“Can we talk about this Transit app update? It tells you how ratty the station is.”
TikToker @smokulani posed this question in a video that’s collected more than 500,000 views and a lot of follow-up questions.
It should come as no surprise that she is talking about New York City, where the public transportation app Transit is used to simplify bus, train, ferry, and rail routes. But a new update estimates something more important: How many rats have been spotted at any New York subway station.
In @smokulani’s TikTok, the station she’s searching had “some rats,” but she shows a scale that goes from “so many” to “one or two” to “none.”
“I prefer surprise rather than anticipation,” said one commenter.
@smokulani #greenscreen #nyc #transit #rats ♬ original sound – smokulani☆
According to Transit’s site, the “rat detector” feature is a crowdsource project for app users. When the Transit app sees that a user is in a subway station, “We ask if you see any rats.”
As of Wednesday, 40% of subway riders detected rats, which seems low. In a follow-up TikTok, @smokulani dug into those numbers a bit more and noted that the data seems to be updated daily on the app.
@smokulani Replying to @sheri #greenscreen #nyc #rat #ratdata #transitapp #nycrats #ratsrunthiscity #mta ♬ original sound – smokulani☆
A spokesperson for Transit confirms that the data is updated daily. The app started sharing results in early October after asking users to report sightings starting in August.
