So my brother Kevin has a weblog called CTA Tattler. It has lots of readers and a pretty broad community of people interested in the daily live of the Chicago Transit Authority has formed there.
The site get lots of action when there is a service interruption on the CTA– people log on after being frustrated after rough commutes peppered with precious little actual useful communication coming from CTA employees– the people who “should” know.
But I also noticed that people posted tons of specific information about the transit conditions that would have been useful if it was received at the right time (like, during rush hour when people were making transit decisions).
So I started a group on UPOC, which is a pretty nifty free wireless notification utility. I signed up years ago and started a group called “Five Dollar Meals in Chicago” as a test. It kinda went nowhere, but I never noticed much spam in the group and I’ve never been solicited by UPOC directly, so they seemed to be a relatively non-evil group providing a useful service for free.
The new group is called CTA Alerts and its description is “Rider-to-rider communication in the event of service disruption or emergency on the Chicago Transit Authority”. Kevin posted about it this morning and we have 52 members already.
Upshots for those interested in an internet life:
- You don’t have to rely on traditional sources of information (silent or
misleading CTA workers) or ineffective technology (bad loudspeakers) - You can use free, reliable technology that is widely available (weblogs,
wireless notification utilities, etc.) on hardware you already own
(cell phones, computers, etc.) to make your life better (be better
informed and make better on-the-spot decisions
God bless the internet.
Go here to sign up or just use this nifty form.