FAQ

Nope! Tunnel Rat works the second you open it—no signup, no email, no password to forget.

We might change this in the future, particularly to make it easier to use Tunnel Rat across multiple devices, but we plan to keep it optional.

Yes, completely. Live arrivals, favorites, alerts, trip planning, widgets—all free. We may add a few optional, paid extras down the road, but everything you need to catch your train stays free.

We (tktk studio, the developer) cover the cost of running Tunnel Rat for free, so as many people as possible can use it. At some point we may accept donations or add optional paid features, but we don't do so today.

Tunnel Rat was primarily designed for New Yorkers who have a routine—some stops, lines, and routes they use every day. That said, anyone can use it to find their way around the city.

It does less, on purpose. No ads, no clutter, no five taps to see your train. Just open it, glance, and go.

Mostly, yep. When you're between stops or in a tunnel, Tunnel Rat keeps showing your last live times, fills the gaps with scheduled estimates, and catches up the moment you're back online.

It can't magically get signal when there is none, but it's built to make sure you have what you need during those short moments between stops.

Today, Tunnel Rat is subway-only—every line and every station done well, rather than spread thin across every mode of transit. We may expand over time, but the subway will always come first.

Tunnel Rat is built by tktk studio—a one-person independent studio in Brooklyn, founded by designer Ryan Reid. It's made by a New Yorker, for New Yorkers who actually ride. Read more about the studio at tktk.studio.

No. Tunnel Rat is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by the MTA. We use the MTA's official public data under license to show route symbols and station names, but we're our own thing.

No. Today, Tunnel Rat is only available for iOS. We don't have immediate plans to add Android or web support.

You can find stops on the map tab or through search. Once there, just tap the star button to add it to your Faves tab.

You can also manage your favorite stops by scrolling to the bottom of the Faves tab and tapping “Edit Favorites”.

Yep! In Settings > Favorites, tap the ··· button, then “Reorder”. Then you can tap and drag your favorite stops into the order you want.

As many as you want—there's no maximum. Most riders settle on a handful of stops they actually ride, but that's entirely up to you.

The map helps you find stops and plan trips. Search for any station, address, or landmark, just like you would in other map apps. It works best with location turned on, but it's still a handy tool without it.

Yes! In the map tab, tap “Where to?” at the top to enter a destination and see available routes. Tunnel Rat will show you a few options based on live train times and alerts, and guide you to where you need to go.

When you plan a trip, the routes Tunnel Rat suggests take current alerts and live train times into account—so you're starting from what's actually running, not just the map on a good day. For anything that shifts mid-trip, the Alerts tab has the latest.

Sometimes, entrances to a stop are split by the direction they serve. That means it's important to enter the right station, depending on which way you're headed. The map tab adds labels to any entrances that only serve a single direction, so you can always double check before entering.

Both! Tunnel Rat takes the MTA's official alert and turns it into a short summary you can read at a glance. The original MTA wording is always one tap away, so you can check it if you're ever in doubt.

They come straight from the MTA's official feed and refresh every minute or so, so you're seeing service changes close to as fast as the system posts them. If your signal drops in a tunnel, alerts hold until you're back online.

You can see alerts about your favorites in the Faves tab, or for the whole system in the Alerts tab. For a heads-up without opening the app, you can add the alerts widget or turn on notifications.

Yep, if you want them. In Settings > Notifications, you can customize exactly what you want to get: specific lines, times, days, boroughs, and more.

We have two types of widget: Arrivals and Alerts. Both are tied to your favorite stops, so you can keep tabs on upcoming trains and any issues without opening the app.

Every line has a hand-written description, and station pages surface accessibility details like step-free access and live equipment status.

A dimmed line isn't scheduled to stop at that station right now. Some lines only serve a station part of the time—often late at night, when an express switches to running local—so they're dimmed during the hours they pass the station by, and light back up when they're running. The bright lines are the ones you can count on at that station at this moment.

If you choose to use it, your location is only used to find nearby stops and plan trips—it's never stored or shared with us. But it's entirely optional, and Tunnel Rat still works well without it.

We do not sell your data. Period.

We intentionally collect very little data. The only data we do collect is anonymized, and only used for fixing bugs / improving app performance. You can check out the full details in Settings > Privacy Policy.

Live arrivals, service alerts, and station details all come straight from the MTA's official public data feeds, with a few extra details from New York's public open data. When you lose signal underground, Tunnel Rat falls back to the scheduled timetable and labels it clearly, so it's never a guess. The app is built on open-source libraries too—you'll find the full list of data sources and licenses on the About page.

Yes—the map is Apple Maps, built right into iOS. Everything on top of it—the lines, arrivals, and alerts—is the MTA's official data. Because the map comes from Apple, your use of it falls under Apple's privacy policy, the same as any app built on Apple Maps.

Yes, we baked it in from the beginning. The app itself supports the system tools some folks rely on: VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, high contrast, and reduced motion. And because a station you can't physically use is no station at all, Tunnel Rat treats the subway's own accessibility—step-free stations and live elevator and escalator status—as first-class information, not an afterthought.

Yes. Tunnel Rat pulls the MTA's live equipment status and shows it right on the station, flagging a stop as currently inaccessible when a key elevator or escalator is down. You can find the latest status in the ··· menu on any station page or bottom sheet. We also show them when selecting a route during trip planning, so you know what to expect.

Accessibility alerts carry their own icon so they're easy to spot, and you can filter the Alerts tab down to just equipment issues. The status is cached, too, so it's still there when you're underground.

Step-free (accessible) stations are marked throughout the app, on the map and on stop details. For a station complex, the status reflects the worst case across all its platforms—so an accessible entrance on one line won't mislead you when the platform you actually need isn't.

Today, Tunnel Rat shows you live elevator and escalator status before you go, so you can spot a locked-up station and pick another way yourself. Routing that automatically steers you around outages is something we're actively building toward.

We do have a high contrast mode. Whether or not you have Apple's High Contrast setting turned on, you can toggle it on/off in Settings > Appearance.

It does. Turn on Reduce Motion in iOS, and we'll dial down our animations accordingly.

Yep. Tunnel Rat is built to work with both VoiceOver and Dynamic Type. We're actively improving both, so feel free to reach out if you notice anything that we can improve or fix.

If you're offline or have weak signal, you'll see a purple banner at the top indicating such. In those cases, Tunnel Rat holds your last known times and fills the gaps with scheduled estimates, then reconnects on its own the moment you've got signal again.

If you're not seeing a banner, try hard-closing the app (pull up from the bottom of your screen and flick it away), then reopening once you have signal again.

When you lose signal, Tunnel Rat keeps showing the last good times and clearly marks them as not live, so you're never left staring at a blank screen in a tunnel. After an extended period offline, Tunnel Rat will stop showing time entirely—we'd rather do that than try to guess and get it wrong.

If you take a screenshot, a little message will pop up asking if you want to share feedback. Otherwise, you can find it in Settings > Share Feedback. We'll do our best to get back to you ASAP.

There are two ways to support us right now:

1. Rate the app in the App Store. Tell others how much you've enjoyed Tunnel Rat with a quick review. A positive review really, really helps us to keep the app alive.

2. Spread the word! Let friends know about the app. You can easily share a link to it by tapping the ··· menu in the Faves tab and picking “Share”.