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Transit Agencies Embracing Syndication

Don’t be afraid of the little orange button on the side of websites (usually with the letters R, S and S nearby), it’s here to help.

Syndication, usually in the form of RSS (which, reassuringly, stands for Really Simple Syndication), is a way to connect your transit users with the information you have. Static websites require visitors to reconnect to a site to get information. RSS feeds put that information right in their sights without them having to browse over.

How It Works

Most transit websites are constantly publishing information valuable to the public, such as system alerts, upcoming projects, jobs, route changes, agency news, et cetera. Websites utilizing syndication create “feeds” for all of their information pipelines on their site. A user then subscribes to that feed and, whenever you update your information, they’re updated.

Initially, RSS feeds only provided information to what were called “aggregators,” programs that put all of these feeds into a single place. Over the last two years RSS has expanded and now users are getting updates in their email, on their cellphones, in their browsers, over instant messenger and just about any web-enabled device.

So as you update syndication-enabled portions of your site, your riders will be informed on whatever device they’ve selected to get that information.

For example, if you have a system update feed and post a message like:

ALERT: Red Line Train is no longer operating between Franklin and Pierce Stations, take #45 Bus Route. Go to transitagencywebsite.com for more information.

That message will then appear on someone’s cellphone, laptop or PDA when they check their feed (or automatically if they choose). This works better than merely placing an alert on your website and hoping they check it before they leave.

Examples

Agencies that are currently doing this include MCTS, WMATA and LACMTA, as well as some others.

To the left is an example of news with RSS links on the front of the MCTS page. Note that they have RSS feeds for special announcements, detour alerts and special events.

Once you publish RSS feeds (or XML/Atom, which are other varieties), it’s completely at the discretion of the user as to how they want to configure the service. This is much easier to operate than comparable email alert services, though it is certainly recommended to try and reach as many customers with service  updates.