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CONCEPT: Cheap & Easy Rider Alert System

Lately I’ve been thinking of different ways to utilize the many web2.0 technologies to bridge the informational gap that exists between riders and operators. I’ve been especially interested in providing up-to-date rider alerts for individual routes that aren’t attached to significant costs in either money or effort.

One of the best ways to achieve a wide-range of notification, at least to people with an intermediate level of web-saviness, is to create RSS feeds for your alerts (whether generally or by route). We blogged about that here. The advantage of RSS is that it’s readable by a variety of sources (whether computers or cellphones).

The major problem with translating information via RSS is that you have to setup a system for getting the piece of information from the information holder (A) to the syndication generator (B) and then to the user (C).

For example, if I am the information holder (A) and I have a piece of information about transit communications I post that information to this blog, which automatically turns it into a post on our RSS feed (B) and is then accessible to you, the user (C).

This is a great system, especially if you know an event or construction is coming up and you can then put that piece of information out there in advance of the event. But what if the event is spontaneous, like a massive rain storm that shuts down part of the city or a chemical spill?

The information has to pass from multiple individuals (A’s) until it reaches the (A) in charge of putting that information into the RSS/Alert System (B) to get out to the (C’s). What’s needed is a system that allows drivers, route supervisors and dispatchers (A’s) to quickly get that information into a (B) so that the riders (C) can adjust their schedules.

This is where a system like Twitter comes in. Twitter uses the basic principles of syndication to let users share information via their web profile, RSS and other formats. This is generally used by people to share updates about what they’re doing at any given moment. For example, politicians like John Edwards use it to let individuals know what they’re doing (see his Twitter here).

The great thing about Twitter is it allows users to send information to their account in a variety of ways including text messaging, email, a webform and instant messenger. The account merely has to be set to remember certain numbers or inputs. And like RSS, people can choose to be notified via email, RSS or going to their homepage.

So what’s the application to transit? Read more here to find out:

Imagine you’re a mid-sized urban bus company named MUBTA and you have 20 bus routes (I know you’d have more, but round numbers work best for examples). For each route you setup a twitter account (like twitter.com/MBUTA_Route5) and give all of your dispatchers, road supervisors and maybe even drivers access to the account if they needed to post information. That would be a lot of (A’s) with access to (B) that could provide immediate, on-the-scene information.

You could put a Twitter box on the alert page that showed each of the routes (or, even better, put it on the corresponding route page as well). All of your users (C’s) could add MBUTA_Route5 to their Twitter account and be notified in whatever way they chose of that information.

I used my Twitter account to post an example message:

ROUTE #34 is being rerouted around Main Street to 4th Avenue due to construction on the Olhaney Bridge. BE ADVISED.

If you put together a twitter account just for your agency (MBUTA in this example) you could set it up to aggregate all the notices from all of the different users, like this (warning, I’m not sure what my friends are twittering about when you read this).

This kind of system would work best in an area with more tech-savvy individuals and, perhaps, a more college-oriented population. But it’s just an example of how to use cheap and easy technology to bring important information to your riders.