Emails with links a recipe for WMATA site overload

Transit

Emails with links a recipe for WMATA site overload

by Matt Johnson • February 16, 2010 10:58 am

Over the past week, Metro has seen a number of major service disruptions, mainly due to the heavy snowfall. But WMATA's method of communicating over email, which sends messages with only a link to a page on WMATA.com instead of the text of the announcement, turned out to be useless when too many people tried to view the release.

Photo by cacophony76.

Thursday evening, the Office of Personnel Management announced that government workers would be expected in the office on Friday. WMATA announced its plans for the region, including limited service on the Red and Orange Lines. The volume of traffic seeking out this information overwhelmed WMATA's servers, and many were unable to get vital information. That led Greater Greater Washington to mirror the service information for readers.

What's the problem? WMATA sends out press releases like this one:

With no service information, riders are forced to click for additional information. If the website is inaccessible, riders are out of luck. Furthermore, it forces riders to have an Internet connection, when many with Blackberries or similar devices might have the email but reduced ability to load the page.

When a train derailed at Farragut North on Friday, WMATA sent out a release with the title, "Metro News: Derailment reported at Farragut North Metrorail station." Unfortunately, I was unable at the time to get to the website to read the full text. Was the station open? Were they single-tracking? When was normal service expected to resume? Not for 47 minutes did WMATA send out a second release, this one titled "Derailment at Farragut North Metrorail station: station closed."

Compare how MTA sends out information to MARC commuter train riders:

People who get this press release don't need to swarm MTA's servers. The information they need is in their inbox. Even if MTA's servers go down, commuters have to only go so far as their email service to know where trains are running and any other pertinent information.

Ken Archer sent in a tip this morning that when he'd tried to access it, the WMATA site was again down. WMATA could beef up their website capacity, but the best solution would be to include fuller information in notification emails.

Metro's riders need to be able to get information, especially about service, during an emergency. The current system falls short, and WMATA needs to reformat how it sends this data to riders.

24 comments — Share	— tags: MARC, technology, WMATA

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Comments

Very good point, Matt.

I know I'm hardly the first to bring it up, but why does WMATA have such a hard time with twitter notifications as well? When they suspended service for the above ground stations they sent out separate notices for each line, all of which were over 140 characters. This isn't very hard to fix.

by TimK on Feb 16, 2010 10:47 am

Or how about when Metro hid the fact they were closing early Saturday night in a press release titled "Metro to Open at 7am Saturday"

by guest on Feb 16, 2010 11:10 am

But how would they then drive eyeballs to the google ads on their webpage?

/sarcasm

by Michael Perkins on Feb 16, 2010 11:32 am

> The volume of traffic seeking out this information
> overwhelmed WMATA's servers

It's 2010. What monstrous setup allows a corporate website to get overwhelmed by a few hundred thousand federal workers?

It sounds to me as if Metro needs to work on fixing whatever the bottleneck was and - since we're talking about wild-blue-yonder kind of dreams - writing a plan to relieve load on their main site during extreme bursts of traffic.

by David R. on Feb 16, 2010 12:14 pm

WMATA's use of technology is really stunning in its awfulness.

Even at the most basic level - what is the brand they are promoting? I hear "MetroOpensDoors.com" all the time in advertising, yet they don't use the URL in their email communications, and their web site simply redirects to "wmata.com." Not a great way to promote a brand.

Their web site is archaic. The travel planning tool, while useful, is almost idiotic in its inability to deal with things that don't exactly match a description that its expecting.

For example, if you use the word "AND" to describe an intersection, and suggests things in other states because it's expecting an ampersand. How hard could it be to get it to just interpret the word "AND" as and ampersand?

There are many annoying things that just seem so basic. It's not the end of the world, but all this stuff just makes them look completely backwards technologically. Not exactly confidence-inspiring for an organization that depends on computers to keeps its trains safe.

by Jamie on Feb 16, 2010 12:14 pm

Excellent post, Matt. Reader Joshua Davis also raised this.

My recollection is that as recently as either 2005 or 2006, WMATA's news releases were distributed in a message that simply said, "WMATA has issued a news release" and included the link.

After clicking on links in several messages that led to news releases about topics like contests for art posters -- worthy, but I admit usually less compelling to me, sorry -- and boasts in days gone past of "a record ridership day" -- not something I found worthy of boasting simply because I don't have many alternative options in the transit market -- I suggested to a former asst. gen. mgr. for communications that they include in the email message what the news release was about so people wouldn't have to click to find out.

They then changed their format to the "expanded version" they've been using since then.

The recommendation that Metro include more substance in their news releases really needs to be taken seriously. While Snowmageddon may be once-in-a-century, transit-related emergencies or topics of acutely-heightened interest, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in the case of, for example, the President's Inauguration), are not.

So, as a practical matter, moving forward, this change is *really needed.

There is, however, one other related issue that I think needs to be dealt with. My recollection is that subscribing to Metro news releases (I haven't been subscribing for a few years now) results in receiving a good number of releases about topics about which I am not interested in receiving releases.

If I'm correct, then is it unrealistic to expect that Metro be able to subscribe individuals based on their issue(s) of interest?

by Dennis Jaffe on Feb 16, 2010 12:18 pm

@Dennis Jaffe
That's a very good point. I'm subscribed to all the news releases MTA puts out, like the screenshot in the post above. But MTA Maryland lets you choose what types you receive, even to the point of only selecting the two stops you use (or more, like all of them).

So you could, for instance, subscribe to Laurel Main Street, Washington Union Station, and Baltimore Camden Station, and only get news about those stations, general Camden Line announcements, and general MARC announcements.

by Matt Johnson on Feb 16, 2010 12:27 pm

So GGW provided information on Metro services! Shouldnt that have required a commission, and a 500K expert, to determine how Metro can get money out of GGW?

by SJE on Feb 16, 2010 12:29 pm

VRE has a "Train Talk" e-mail system. When they sent out emails about delays or service disruptions they send a detailed of the cause and how the long the delay and send up follow up emails. So, their is no need to visit their website.

by Davin Peterson on Feb 16, 2010 12:44 pm

all this stuff just makes them look completely backwards technologically

Like the often-wrong "Next Train" signs in the stations.

by Vicente Fox on Feb 16, 2010 1:44 pm

Metro. Just. Doesn't. Get. It.

They need to keep firing high-level executives, managers, supervisors, and front-line staff until they change their useless bureaucratic culture.

by Fritz on Feb 16, 2010 1:48 pm

WMATA wasn't the only one overloaded. The OPM status website kept going down as well.

by JM on Feb 16, 2010 2:45 pm

@JM

Yeah, but OPM didn't send an email to all the Federal employees saying "Hey! We made a decision on tomorrow's work schedule. Come to the website to find out what it is!"

by Alex B. on Feb 16, 2010 2:47 pm

OPM could update everyone in the region quickly if they used Twitter. It wouldn't take more than 140 to say "2 hour delay, unscheduled leave, http://opm.gov/short.cgi?lsu4v". You wouldn't even have to be a twitter user to see their updates, they'd be at twitter.com/opmncrstatus, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers would melt Twitter's servers (who can take it) rather than OPM's.

by Michael Perkins on Feb 16, 2010 3:14 pm

Feb. 12th had the most page views to our web site in our history. As you can see from the list below, we typically get in the neighborhood of 600,000 page views a day. We more than tripled that, which slowed the ability for people to get onto the site. You can even see that on Friday, Feb. 5 that web traffic picked up due to the weather.

Date.........Visitors...Page Views
02/01/10.....70,243.....559,029
02/02/10.....71,530.....557,590
02/03/10.....85,147.....641,731
02/04/10.....78,826.....558,642
02/05/10.....99,926.....751,805
02/06/10.....83,708.....681,323
02/07/10.....181,502.....1,222,549
02/08/10.....255,807.....1,834,107
02/09/10.....186,548.....1,695,591
02/10/10.....146,935.....1,064,230
02/11/10.....239,940.....1,779,510
02/12/10.....266,263.....2,054,035

by Ron Holzer (WMATA) on Feb 16, 2010 4:58 pm

JM/Alex: OPM also had a backup in the form of the relatively new data.gov

by Froggie on Feb 16, 2010 5:11 pm

In addition, seems like about 5% of WMATA press release e-mails come completely bungled, at least to my gmail account. Not that I can find any examples at the moment.

by Adam F on Feb 16, 2010 5:23 pm

Private companies can scale applications quickly to respond to traffic spikes. Why can't WMATA?

What about elastic cloud computing?

by Eric F. on Feb 16, 2010 5:35 pm

@Eric F: The original post had it right, why deal with higher server loads if you can just send the full text of the press release out to the public, thus reducing the need for such traffic?

@Ron Holzer, so an increase in traffic of about ten times normal gummed up the works? Daily volumes about four times normal, I'm assuming rates in the evening right when service is announced was heavily peaked. Is there a technical reason the full text of press releases can't be included in emails?

by Michael Perkins on Feb 16, 2010 5:44 pm

Metro has no money to hire anyone or upgrade any programs.

Why are people surprised?

by Aloy on Feb 16, 2010 8:48 pm

OPM has a LISTSERV that media and governments use. When it became apparent that www.opm.gov was being overloaded, OPM created a new site main.opm.gov, containing information not related to the operating status. Then, www.opm.gov consisted of a single page with the operating status.

To Metro's communications difficulties I would add the tardy, uninformative emails ("service has been disrupted at X station") and the poor communications about bus status. At 4 pm today, Metro updated its web site to show that some buses were still operating snow service. There was no prior information one way or another. It would have helped greatly to have route-specific information continuously updated, including expected changes with their times. (Metro can easily put a disclaimer that the times are estimates and that the actual times can vary.)

by Chuck Coleman on Feb 16, 2010 9:26 pm

Service information in the email would be useful, but a web link is also useful for spreading the word. Websites and blogs can easily pass along a link. If all they have is an email, they have to republish that information on their own site. (Easier for blogs than other websites.) DDOT sends the full text of their announcements as an email, which alerts me as a website manager to keep checking their site until they finally post the information online so I have something to link to.

I use WMATA's press release links all the time, and have seldom had a problem -- although I did experience the same problem with the Feb. 12 release.

by Joe on Feb 17, 2010 1:17 pm

I've also noticed with WMATA that they will sometimes update press releases. Or, what I've actually noticed is that they send out a new email, but it links to the same press release, so I'm guessing it's been updated. I can see the sense in doing this and publishing the link -- so notification can go out quickly, but readers are always reading the latest version. Better than having an outdated email circulating, or having outdated information republished on other sites.

by Joe on Feb 17, 2010 1:28 pm

Joe, no one is suggesting that WMATA shouldn't provide links to their website - what we're saying is that the link shouldn't be the only way to get that information.

The cynic in me would say that they're just doing this to drive web traffic to their site to generate ad revenue - which raises the question of their dedication to the core mission of moving people around DC. In their cash-strapped world, if they really are making it harder to move people around town (by restricting the flow of needed information) in order to drive page views and ad revenue on their website, then something is seriously wrong with the system.

by Alex B. on Feb 17, 2010 1:34 pm