I’m a twitter user, and this morning came across an enterprising web-site called Melbourne Transport. They use the twitter handle @MelbTransport to publish line and train alerts for Melbourne’s Connex train services. This appears to be the outcome of someones frustration with the dreadful SMS alerts services that Connex provide.

Connex have their own SMS alert system, which states “From Monday to Friday, between 6am and 8pm, we provide instant text messaging to mobile phones with up-to-the-minute information on any train that is more than 15 minutes off schedule”. I have been signed up for about 12 months, and I rarely never get notified about ANY events, including hearing nothing about the double-whammy fatality/crossing incident disruption to Pakenham and Cranbourne lines yesterday, causing over 1.5 hours in delays

The Melbourne Transport idea allows users of the train system to give direct feedback stating on their site “if you see an issue you can broadcast it to all other MelbTransport followers either using a Direct message (private) or just tweet @MelbTransport”. Good idea!

A system like Melbourne Transport will work much better the more people participate. With only 19 people currently following, and the idea being new, unless they have some mechanism to get data from Connex they will need a much greater twitter following to make this work. Good luck to them.