Don’t Hate Her, She’s Just the (Subway) Messenger

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/nyregion/subway-mta-social-media-alerts.html

by daegloe • 8 years ago

69 53 8 years ago

no_wizard• 8 years ago

I have friends who have and currently live in NYC and I know the MTA gets a lot of flak from them and sometimes for very good reason.

I have to say though all things considered this is a shining example (to me) of something that is typically very opaque - government agency public relations- and giving it some honest try polish and actually trying to meet people where they are (e.g Twitter)

Does this paper over all the problems of th MTA? I’m sure it does not! I do think they’re at least trying though and that’s a lot more than can be said of other gov agencies I have dealt with.

z2• 8 years ago

Agreed! Though there are clearly problems, I really appreciate the folks working actively on transparency (of operations, at least). I've been pleasantly surprised at the breadth and depth of my own city's API for real time information, and understand this level of thoughtfulness isn't unusual for major US public transit systems in general.

probably_wrong• 8 years ago

The German train system uses TTS in all stations to announce (among other things) delays and cancellations. Cancellations are usually followed by the phrase "we apologize". This has always been for me the most infuriating part: that the fakest of apologies was attached to it.

In contrast, getting actual information about the delay works for me, precisely because it feels more honest.

kaybe• 8 years ago

I feel like they increasingly inform about causes of delays too though. It has been worse in the past.

withdavidli• 8 years ago

Using the DB app is really helpful to me. All delays are near real-time. It makes using public transport so much easier. Now the German ticketing machine, please fix that so it includes the stops instead of just end points.

pluma• 8 years ago

The most infuriating part for me with the local transport agency in Cologne (KVB) is the verbosity. They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

This is especially bad with cancellations because it lists every major stop (with station name and time) for the canceled tram. So instead of getting the important information instantly you are stuck waiting for the message to end and then repeat to the point that's actually important. I realise this is a technical limitation because apparently all affected stations get the same message but this seems fairly archaic while at the same time also being an obvious cost-cutting move over having actual announcements.

In general however the infuriating part about the apologies is that instead of "we apologize for the inconvenience" a more literal translation of the one you see most often -- "Danke für Ihr Verständnis" -- is "thank you for your understanding", which comes off as super passive-aggressive compared to the more apologetic but much less frequent "Wir bitten um Verständnis" ("we ask for your understanding"). Sure, they're both hollow phrases but thanking you seems extremely condescending.

dgellow• 8 years ago

Isn’t this “fake” politeness part of the German culture? I see it in everything related to business communication, from banks, insurances, public services, etc. Even from retail stores. That has been explained to me as being part of the etiquette for proper communication, which seems to be quite important in Germany, even if everybody I asked agreed that it was empty and meaningless.

Sangermaine4• 8 years ago

Honest my ass:

“I think people think it’s a lot worse than it is, this catastrophic mess all the time,” she said. “I’ve had to put a moratorium on talking about the trains with my boyfriend. We had to say no talking about the trains. He’s part of the public. They just see the bad parts. They don’t see the strides we’re making and how this information that we put out makes a difference. They’re caught up in the negative part.”

The "negative part" is the trains being late or stopping in the tunnels almost daily. The "negative part" is our lives being constantly disrupted by the MTA's unbelievably poor service. She's damn right we're "caught up in the negative part".

This is a bullshit spin operation. Fix the damn trains, don't hire some PR operative to tell us we're somehow delusional and we're not really having these problems.

sametmax• 8 years ago

I don't get the hate. I just love to have a good information system.

People hating those messages never had to live in countries with failures occurring without any feedback.

chimeracoder5• 8 years ago

I don't get the hate. I just love to have a good information system.

That's the exact problem. We don't have a good information system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17442606

binarymax• 8 years ago

One of the feeds she monitors is here: https://twitter.com/NYCTSubway/with_replies

jrockway3• 8 years ago

I checked out their Twitter feed a couple days ago (had to reroute due to a broken rail at Wall St. and wanted to see a picture or something of the broken rail). I was amazed how polite and helpful they are to the most irate customers. It really does seem that the social media team calms down a lot of angry people.

Meanwhile, I am surprised at how desynchronized their various data sources are. I check mta.info before I go on a subway trip, and did that this morning for my commute to work. Delays on the 4 and 5, but none on the 2 and 3. I go down to the 2/3 platform and there is an announcement playing saying that the 2 and 3 are delayed (for the same reason given on mta.info about the 4/5; signal problems at Borough Hall). The website apparently didn't get the message. At least I had cell service while waiting...

pavel_lishin• 8 years ago

The worst part about mta.info is that it'll show scheduled work on lines, but it doesn't show closed stations - so the C looks like it skips 86th but not 72nd, when in actuality 72nd is closed for repairs and you ain't getting on or off a train there. If you need to plan a trip, you have to check at least two places.

jrockway3• 8 years ago

Yeah, the updates are honestly pretty bad.

For that broken rail incident, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten home. The announcement said Clark St. was closed, which is my station... but I am pretty sure, in retrospect, that they meant that there would be no Manhattan-bound trains at that station because they're being rerouted over the 4/5, but I think Brooklyn-bound trains were not being rerouted (as that rail wasn't broken). They were very unclear, and so I just took an alternate route. They could have been completely clear, but chose not to.

(I'll also point out that they provided walking directions from Clark St. to Borough Hall... but they provided directions to the actual Brooklyn Borough Hall, not the subway station with the same name. Oops.)

Sangermaine4• 8 years ago

It really does seem that the social media team calms down a lot of angry people.

Great, they've mastered spin. People are angry for good reason. Don't calm them down, fix the damn trains, now. This is just more of the MTA's endless bullshit.

jrockway3• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.

I have noticed on my commutes that there are times that I simply can't arrive at work. If I'm commuting at an unpopular time, it takes 15 minutes. If I commute at a popular time, it takes 20 minutes. This makes me either 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late, depending on the time I expect to arrive.

The reason the trains take a different amount of time is because when the trains are crowded, it takes a long time for people to get on and off, so the train has to sit in the station longer. This delays the train behind, and so on. A new signal system or better tracks isn't going to fix this problem. It's the human factor of "I want to arrive exactly at 9am, 9:01am isn't acceptable" that's slowing everyone down.

raverbashing• 8 years ago

As much as the system might be bad, remember the human behind the service.

Sangermaine4• 8 years ago

Then the human can fix the awful service and stop feeding us bullshit.

chimeracoder5• 8 years ago

I live in NYC, and I follow transit news very rigorously.

This article underplays the extent of the problem, which is that the information they give is just not actually correct.

First of all, the MTA made a big deal about rolling out the subway countdown clocks across (almost) all the stations. Except, for the old BMT lines[0], the clocks are just... not actually accurate! They're literally just publishing the scheduled times, and almost never actually update it to correspond to a delay[1][2]. Delays are dramatically worse across every single subway line than they were ten years ago[3], so by this point, those scheduled times are almost completely useless. Thankfully, the BMT countdown clocks are a different style from the IRT ones, so as a rule of thumb: if it's black text on white background, then it's completely useless, and if it's green LEDs on black background, then it's probably-somewhat-useful, but still not necessarily up-to-date.

Even for planned service changes, they publish information in unbelievably obtuse ways[4]. Yes, they're technically correct. But the point is to communicate things clearly, not to publish statements that are defensibly not-wrong in a court of law.

Just last month, they decided to stop service for the express trains midtown (or run it in two segments - I never figured out which). They didn't tell anyone, so an entire train full of passengers went two stops downtown and two stops back uptown. Because they also held the train before one of the stations, we literally took half an hour to end up right back where we started[5].

[0] For the most part, any line with a letter instead of a number, like the A/C/E instead of the 1/2/3

[1] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/950863996323794944

[2] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/948727423444639745

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...

[4] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/933826118364299266

[5] https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/1000422530736377857

macintux• 8 years ago

I understand your frustration. Precision without accuracy can be absolutely infuriating.

Imagine a friend saying "I'll be there in 5 minutes" and showing up 2 hours later. Just maddening.

electricslpnsld• 8 years ago

Imagine a friend saying "I'll be there in 5 minutes" and showing up 2 hours later. Just maddening.

Sounds like L.A.!

chirau• 8 years ago

I totally agree. I was stuck at the Broadway Junction station this weekend waiting for the L. Every 5 min or so, both the screen and the announcer would claim it is now arriving. We were there for 35 min. I was supposed to meet some friends and initially I was updating them that it's about to get there. Eventually, they were almost pissed because they thought I was lying. Had to send pics.

I really really get frustrated by the inaccuracies. I'd rather they just let me know straight up that it's 30 min away and I make alternative arrangements.

ng124• 8 years ago

Except, for the old BMT lines[0], the clocks are just... not actually accurate!

I can't say I agree. I've been a daily commuter on the ACE, 1, and NQR/BD trains since the introduction of the clocks and found them all to be wonderfully accurate.

workinfunk3• 8 years ago

Yeah, it's almost surely a case of remembering the handful of times when the clocks were inaccurate because they caused you trouble, while forgetting the hundreds of times when they worked correctly. They do work correctly most of the time, and the A division works even better than the B division, as you'd expect. (the opposite of what OP claimed.)

L_Rahman• 8 years ago

This is an improvement over how things worked before, but the end state for this has to be an API definition for service changes so that services like Google Maps and Citymapper can update my routes or estimated travel times.

I don't want to plan a route in Citymapper and then have to check myMTA for service status.

RIMR• 8 years ago

Can I recommend that "MYmta" should be replaced with "MyMTA".

delinka• 8 years ago

You can, but I suspect they'll stick with the former: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymta/id1297605670?mt=8

Seems to me they've branded it this way intentionally.

Animats• 8 years ago

The innovation here is that this PR person works in the Rail Control Center, with the people who are actually running the subway. Not in some PR office. She's surrounded by the people who are telling the trains what to do, controlling signals and switches, and dealing with problems. She can see the track boards and listen to the comm loops.

Contrast this with big sites which have status pages showing everything is just great half an hour after it's hit the mainstream media that they're down.

It's very New York. When Maersk Shipping had a big hacking incident and was down for most of a week, the best no-bullshit info was coming from someone at the Port Authority who edits their feed for truckers. Maersk PR was saying "almost everything is fine". The Port Authority trucker feed was saying stuff like "Maersk can't take outbounds at APM, only one gate is open for inbounds, don't return empties at this time". That brutal honesty beats horsing a semi over there to find out you can't unload.

msla• 8 years ago

Seems like it's a new communications channel which is ripe to get PR'd into uselessness, just like the company's official channels.

Maybe it can't be, because there has to be some useful channel to tell people that, no, those ships aren't coming in today or that train isn't going to make it on time or so on, but if the company sees a value in presenting the happy face to everyone, it has an incentive to make whatever deals it needs to in order to ensure all public or not-private channels stay on-message. This works out to NDAs and encryption, usually.

Maybe that's impossible at a practical level.

tomjen3• 8 years ago

Don't hire pr people, make the trains run on time. It works for japan.

ardit33• 8 years ago

I hate to say this, but the MTA/Subway in NYC has reached the level of service that you can expect from a third country system. The pain is even worse during the summer where all stations have a mix of scorching heat and humidity, and it feels almost like you are in a sauna.

The MTA doesn't just need more money, but a completely change in leadership as well, and putting new people that have higher expectations on the service, and that actually use it themselves.

Even simple thing like "scheduled maintenance" notices look like they were design for lawyers and not normal people.

The current management is totally dysfunctional, and yes Ny Gov. Cuomo is part of the problem. (and the boob wants to run for President). He is going to run down the country just as he is doing with the MTA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/new-york-subway-a...

mjevans• 8 years ago

It needs... robots.

Robots for all the things that a commuter doesn't directly interact with.

The humans belong in the human interface and can remain in the stations; MAYBE as actual patrols on the train looking to provide assistance and keep the peace (and also having access to get in to the control area in case an over-ride is required).

jefnwk2• 8 years ago

Check out these Split Flap displays - real-time updates, API integrations, oh YES. https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/

Don’t Hate Her, She’s Just the (Subway) Messenger

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