TCal

A calendar of planned service disruptions on MBTA rapid transit.

📅 Subscribe

To get these events in your own calendar, copy this iCal URL and add it to your calendar app:

https://tcal.digitalcora.net/alerts.ics

The process for doing this varies, but in the end you’re looking for a box you can paste a URL into (not something that asks you to upload a file). Look for words like “feed”, “sync”, or “subscribe”. If stuck, try a web search for your calendar app name plus “ical feed”.

Developer options

To easily inspect the raw feed in your browser, replace .ics with .txt in the URL.

⚠ Limitations

• The calendar only shows disruptions on rapid transit lines (Blue, Green, Orange, Red). To get alerts about Commuter Rail, bus, or ferry disruptions, try T-Alerts.

• The calendar does not show all disruptions on rapid transit. The goal is to surface disruptions that can substantially impact a ride, and are planned in advance (and thus useful to display on a calendar). Shuttle buses and station closures are typical examples.

• The calendar does not show the exact time(s) a disruption is scheduled to start and end; all disruptions are shown as “all-day” events. This creates a more readable calendar view (and avoids cluttering your personal calendar, if you subscribe to the feed). Check event descriptions for timing details.

• The calendar does not show past disruptions. This is a limitation of the MBTA alerts API, and working around it would not be worth the added complexity.

💬 Feedback

Issues and feature ideas are tracked on GitHub. Anyone (with a GitHub account) can report bugs or suggest improvements there!

Before reporting an issue, check whether it is also present in the alerts on mbta.com. If so, please report it to the MBTA instead of this project.

💻 About the author

I’m Cora, a software engineer with the MBTA’s Technology Innovation Department. I created this project using the agency’s public data and APIs, partly as an exercise in learning Crystal, and partly as a tiny public service that fills a niche the MBTA itself does not.

🔎 Privacy

TCal does not track usage or collect any personally identifying information. When you visit this web site or request the iCal feed, data from your HTTP request (including IP address) may be temporarily stored in logs or sent to Sentry to help me fix crashes. This data is automatically deleted after 30 days.