The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has an alert system managed by GovDelivery. The system is supposed to alert subscribers of delays affecting any and all bus and light rail service in Santa Clara County.
Greta Helm, VTA’s Chief External Affairs Officer, was at our last group meeting last Thursday. I inquired to her specifically about this issue. Notes on that meeting will be available shortly.
It seems VTA’s implementation of GovDelivery for alerts doesn’t always tell you everything. Details on what’s going on – and how YOU can help to fix it – are available after the More… jump.
How VTA’s Alerts Don’t Always Give Full Details
Riders like myself who use VTA’s alerts system initially learned how poor it was on July 15 when a light rail train derailed on North 1st near Tasman in San Jose. This picture taken from my smart phone that morning shows the alerts VTA had sent out throughout the incident:
Notice the lack of details on why “bus bridge” service is operating, and an ETA on when service will be restored. Hence, an alert like “Bus bridge operating between River Oaks and Baypointe Stations” becomes useless. Worse, riders learned the true cause of the events – a derailment preceded by electrical wiring issues in the Tasman area – thru third sources. This is clearly not professional – particularly for a transit agency of the world’s center for innovation and technology.
Even yesterday (July 31) there was an accident at Mary and Washington in Sunnyvale, on and affecting VTA’s 53 bus line. This issue was first alerted to us by Mike Inouye of NBC Bay Area:
Sunnyvale crash, at Washington and Mary reportedly involves a transit bus. May delay line 53 thru area, and traffic btwn Evelyn and ECR.
Shockingly no official notice from VTA regarding this incident came.
Good Examples of Transit Alerts
Here are some good examples of transit alerts.
From Caltrain:
Trains holding near #SanJose #Diridon due to fire at College Park. #Caltrain T14:26
https://twitter.com/Caltrain_News/status/362323416432394241
From BART:
15 to 20 min delay in transbay tube in PITT, DUBL, SFO, MLBR and DALY dirs due to track maint.
https://twitter.com/SFBARTalert/status/362798921388531713
Using Twitter, VTA could easily set up something similar for smart phone users. If such a setup is done properly, it could even be used for people who can only receive text messages. We currently use something similar for VTA and other transit alerts, since March 2010.
What’s The Issue?
VTA’s Rider Alert system gives either incomplete or no information regarding service delays.
Who’s Responsible For Rider Alerts at VTA?
Michael Burns, General Manager. Email: michael.burns@vta.org – phone (408)321-5559
Greta Helm, Chief External Affairs Officer. Email: greta.helm@vta.org – phone (408)321-5742
This is in addition to VTA Customer Service and the VTA Board of Directors.
Make sure to let VTA know how alerts can be properly issued to riders today!
Eugene Bradley
Founder, Silicon Valley Transit Users