Twitter alerts back on track for NYC subway after week off
Service alerts for New York City’s subway, commuter trains and buses are back on Twitter
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Service alerts for New York City's subway, commuter trains and buses were back on Twitter on Thursday, a week after transit officials balked at paying to provide the information.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost access last week to Twitter’s application programming interface to send out automated alerts about service changes and emergencies. The MTA decided last Thursday to cease publishing service alerts to Twitter, saying it opposed the platform's recent decision to start charging for access to its programming interface.
In an about-face, Twitter said this week it has restored free access to the interface for verified government and “publicly owned” services so they can tweet alerts.
“Twitter got the message and reversed its plan to charge the MTA more than half a million dollars per year for these alerts, so now no transit agency will need to pay,” read a prepared statement from Shanifah Rieara, MTA’s acting chief customer officer.
The country’s largest transportation network began providing service alerts on its Twitter accounts in time for the Thursday evening commute.
The MTA also said last week it was concerned with technical problems that had led to two recent outages of its Twitter alerts service. The authority said Thursday that it received written assurances from Twitter that reliability on the platform will be guaranteed.
An email seeking comment was sent to Twitter’s communications office.
The service alert interruption comes as many institutional Twitter users deal with changes Elon Musk has made in an effort to make the service profitable.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.