MTA abandons bus and train alerts on Twitter

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter, citing doubts about the platform’s reliability. It directs riders to the website, apps, and email or mobile notifications instead.

“We’ve loved getting to know you here, but we don’t love knowing if we can communicate with you every day,” the MTA account tweeted in a thread Thursday evening. “For the MTA, Twitter is no longer reliable to provide the consistent updates riders expect. So starting today, we’re saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information.”

The MTA acknowledged this was a “big change,” and a separate MTA service account alluded to the reasoning in a follow-up tweet. “Our access to publish service alerts was suspended last week and again this week,” account explainedand asking people to contact operators via WhatsApp and iMessage instead.

Earlier this month, MTA was one of many accounts to have its automatic service notifications disrupted by changes to Twitter’s application programming interface, or API. Along with San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit and a number of disaster alert accounts, it was temporarily banned from posting service updates as part of Twitter owner Elon Musk’s effort to charge for API access. Separately, while the MTA didn’t cite this as a problem, Twitter has also become more turbulent as users try to parse Musk’s confusing rollout of paid verification — which has made it harder to judge which accounts are trustworthy.

It is unfortunate for the riders. Service alerts are one of the most consistently useful services Twitter — until recently — provided, and while the MTA’s other options may fill the gap, it’s a loss for both the agency and the microblogging platform. As of press time, the MTA has not joined Dril and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Bluesky.