The MTA recently launched a new website, one with which I’m quite happy.  It addresses many of the complaints I had about the old site, and is, in general, much more usefully laid out.

The most obvious change is the new layout of the front page.  They’ve replaced the old static navigation with a table showing the current status of each area of service: bus, subway, light rail, MARC, commuter bus, and paratransit.  For each of those, there’s a color-coded button indicating the general health of the service, followed by a brief line of text giving an overview.  If additional detail is available, there’s a link to the full description.  (And that link is a normal one—no opening in a new window and no javascript.  I’m pleased with that.)

Finally, the table has links down the righthand side to the schedules for each service area.  The schedules are arranged nicely, with HTML and PDF available for everything.

Also of note is the removal of the trip planner from the site, a move that was long overdue.  They say they’ll put it back up if they can get it to work.  (The MTA used nicer wording than that, of course.)