In response to widespread customer complaints during last year's snowstorm—when it was basically impossible to find out if or when your bus was coming—King County Metro just redesigned its web site to be more user-friendly. Among other changes, they've made the route timetables more prominent, put the previously elusive trip finder right on the front page, and added a more prominent link to information about ORCA, the new regional transit smartcard. "The poor navigation concept of our [old] web site really did not serve us well," says Metro general manager Kevin Desmond. "Either people would have to make too many clicks to get information, or it was counterintuitive."

But the biggest change is the addition of a staff-run blog called Eye on Your Metro Commute, which, in theory, will contain the latest information about delays throughout the Metro system. (It just went live yesterday). "Basically, it's a traffic update," Desmond says. The site is based in part on similar web sites in Chicago, Portland, and Vancouver, B.C..

Riders can get updates via web, email, or RSS. What they can't do is get information via text message (important if you don't have a smartphone), or let Metro know if they encounter problems on the ground (there's a feedback email, but no comments, and all posts are generated from a central console at Metro's operations headquarters). "A lot of people have suggested a Twitter-type [interface], but the problem with that is that creates a very significant burden on our side and we don’t have people to do that," Desmond says. "Putting out one way information is one thing. But if we have to start monitoring information with the expectation that we will verify it and report back—that’s a huge explosion of contacts that we would have to start making." The centralized staff-generated blog system also doesn't solve the biggest problem Metro staffers reported encountering during the snowstorm: A lack of radio channels to report backups, which Desmond acknowledges is "still a problem." However, he says Metro expects its new radio system—an expansion of the current antiquated system, which only has four channels—to come online in 2010, which should solve some of the communications problem.