UES Lawmaker's Personal Laptop Powers Tram Schedule

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Trip-planning apps like Google Maps track every subway and bus arrival in New York City through a complex digital coding process.

However, the code for the iconic Roosevelt Island Tram is not maintained by the city — it's entirely run from an Upper East Side lawmaker’s personal laptop, who taught himself the code.

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Assemblymember Alex Bores, who represents the Upper East Side and is currently running for Congress, told Patch he feeds the schedule data that powers the tram on Google and other mapping platforms.

"It still runs off of my personal laptop," Bores said.

The unusual arrangement dates back to a thunderstorm in 2017, when a friend couldn’t find the tram on Google Maps and assumed it wasn’t running.

When Bores checked the app himself, he realized the problem wasn't the rain; it was the lack of data. The tram, as well as the island's network of buses, had, at that point, never been integrated into any major mapping service.

Alex then taught himself the General Transit Feed Specification code, the standard format transit agencies use to share schedules with mapping companies, and translated the tram schedule into the code, he told Patch.

However, he needed to get the code approved by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, which runs the tram, in order for Google and others to publish it. This process took several years. The tram joined the many maps tracking New York City's public transit in 2021.

“Finally, I got [The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation] to go to Google and say, ‘Yes, this is the official system and schedule and you should display this on Google Maps,’” Bores said.

The tram and buses now appear in trip-planning apps, but the backend of that is still running from the Upper East Sider's laptop, leaving Bores as the de facto tram data manager.

He said he usually sets the schedule about a year at a time and is not able to handle real-time delay information.

“With subways, it’s a dynamic schedule,” he said. “When I’m doing it on my laptop, I don’t have that level of integration. It should be done by the people actually running the tram.”

There is now a separate website that tracks Roosevelt Island buses in real time, he noted, a sign that the technology is starting to catch up with riders’ expectations.

Bores currently represents the Manhattan side where the tram lands, but if elected to represent NY-12 in Congress, he would represent Roosevelt Island as well, where he used to live with his wife.

"There would be something nice about actually representing the whole tram system again," he said.

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