I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the MTA’s Web site.

On the one hand, it’s a great resource for many things MTA. They’ve got press releases, maps, schedules and construction information up the wazoo. But on the other hand, there’s no rhyme or reason to the structure, and vital parts go without updates for months or years in certain cases. It also had this inconvenient tendency to crash under the load of heavy traffic.

While the MTA has quietly improved the site’s reliability and performance over the last few months, one aspect of the site — the Trip Planner — has seen numerous upgrades and an increased level of popularity. Yesterday, the MTA’s efforts paid off when the Center for Digital Government handed out its Best of New York Awards. The Trip Planner took home the gold for “Project Best Advancing Service to the Public.”

The MTA was deservedly proud of this award. “We believe Trip Planner is by far the most accurate travel itinerary provider there is for New York City,” Paul Fleuranges, NYC Transit vice president for corporate communications, said. “This award from the Center for Digital Government is proof that we are providing our customers with quality digital customer service.”

As Trip Planner has improved, traffic has increased correspondingly. According to the MTA, in February, an average weekday saw 6912 trips planned while an average weekend saw 5512 trips planned. Those figures represent a 272 percent and a 287 percent increase, respectively, over the usage numbers from February 2007.

For the next year, the MTA plans to add a station locator, places of interest and address finder features to the application. If I were running it, I’d also look at a way to add staircase location to the directions too. Some of the system’s larger and busier stations have multiple entrances, and it’s handy to know which exit will put you closer to your destination.

Meanwhile, as the MTA deserves some recognition for its Web site, I am eagerly looking ahead to a planned overhaul of the MTA’s site. MTA.info 2.0 will be a welcome addition to the online subway resources.

These will have to wait. (Photo by flickr user craigshadow2007)

Surprise, surprise! A contract issued by the MTA will not be fulfilled on time because of a mechanical problem. This time, a whole bunch of R160 cars won’t hit the tracks on time due to a gearbox defect, according to the Daily News. Pete Donohue has more:

NYC Transit stopped putting new R160 model subway cars on the rails shortly after they arrived from the assembly line after a gearbox defect was detected about two weeks ago, transit officials confirmed.

The agency won’t put the high-tech cars – and hundreds more yet being built – into service until a fix is designed and approved by the agency, officials said.

Under a $950 million contract awarded to two manufacturers that joined forces, a total of 660 cars were to be in service by May, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority documents. Now, it looks like it will be late this year, or early next year, before the full allotment is shuttling straphangers from station to station.

Of course, officials from Alstom Transport, the company responsible for the new cars, declined to comment. Meanwhile, the MTA says they are pleased with the cars currently in use. Those do not suffer from the gearbox defect and will not be taken off the rails. The losers then are those folks along the N and Q lines who were due for new cars sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, this defect is just another issue of an MTA partner failing to fulfill the terms of a contract. Already this year, we’ve seen stories about problems with the MTA’s security camera project and its bus arrival board project. We know that implementation of the arrival boards on the L line has been fraught with delays and implementation problems.

At some point, the MTA should take a public stance here. It’s simply not acceptable for all of these companies to miss deadlines set forth in contracts. Over the next few months, the MTA is going to put out a text message alert contract, and Rick Bowen, one of the unsuccessful bidders for that deal, said on this site yesterday that the MTA’s demands “may not be technically possible.” If the MTA is serious about getting more funding and delivering more service, it must show more responsibility with their preexisting contracts, unforeseen mechanical problems or not.

Every few months, it seems, I run the same story about the MTA and text message alerts. But I — or at the least the MTA — swear that things are moving closer to reality on this technological front.

The saga started in August when a flood knocked out subway service in New York and a crush of visitors downed the MTA’s Web site for the better part of a day. Shortly thereafter, the MTA announced their desire for a text messaging alert system, something sports leagues had managed to produce for a few years. Then, in November, the MTA announced a call for proposals from external companies to provide just such a system. Apparently, things move a bit slowly through the MTA bureaucracy.

Now, nearly four months later, the MTA has announced that it is still another three months away from implementing the text message alert system. But at least it’s on the horizon with a debut date set for June, just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of the flood. Marlene Naanes of amNew York has more:

Within the next 90 days, transit and commuter rail riders are expected to be able to go to the MTA Web site and customize alerts they want sent to their cell phones or computers, MTA executive deputy director Chris Boylan yesterday told the MTA Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee.

“We are looking to see if we can get all of our messages distributed in five to 10 minutes or less,” Boylan said.

The agency also will redesign its Web site, and add an online lost-and-found service. Transit riders will be able to log on to inquire about lost items. Metro North already offers this service. The new face of the Web site will be less cluttered and easier to navigate. It’s unclear when it will launch.

Before getting to the juicy stuff, let’s just review this text message alert system. I love the idea; it’s a long time coming; what took so long? In August, MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander said this idea had been in the works for a while and the flood “made it clear that timely text and email alerts are necessary.” Seven months later, the MTA says they’re still about three months away from a launch. I can only wonder how long this would have taken had there been no flood.

Meanwhile, I eagerly anticipate a redesigned MTA Web site. The current incarnation has a lot of information and no easy way to access it. Separate agencies maintain their own pages, and everything is just jumbled together. Any redesign aimed at uncluttered the site is a huge step in the right direction for an agency that, over the last year, has shown a willingness to embrace technological innovation in a big way. That is good news for straphangers.