Classes and internships as well as recreational activities downtown are an integral part to many students’ NU experience. The Purple Line connecting Evanston to downtown Chicago is infamous for its tardy arrivals and departures. With the new tracker, we will be able to plan for these delays and minimize waiting time, especially during the colder months of the year, which we all know can be very, very cold.

Still, while beneficial, the tracker is not perfect. Rather than a GPS, the tracker employs mathematical predictions which, according to the CTA, are still reliable. More troubling: currently, the tracker often reverts to listing each train’s scheduled arrival rather than the calculated arrival.

At times, the website does not list either option, instead showing “—” indicating that the CTA “need(s) more information to give you a reliable estimate.”

We hope that as the tracker moves out of its beta phase it will become more accurate and useful.

Finally, an important way to broaden the utility of the tracker is to expand existing software into an easy-to-use mobile app so that times can be easily accessed. The app would eliminate the need to access the tracker through a browser.

We welcome the tracker and anticipate its continuing improvement.