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It's as simple as sending a text message. Long Island Rail Road riders can now text a station-to-station request, like "Penn to Huntington," to 266266. That spells CooCoo -- the text engine company that operates the new service. Within seconds, CooCoo will text you back with the next five trains, including any delays.

"What’s beautiful about this is it’s right there. All five are listed and stored. The customer can look at it as many times as they want and make a decision about their commute," said Long Island Rail Road President Helena Williams.

The service works on any phone. No Internet access is needed, and the only cost is your phone carrier's standard texting fee. The pilot program also comes at no cost to the MTA.

"You don’t have to subscribe. You don’t have to sign up. It’s just a free service available to our customers," Williams said.

"We’re reducing our cost, but actually providing a greater level of customer service than we were able to do before," said MTA Chairman & CEO Jay Walder.

Currently, there are no plans to provide this particular service to subway riders, who of course rely less on posted schedules anyway.
In any case, transit riders are likely more concerned with the fact that they will soon have less service thanks to major planned cuts to subways and buses.

MTA officials, however, say the revised list of service changes released Friday results in less pain for riders.

"What you've seen us do is to mitigate impacts," Walder said. "We’ve tried to restructure routes. We’ve tried to do things to be able to continue to provide services to communities so that we're not cutting communities off."

The plan will still cut subway service and eliminate or reroute dozens of bus routes. In addition, Access-a-Ride vans will now, in some cases, no longer take riders to their destination, but instead drop them off at a subway or bus stop.

The MTA also plans to move ahead with the elimination of student MetroCard discounts. Walder said the information posted on the MTA website sets a new standard for transparency.

"This is not a black box anymore," Walder said. "I think in December, you know, people saw a package of cuts, and it was largely pulled out of somewhere else. All of the data's out there, in a way that I think it's never been out there before."

The service cuts must still be approved by the MTA board following public hearings scheduled to take place in March.