MTA Administrator Ralign Wells plans to disable some of the agency's less reliable email notification services and go back to the drawing board.
Wells says he's been disappointed with the performance of the services that are supposed to notify passengers of problems on the Metro subway and bus lines. He plans to discontinue them until they can be done right.
The MTA chief called to follow up on a complaint registered recently by Alisa Bralove-Scherr about a problem she had with the Metro in which the email notification service failed her. Bralove-Scherr had arrived at the Owings Mills station anout 9:30 one morning only to be told the station was closed and that she would have to go to Old Court to catch a train. None of the MTA employees she encountered could explain what happened.
A later explanation that a crew was doing maintenance at Owings Mills raised the question of why maintenance would be scheduled for the middle of the morning. Wells explained that the maintenance work wasn't supposed to result in a service interruption but that somehow the power was cut.
As seems to often happen with the MTA, the operations people set to work to fix the problem but didn't think of notifying the traveling public. Wells said that's an issue he plans to address. He's planning to consolidate operations in a new control center that will also handle the communications end of the business. It can't happen too soon.