Real-time train delays, bus route changes and other service information that would be vital to millions of New York City commuters will no longer be shared on Twitter because the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed,” a Metropolitan Transportation official said. Authority said Thursday.
The MTA, the largest public transportation company in North America, is the latest major account to make significant adjustments to how the platform is used, following recent changes under its new owner, Elon Musk. In recent months, Twitter has removed the blue check mark, jettisoned content moderation rules and tinkered with the algorithm that determines which posts are the most visible. NPR and PBS suspended all of their Twitter usage this month after being labeled “government-funded media” on the platform, a label Twitter later removed.
“The MTA has stopped posting service information to Twitter effective immediately,” said Shanifah Rieara, the agency’s acting chief customer officer, in a press release.
The agency’s access to Twitter through its application programming interface, or API, was involuntarily interrupted on April 14 and again on Thursday, officials said.
Last month, Twitter introduced new price levels to access its API For the MTA, the cost of the API is about $50,000 per month, the agency said, adding that it does not pay tech platforms to publish service information. Ms Rieara said the same information can be found through the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the MTA website, email alerts and text messages.
“Service notifications are also available on thousands of screens in stations, trains and buses,” she said.
On Twitter, the MTA responded to dozens of concerned customers, some of whom questioned the decision. Still, the agency doubled. “We loved getting to know you here, but we don’t like not knowing if we can communicate with you every day,” the agency says said in a pinned tweet on his food.
Ridership on the MTA, which oversees an intricate network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines that tie the city together, has been improving since the start of the pandemic. In February, there were more than 84 million subway rides and more than 33 million bus rides, which was about two-thirds of February 2019 passengers, according to the city’s control agency.
The MTA said it would not abandon Twitter altogether. The account will remain active for branding and other messages, and customers will be able to continue tweeting on the MTA accounts, including @mta And @new subwayfor questions and requests.
The agency appears to be one of the few transportation networks in the world that has stopped using Twitter to communicate with their customers.
Metro operators inside Madrid, Paris, Singapore And Tokyo were among those still providing regular service updates on Twitter as of Friday.
Mike Ives reporting contributed.
