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The Service Alert Will Be Crowdsourced
The last few weeks have seen a slow but steady flow of new net-based services for frustrated commuters. First came TTCupdates (TTCu for short), created by former Torontoist contributor Brian Gilham, which takes service alerts from the Toronto Transit Commission’s RSS feed and posts them to Twitter. The TTC itself followed suit yesterday, albeit in a slightly more old-fashioned way, with the launch of its e-alert service. Now comes TTCupdates Community Edition, which takes the basic idea behind TTCu and gives it a democratized twist.
Instead of relying on information from the TTC, TTCu Community Edition lets commuters get service alerts straight from their fellow passengers—and share their own information on disruptions as well. To send in an update, simply post the information to your Twitter account and include the #ttcu hashtag in your tweet. TTCu compiles all tweets with the #ttcu tag every five minutes and posts them to the Community Edition page on Twitter.
“The biggest flaw with TTCu used to be that it relied on official word from the TTC,” says Gilham. “Now, every transit user in Toronto can help everyone get around a little easier.” So far there are only a few subscribers to the new service. But as more frustrated commuters start tweeting disruption details to TTCu Community Edition, Gilham says, the better it will get.
To subscribe to TTCupdates Community Edition, visit twitter.com/ttcu_community.