Frequently Asked
Questions

Trakkr is a free transit safety tool for NYC subway riders. You enter a destination address — Trakkr finds the nearest subway station and uses TrakkRecord™, the engine behind Trakkr, to tell you two things: (1) the safety outlook for that station, and (2) which elevators and escalators are likely to break down in the next 30 days. No login. No account. Just enter an address.

No. Trakkr is fully independent. We're not affiliated with the MTA, NYPD, NYC government, or any transit agency. We use the same public data anyone can download — and we put in the work to turn it into something a rider can actually use in 30 seconds. We are not the MTA. We are simply better informed about it.

No. Trakkr requires no login, no account, and no personal information of any kind. Enter an address. Get a prediction. That's it.

Trakkr currently covers 371 NYC subway stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. Staten Island Railway is not yet included. Coverage expands as new data becomes available.

The crime model is trained on NYPD Transit Crime open data — years of incident records covering transit crime across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens. Incidents are weighted by severity and normalized against monthly ridership volume so high-traffic stations aren't unfairly flagged.

These are TrakkRecord™'s plain-language crime risk labels for a station:

• SAFE Hotspot probability is low. Crime activity at this station is below the borough average based on historical patterns.
• CAUTION Crime activity is above average for the borough. Not necessarily dangerous, but worth being aware of.
• HIGH RISK TrakkRecord™ places this station in the top-risk tier for its borough. Incidents — including felonies — occur more often here relative to ridership.

No — and this is intentional. Trakkr is predictive, not a live feed. TrakkRecord™ analyzes years of historical crime patterns to forecast which stations are structurally at higher risk. A live incident feed would only tell you something already happened. We tell you what patterns suggest is likely to happen next.

TrakkRecord™ is trained on 10 years of MTA elevator and escalator availability records across 689 equipment units at 180 stations. The model predicts which units have a high probability of needing unscheduled service in the next 30 days, based on outage history, days since last maintenance, equipment type, and seasonal wear patterns.

These are severity tiers for individual elevator and escalator units:

• URGENT Likely to break down soon — and has trapped riders inside before. Plan an alternative route.
• MONITOR Elevated risk, but not at the urgent level yet. Worth knowing if you depend on this unit.
• LOW RISK Wearing normally for its age. No unplanned outage expected in the next 30 days.

Trakkr predicts service risk based on patterns — it does not pull live outage confirmations from MTA systems. For real-time outage status, check the MTA website or the MTA app. Trakkr tells you which units are at risk before they go down. MTA tells you after they do.

No. Trakkr doesn't track your location, store your IP address, or save any personal data. You type an address — we look up where it sits on the map, find your nearest station, send you the report, and forget the address. Nothing about you is kept around.

None. Trakkr is built entirely from public records — MTA equipment logs and NYPD safety records — that aren't tied to any individual rider. We don't use anyone's personal behavior to make a forecast. No accounts, no profiles, no cookie tracking, no analytics beyond making sure the server is up.

TrakkRecord™ is the engine behind Trakkr. It's two custom forecasts: one that predicts which elevators and escalators are likely to break down, and one that predicts which stations are likely to turn into safety hotspots. Both are tuned to err on the side of warning you about a risk that doesn't pan out, rather than missing one that does. Learn more on the TrakkRecord™ page.

When we say Trakkr's safety forecast is 93% accurate, we mean this: of all the stations that actually turned into hotspots in our test records, Trakkr correctly flagged 93 out of every 100 of them in advance. We tune for that number — catching real risks — instead of overall "accuracy," because missing a real risk is more harmful to a rider than occasionally flagging a station that ends up being fine.

The dashboard shows a rolling 90-day outlook. The safety forecast looks back across five years of records to spot the patterns that matter. The elevator and escalator forecast is refreshed every month from each unit's outage and repair history.

Yes — TrakkRecord™ is available to developers, researchers, and organizations who want to pull station reports straight into their own products. Every request comes back with the safety verdict, equipment status, the overall outlook, and nearby station alternatives. To get access, visit the TrakkRecord™ page.

Yes, Trakkr is completely free for all riders — no ads, no subscriptions, no tracking. It's an independent project built for the CUNY AI Innovation Hackathon 2026. If it's useful to you, you can support the work by buying the developer a coffee.

Head to our feedback page — bug reports, feature ideas, and partnership inquiries all welcome. You can also tap the Feedback button in the bottom-left corner of any page to get there directly.