Rob's Rants

It’s hard to know how many MBTA commuters on the Framingham-Worcester line signed up for Clever Commute when it was first launched in Boston. But I think the service could definitely give better information — or at least faster information — when something goes wrong than the MBTA notification system. So I’m challenging myself to actually post when things go wrong for the next 6 months, to see if others pick up on it.

Here’s a case in point:

On 9/10/2009 the P529 6:15pm Worcester train was 12 minutes late arriving in South Station. It didn’t get in until 6:27pm. And then boarding took another 13 minutes, so it left for Back Bay at 6:30pm. During that time, I was able to quickly send three updates on what was happening. How many did the MBTA system send? Zero. Her’s the proof from my mobile inbox:

Clever Commute Beats the MBTA Notification System

The three messages I sent were received back in my inbox at 6:08pm, 6:23pm, and 6:32pm.

So if you were standing on the Back Bay platform wondering what was going on — if you used Clever Commute you would have known. And so would anyone waiting at your station to pick you up.

Let’s see if we can make this work for the next 6 months … Please join and give it a try. Just click the picture above.

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Related posts:

1. Something That Worked on the MBTA