Last year I criticized Metro for not letting anyone know that boating Opening Day was going to create massive disruption to buses in the Montlake area.
That makes it gratifying to see that routes like the 48 now have the reroute listed under their alert page. To further help things, they’re adding a shuttle every 20 minutes to get people from Campus Pkwy (where the 43 and 48 will cross the canal) to the University Hospital area.
Bravo Metro! In a short time your new rider alert system has made it much easier to find out about service disruptions. In fact, it’s now Sound Transit that takes the hits for absent or uselessly generic information.
Anyone know if there are those big orange notices, you know, on the actual buses?
And how long before Metro starts using maps to illustrate reroutes? Hell, even a summary at the top of the reroute page, like “Routes 43 & 48 will use University Bridge instead of Montlake Bridge,” would go a long way to making these notices more useful for the average rider. But I doubt there’s a single transit user out there who finds “R on WB NE Campus Pkwy, L on the SB University Bridge, C on SB Eastlake Av E, L on SB Fuhrman Av E, C on EB Boyer Av E,” etc, intuitive or easy to visualize. Simply putting information that’s clearly been written for operators up on the website doesn’t really seem all that helpful to riders.
Anyone know if there are those big orange notices, you know, on the actual buses?
Not for individual routes, no. Often we’ll find out about things like bus stop closures the same way that riders find out – we pull up to a bus stop and there’s the notice. I’ve often had to stop, get out of my bus, and read it myself because nothing was posted at the base. Stop closures on 3rd avenue for example? Nothing posted at Atlantic base. When the stop closed (and a temporary migrated up and down John in the vicinity of Harvard Avenue) at Broadway when the staging area for the dig closed that stop – there was no notice at base either, and no information to give customers.
Major notices like seasonal changes etc. generally are posted on buses.
So that’s what the Rider Alerts at Campus Parkway & Brooklyn mean. They say the 44, 48, and some other routes will be stopping there for one day.
There are also rider alerts taped to stops between Campus Pkwy. and Montlake explaining that the 44,48,271 will not stop there on Saturday. Amusingly, it’s not the 48 to Mount Baker that won’t stop there; according to the sign, it’s the 48 to Rainier Beach thats listed.
It means that the Montlake Bridge is closing on Saturday.
No kidding. Such as the tweets that get cut off by a link before the important part of the information.
“@SoundTransit: Due to an accident at the scene, Link Light Rail will not be stopping at the northbound platform at… http://link.to.rest/of/important?info“
i laughed out loud!
I like the alerts too – unfortunately due to Metro’s “no PED policy”, I only get them when I’m at layover or done at the end of my shift and can turn my phone on. Those alerts often don’t come over the radio (depends on what channel your particular route is on), nor is there any type of information presented through the DDU. Often customers will ask about problems and I have nothing to tell them.
Here’s a communication breakdown: http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/NewsCenter/NewsReleases/2010/March/nr032910_gameday.aspx
I had taken the special service to the last two games and found it quite convenient. As they say, it had low ridership, but they could have promoted it a little better. What irks me though is that there was no communication about stopping the service form. I feel lucky to have looked at the news release again before heading to the stadium today.
Funny – those “special service” announcements are still up on buses.