At TransitScreen, our goal has always been to make it as simple as possible for people to make their daily commute decisions. That means real-time information about bus and train arrivals, as well as availability of nearby bikeshare and scootershare. Now, at long last, we’re introducing another feature to help keep commutes going smoothly: service alerts.
Our real-time data just got even better with service alerts: Live updates about unexpected service interruptions for your city’s transit system. You’ll be able to view this on both TransitScreen and CityMotion in these select cities:
- Austin: Capital Metro
- Boston: MBTA
- Chicago: Metra
- DC: Metrorail, Metrobus
- New York City: Subway, Bus, Metro-North, LIRR
- San Francisco: BART, Muni, AC Transit, (MTC), Monterey-Salinas
- Seattle: King County Metro, Sound Transit, LINK Light Rail
- Los Angeles: LA Metro, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, Riverside RTA, Orange County OCTA
- Vancouver: TransLink
And you should see data for Chicago, Denver, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Toronto soon!
Here’s how it works: Say you take the L train from Brooklyn to Manhattan every morning. If there’s a disruption on the L, we’ll capture the information from the MTA and make sure it’s right next to your normal departure. If there’s no alert, the L is running normally!
Have you ever spent time on a subway platform watching a tired-looking LED sign scroll through pages of irrelevant alerts? Or worse, trying to decode a lengthy flyer with both too much and yet not enough information on it? We have, and we hate it.
We designed our alerts to be the exact opposite of that frustrating experience: purely relevant information, where you need it, at a glance.
With people returning to work amidst the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, this type of information is more important than ever. Many people will be relying on public transit to take them where they need to go, but some metro systems are offering reduced service. Some companies will be introducing flexible work hours to accommodate social distancing requirements, so employees will be dealing with transit at unusual times.
Service alerts make it easy for employees to handle their commute regardless of when or where it happens.
We’ll be continuing to roll out more alerts in more cities, whether that includes city-wide disruptions or just a small detour.
This information is available not only on our physical TransitScreen displays, but also on our CityMotion mobile app. That means it’s available to you wherever you are, whenever you need it — not just once you’ve already made it to the subway platform and it’s too late to make a different decision.
We also support service alerts for employee shuttles and other private transit options, if you have those. This way, your employees can stay in-the-know and won’t trade the shuttle for their personal vehicle next time.
Whether you’re running a fleet of shuttles and need a way to communicate disruptions to employees, or simply have a lot of employees trying to navigate the MTA to get to work every day, we have solutions — hit that “Request a Demo” button up top and let’s start the conversation. Your employees will thank you.
