L.A. Metro Transit Goes Social Media with Facebook
January 04, 2010
When most people think of Los Angeles, cars, not transit, come to mind. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, also known as Metro, is painstakingly changing. It is building and growing a bus and rail rapid transit system that had been lost with the dismantling of the famed ‘Red Car’ interurban network in the 1950s and early 1960s replaced by freeways.
Metro operates more than 2,000 peak-hour buses on an average weekday. It also operates 73.1 miles of Metro Rail service: Purple and Red Line subway, the Metro Blue, Green and Gold Line LRT plus the Orange and Silver Line bus rapid transit. More is on the way the lines under construction and approved to reach Century City, Santa Monica and LAX via Crenshaw.
Key to keeping Metro’s customers, in a city where car is king, is customer service. In a move to enhance it the agency has embraced social media by launching its official
Facebook page. It is aimed at offering better customer service to its passengers, customer base, the public and stakeholders with the opportunity to interact with each other on transit related issues. With this new tool, Metro shares information, post comments, pictures and videos, with its customer base and subscribers to interact directly.
With the Facebook page, Metro will promote other links to other Metro projects that are already on Facebook. These include Metro Silver Line, Metro Westside Subway Extension, Metro Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor, Metro Eastside Transit Corridor Phase 2; and the Metro Library and Archives.
The new Facebook page can be found under “Metro Los Angeles” and is becoming successful. The page is now up to 1,000 subscribers. Metro Communications is managing the page and will be responsible for its content with comments and pictures.
For example Metro announced that it is going seriously begin exploring a way to provide cell phone service to subway passengers. It received 13 comments, a majority approving it but it also received suggestions from the same post for station washrooms.
Customers are becoming used to the site for other issues. A question was raised on the page about possible fare increases that could take effect in July. One person asked why Metro doesn’t have the Red Line - Orange Line to Van Nuys Courthouse in the trip planner, which would take half the time of a local bus from Hollywood/Highland.
Brendan B. Read is ContactCenterSolutions’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Amy Tierney
