Rough two days
It is unfortunate to learn about two suicides in as many days (and the first of the year) and it is unfortunateit is this news that brings me to posting at all. @caltrain certainly helped me out on my morning commute today as I suspect it had for others. I had intended an early train but adjusted my schedule after getting the first tweet. This gave me plenty of time to get to 4th and King and get an update of delays. I was able to get a delicious latte from The Creamery and Lactaid from Walgreens to allow for a pleasant gastro experience.
It was nice to also see actual official tweets by a Bay Area transit representative. Official tweets from such entities are prefixed with O: to designate so. I also want to remind everyone of the updating guide and to try to check recent tweet history to prevent too many redundant tweets. Also consider the newsworthiness of the tweet. I don’t censor, edit, or otherwise prohibit content but I want to remind everyone of the 1,200 followers many may be getting SMS updates for each tweet.
In other news I had a phone interview with Sebastian Kunz of Talk 910KNEW / green960 KKGN a few weeks ago to talk about @caltrain and @bikecar. I’m not certain if it made it to air as I was back in Cleveland for several days, but the potential exposure and awareness was cool.
Finally I wanted everyone to know that it is just me running this service so if replies to email for update keys or otherwise take a little while it is either because I am stuck with my real job or out of town. Sometimes I do miss email all together so if its been a long time in getting a reply send a reminder.
Thank you to everyone who has been helping make this as useful as I had imagined it could be.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Thanks for all the hard work! It’s much appreciated by your fellow Caltrain commuters.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Hey!
I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner… the cutbacks here at ClearChannel have affected us all.
The interview VERY MUCH made it to air on my April 25th program (it was in the FIRST segment). You can hear my story and interview about the CalTrain and BikeCar twitter feeds at
http://www.green960.com/pages/theweek.html
Thank you all for the updates… they even make it onto the radio from time to time!
-sebastian
sebastiankunz@clearchannel.com
May 5th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Thanks for the useful service. While I’m only using trains occasionally for errands these days, I have been stuck on the way to work a few times. The worst was when my 8:58 am arrival turned into 11:30 or something. There was no good way to get info back then.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Thanks for keeping the service going!
I woke up this morning and turned to my Twitter (which replaced my RSS reader for all things news). Immediately saw tons of @caltrain entries and thought “uh oh”.
My company has limited hours shuttle service between Mountain View station and the office. I knew I couldn’t count on a shuttle to take me to the office when an overly delayed train finally make it down there. I chose to drive instead.
If it wasn’t for the @caltrain tweets, I know I’d waste half an hour on my platform wondering what the !@#% is going on, so thank you!!
May 5th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I think the service is particularly valuable because accurate info is spread much quicker than through conductors and other official channels. Thanks for the idea and the hard work!
May 5th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Thank you for your valuable service! It was mighty helpful this morning as we stood in the sprinkling rain at Hillsdale trying to decide if we should stay or find alternative path to San Fran. Two of us with iphones had a crowd gathered around us, asking for news updates.