North America’s largest transportation network suspends use of Twitter for service alerts

By Rob Frehse, CNN

North America’s largest transportation network suspended the use of Twitter for service alerts Thursday, saying the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which serves 15.3 million passengers across a 5,000 square-mile area surrounding New York City, Long Island, New York State and Connecticut, also said their access to Twitter through its Application Programming Interface (API) was involuntarily interrupted twice over the last two weeks.

“The MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information and has built redundant tools that provide service alerts in real time,” MTA’s Acting Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said in a statement. “Those include the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the MTA’s homepage at MTA.info, email alerts and text messages.”

“Service alerts are also available on thousands of screens in stations, on trains and in buses,” Rieara said. “The MTA has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately, as the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”

The @MTA app will remain active and customers will still be able to tweet at MTA accounts, including @nyct_subway, and get responses, according to the MTA

Following the MTA’s announcement, Air France said Friday that it will also stop using Twitter direct messaging for customer service, and pointed users to its other platforms.

The moves also come after weather agencies have warned that changes to Twitter’s API service could restrict their ability to send emergency weather alerts.

– CNN’s Julian Cummings and Clare Duffy contributed to this report

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