A Wake-Up Call For Sleepy Transit Riders

The best things about a long bus or train commute—the rhythmic rocking, the soothing white noise, the forced idleness—are also perilous: You might fall asleep. And the longer your daily commute, the more likely you are to be sleep deprived and susceptible to grabbing—or being grabbed by—an onboard nap.

Which raises the issue of how not to miss your stop. While some subway snoozers are able to reliably rouse themselves in time, possibly via subconscious micro-awakenings at every stop, others risk waking up to find themselves at the end of the line, or aboard an empty train in a desolate maintenance yard. As a sometime sleeper on D.C.-area mass transit, I recently had a great idea—developing a smartphone app that could sound an alert just before the user’s stop. Then, as frequently happens, I went to the app store and discovered with a mix of disappointment and relief that someone else (actually several someones) had already had my idea.