jotsheet

A few months ago, I thought of a great way the CTA could improve its service. If the El is delayed, I’d like to get a message on my cell phone, and I’d like the CTA to provide a service for sending out SMS messages. I envisioned a service where I would indicate my interest in a rail line (Red Line, Purple Line), days of the week (M-F), and perhaps type of delay (major/minor). The alerts would save me time, of course, but they’d also help the CTA; the fewer people to deal with in a crunch, the easier it is for them to sort matters out.

Back to reality: the CTA is barely capable of posting a post-mortem message to its website. A wireless alert service about delays, styled after the SMS messages sent out by Southwest Airlines and Orbitz, is pretty much out of the question. So we’ll do this, you know, the grassroots kinda way.

Dan has created an Upoc group that allows CTA riders to inform other riders of delays on the system. Join Upoc, join the group, and get SMS alerts on delays. It’s simple and will be far faster and more informative than anything the CTA would have dreamt up. I’m genuinely excited about this. Provided the group doesn’t become an avenue for SMS spam, this might actually save me time, and there’s nothing—well, almost thing—which I love more than efficiency.

Join the cta_alerts Upoc group. Kudos to Dan. More discussion is at CTA tattler.

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