MBTA Steps Up Its Game, Shares (In)Visible Results

This morning, the General Manager's twitter account pointed riders to an album of photos on Flickr covering the painting that happened at the Davis Square station this weekend. They also added a few photos of the continued work on the spot repairs they have been doing to the floating slabs along the Red Line, the primary project causing the ongoing weekend service outages of the Red Line north of Harvard.

Before Rich Davey was General Manager of the MBTA three years ago, photos of work on the T were few and far between. Months after I started tweeting about the MBTA (prompted by the phenomenal 2009 derailment of the Red Line, which I experienced personally on a train) and in May 2010, shortly after Davey took office, the MBTA created their twitter account to directly address customers in real time.

Davey was able to sporadically update riders with photos covering things like his visit to Korea earlier this year to tour construction of the first cars in the MBTA's new order of bi-level commuter rail cars.  This wasn't nearly enough to assure the public of the work that it does and was far less than what the MTA in neighbouring New York City has been doing with Flickr to cover weekend work.

It's good to see the MBTA has ramped up their own behind-the-scenes coverage of work, instead of having to be at the mercy of the press to cover their overnight and weekend work. This is photographic evidence to reassure the riders and general public that work is being done to the system, especially work that is invisible, but important, to riders. Now it's up to the press, blogosphere, and twitterverse to get the word out.

At the same time, does it really matter that there are photos of work if trains are still late and the MBTA is unable to affect perceivable changes to service quality? Most riders will see these photos and immediately ask, 'Why is my Orange Line train delayed?'