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MBTA acknowledges service-alert system didn't work after Red Line derailment
By adamg on Wed, 12/23/2009 - 2:22pm
The MBTA's chief technology officer is apologizing for delayed notices about yesterday's Red Line derailment. In e-mail to people who wrote to complain, Gary Foster says the service-alert system failed "just minutes before the incident on the Red Line" and wasn't brought back up until 5:22 p.m., or more than an hour after the Red Line came to a halt.
His e-mail follows:
This email is in response to your note to our General Manager’s Office regarding yesterday’s derailment and delayed Service Alert.
On behalf of the MBTA I sincerely apologize for the lack of an appropriate Service Alert being delivered. This was not a procedural issue. It was a technical problem that occurred just minutes before the incident on the Red Line. The appropriate action was followed by MBTA staff and the Service Alert system was not operational until 5:22PM. That is the exact time the ALERT you expected was posted on our Web Site. There is a lag between posting and the delivery on mobile devices, depending on your service provider.
As the accountable leader responsible for the MBTA web site and associated services it is my intention to assure that the entire web site performs and is available around the clock, especially in situations like rush hour yesterday afternoon. We have completed a root cause analysis of the technical problem encountered and are developing mitigation plans and performing a post incident review to identify improvements to our system and assure this incident does not occur again.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write us about your concerns and for riding the T.
Best regards,
Gary S. Foster
Chief Technology Officer
Spokesman Joe Pesaturo declined to be more specific about what went wrong with the alerting system, citing the T's policy's on information security.
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Comments
jesus, what MBTA "system"
jesus, what MBTA "system" isn't failing at the moment? It's one every day at this point.
What *didn't* break yesterday?
My commute on the green line was actually rather uneventful yesterday afternoon, but I didn't bother to comment on that fact. Maybe I should have due to the growing infrequency of a non-horrific commute...
seems that system breaks down...
...every time a trolley or subway breaks down, too. Because these outages are RARELY listed, and the reasons why almost never jive with first-hand accounts. People on-scene twitter "train on fire" and the MBTA posts "switching problems".
Also, I thought we were told earlier that the problem was that those pesky dispatchers were just SO BUSY that they couldn't take a minute to type "service on redline out from Davis to Alewife, shuttle busses will be running by X pm."
Pesky dispatchers
Yeah, I posted that. It was based on something somebody told me weeks ago, rather than something related to yesterday's issues.
aha!
T's policy's on information security.
Aha! Can't let that pesky information out.
Time for FOIA requests. After all, the MBTA is now firmly under the state government, which means almost everything should be FOIA'able.