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Communication technology connecting the MTA with its riders is becoming a laughable deficiency in comparison to other major cities with metro systems. Riders who were prescient enough to check the MTA's website to see if there were any delays on their lines related to the torrentional downpour Wednesday morning before they left their homes were out of luck and not alone. The MTA's site crashed under the volume of online traffic one might expect the agency to experience during a systemwide series of shutdowns when riders would be looking for information.
The New York Times describes how commuters in other cities receive updates on their phones and auto-generated emails while standing on train platforms, as New Yorkers are reduced to crowding around token booths in an attempt to decipher abrupt and always disappointing news of service interruptions on propped-up white dry-erase boards.
Compared with commuters in many of the world’s leading cities, subway riders in New York live in something of an information vacuum once they enter the system’s 468 stations. For decades, riders have regarded their creaking and antiquated subway network as a minor miracle, tolerating frequent delays, cramped stations and malfunctioning public-address systems.But the storm this week, highlighting yet again deficiencies in how the authority gets information out, seemed to push riders past the limits of their patience. Those flaws are one focus of a 30-day review that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has ordered into what went wrong after the intense early-morning rains of Wednesday.
One of the improvements set in place for yesterday's rains: extra managers and employees dispatched to the system's busiest stations, some equipped with bullhorns. The Times describes the management of the MTA as being highly focused on major capital improvements and regular maintenance, like building the 2nd Ave. subway line, and maintaining aging signal and switching equipment. Avoiding massive customer frustration, like that experienced Wednesday, by providing current information is simply a lower priority.
Describing how the current NYC customer notification system works, the Times writes that employees stationed by train dispatchers record a telephone message describing disruptions. Station agents then listen to these recordings and attempt to transcribe their meaning on a dry-erase board. "'We keep an ample supply on hand,' Termain Garden, a transit official, said of the markers."
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The MTA needs mobile (from cell phone and PDA) tools to plan routes, get service interruptions, and to get schedules for non-metro service. They could learn volumes from Transport for London (TfL) about how to get info to people via text message, cell phone browser, or BlackBerry/PDA browsers. While TfL's train service might suck more than the MTA's, they do (IMHO) a super job at communicating this info to people.
Each subway station should also have a digital message board outside the station that can be used to let people know if the trains below are running, or if there's something wrong. Why do I have to go down the stairs only to find a stupid tiny whiteboard with drivel written on it? We can get stupid freakin' advertising on these LCD/plasma displays mounted adjacent to many stations, but not actual service info? Wtf?
The MTA also needs to step up fixing the signalling system on all lines so we can get trains running less than a mile apart. Too bad if the union doesn't want increased automation on trains -- the city is going to crumble at the expense of Toussaint and his minions. If the TWU keeps getting in the way of progress, to hell with them -- break the union and rehire.
While TfL's train service might suck more than the MTA's, they do (IMHO) a super job at communicating this info to people.
There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin. Accept mediocrity as explained on pretty plasma screens?
Each subway station should also have a digital message board outside the station that can be used to let people know if the trains below are running, or if there's something wrong. Why do I have to go down the stairs only to find a stupid tiny whiteboard with drivel written on it?
Are you that freaking lazy? Walk down the fucking stairs.
I'm glad you brought this up again. A quote by the MTA's CIO in that same Times article made it seem like sending email alerts to passengers was a nearly impossible task. I don't know if he was quoted wrong or out of context but that seemed like a bizarre statement to make. Managing an email list is a fairly trivial IT task.
Plus, as the guest commenter said, we can get advertising on the outside screens but not service info? The city is blanketed with cable and phone networks. It can't be that difficult or expensive to run those wires to station entrances or into the station.
Quoting JoeSchumacher:
I'm glad you brought this up again. A quote by the MTA's CIO in that same Times article made it seem like sending email alerts to passengers was a nearly impossible task. I don't know if he was quoted wrong or out of context but that seemed like a bizarre statement to make. Managing an email list is a fairly trivial IT task.
Joe, you bring up a very good point here. There is a can't do, we're stuck with 19th century technology attitude at the Transit Authority. This organizational culture is pervasive all the way from upper management to low level employees.
Trying to get them to reform, accept new processes, or use new technology is against their culture. So their thinking is...if whiteboards and markers are working fine, then why bother setting up real time email alerts for thousands of riders?
[2] You're joking right? Have you ever been to a crowded rush hour station when service is interrupted? One feels fortunate to wait in line on the sidewalk to even descend the stairs to read a dry-erase board.
#2 -- if you've ever been on a tube train in London, you'd understand that there is only local track, so if a train breaks down or there's a problem at a station (which happens daily) you can't get around it -- everything comes to a screeching halt. Letting people know before they go downstairs that they need to find a bus, cab, walk, or go back where they came and wait it out, is almost genius.
Public/private partnerships (like what's recently been implemented in London with TfL) are iffy. I think at this point, between crumbling stations, sporadic service even during rush hour, signals (the nervous system of a train network) that are from the 20s that can't operate safely, and no way to deliver customer information in an accurate and timely fashion -- we need any help we can get. I'll gladly turn the design, construction, and maintenance over to a "big evil" corp and let them make some $$$ just to get us in a 21st century transit system.
The MTA CIO should be immediately fired for those remarks. Their BS "weekend work" emails are still in testing after almost two years. That alone (along with no real working trip planner) should have this douchebag on the unemployment line.
Lack of communication is the problem.
In spite of commenter #2's enthusiasm to begin arguing, it's not laziness that makes people frustrated at having to go downstairs, swipe their card, and make their way to the track BEFORE finding out that there's a problem.
Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering your food, and then, after you've begun to wonder what's taking the kitchen so long, the waiter tells you, grudgingly, after repeated questioning, that there's no food.
Wouldn't you wonder why they didn't tell you that when you walked in the door?
It doesn't have to be a digital display. Take one of those little dry erase boards that they claim to have in abundance, and prop it at the entrance. Or post one of the MTA employees at the entrance.
There's absolutely no reason on earth why the MTA's website is not designed to accomodate the very reason that most people will seek it out; an emergency situation.
The communication this week was just terrible. I waited at the 7th Ave. stop in Brooklyn for almost an hour and did not hear ONE announcement of any problems or even an estimation of when the next train would arrive. This is just inexcusable. And the same thing happened the next day when the f train was still f-ed up. A little communication would go a long way to keeping people calm.
The digital message board idea is genius. It should include the basics - training is running (check) or train in not running and here are the options (check).
Requiring up-to-date information on a timely basis will force the MTA to be actually know what is going on. My sense from Wend's nightmare is that they didn't have a clue.
In London, the level of repair went way down when they handed over maintenence to a pair of private companies. I don't think it's really worth it.
Hey at least they don't use "Smoke Signals " ! Give them credit for that ! Posted by; "Still Not Amused"
Sometimes the answer is not just the latest technology. Rode the N in from Astoria to Union Square this AM.
The "latest" Car. Nice, clean, cool.
Only prob was that after passing thru 49th Street, the displays & automated audio announcements kept saying next stop: 49th street.
From 34th South, Kept saying next stop: Astoria Blvd.
Loved watching the turistas freaking @ 28th, 22nd, 42nd, pulling maps.
How about a nice big whiteboard at each turnstile group for the latest info? What, it's like $14.99 @ Staples including markers. Low-tech, can be kept up to date. You can even "adopt a station" & donate one.
My prediction: some million dollar study by some politicos NYU nephew, then a high tech system no-bidded to Bruno or Shel's mistresses cousins brother-in-law that doesn't work, with millions of cost overruns.
Dadoc
Sorry, guest # 7.
Didn't see your post. Darned faded "guest" stuff.
But it's comforting to know that great minds think alike.
Dadoc
hey, at least the writing on the dry-erase board is legible. kudos mta!
My personal favourites are when you find service notices that contradict each other and you just get on a train that may go in the general direction you are going in Even if you look at the scheduled service changes on the weekends/nights you sometimes find the reality is way different than what was scheduled. Then again I have through some strange act of the subway gods have ridden a G train in Manhattan despite that being impossible. (OK, it is physically possible for the G to be routed into Manhattan, but it is just one of those freak things that happens.)