Fail Rail

All you Twitterers out there are familiar with the dreaded "fail whale," so we thought this was a clever and very funny adaptation of the same theme. The idea to use this instead of the vague service disruption announcements is one we can get behind!
Thanks to brhefele!

Phd. Cryptologist Needed

Our cell phone has been going berserk this weekend with cryptic tweets from @metroopensdoors regarding delays. We knew there was quite a bit of scheduled track maintenance, but there also appear to have been train malfunctions, track malfunctions and switch malfunctions. We think anyone looking down this list of delay reports—if they could make ANY sense of it--would have headed immediately for their car.
Even though @metroopensdoors is the official Twitter account of WMATA, we are starting to think it's better to subscribe to the line specific retweets in the interest of preventing overage charges on our text plan.


Thanks to hostagehoosier for the heads up on the photo. Looks like NY, but we all can relate to the sentiment.

@wmata Til the Twitter End?

WMATA gave an unconvincing argument to the DCist post about the use of the @wmata account on Twitter. It was basically that they could have an impostor's account removed if they started acting up. Our response: 1) So you'd wait until someone caused trouble to have them removed? 2) You don't want the @wmata name to begin with?
Huh? OK then.
That said, Metro should be applauded for at least giving it a try. They just need to fine tune it.
Metro should take over @wmata, shut @metroopensdoors because it stinks and be sure any would be Twitterererer who could be construed as WMATA make it be known they're not the real deal.
Like DC, in NYC, there are "impostor" Twitter accounts for MTA, including @nyc_mta and @mta_nyc. Both appear to do the same as @wmata in that they merely repeat official information from MTA. However, when you click on their Twitter profiles, they both clearly say they're "unofficial," and @wmata does not.

WMATA's Tweets

We've often wondered why there were so many tweets apparently coming from "WMATA," including @WMATA, which is NOT really WMATA at all. @WMATA has 980 followers, while @metroopensdoors, the official WMATA account, has only 362. Confused?
Here's the explanation from Ronald A. Holzer Jr. in the Office Of Public Relations.

"Your blog incorrectly lists the WMATA twitter as www.twitter.com/wmata.
There are many transit junkies in the area that have twitter accounts that bear our name. These people are using our RSS feed to populate their messages, which often exceed the 140 character twitter limit.
WMATA does have an official twitter account, www.twitter.com/metroopensdoors, which was posted on our Web site, March 25th.
We use an automated feed to populate the majority of “tweets” on this account and are working to update message lengths and content. We will also send other important information and respond to feedback as appropriate."

Given this, we'd like to correct a post from yesterday. WMATA's official tweet was "Ballston. All station escalators and elevators are out of service. Shuttle bus service has been requested. The station remains open."

When asked what the real WMATA was doing about the impostors Holzer said the following in an email:

So far we haven't done anything. Since the information is just a re-broadcast of what we post on our webpage, and several of them have more followers than we do, we are not doing anything. If they become a problem, according to twitter terms of service, we can have them removed. Until then, the more people that get our message, the better.

We look forward to 140 character tweets from the metroopensdoors and hope our Twitter name will never confuse us with WMATA.