MTA’s Website a casualty of the power outage

When the South Bronx and East Side went dark last Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of commuters panicked. With rush hour nearly upon the traveling masses, subway service failed on some of the city’s most popular lines. But even worse, the MTA’s Web site went dark.

As would-be straphangers sought information during the blackout’s first few minutes, many tried to navigate to MTA.info, the MTA’s recently revamped and usually reliable Web site. But instead, most surfers — including me — were rebuffed. The site was down. Instead, computer users turned to Gothamist, The Times’ Cityroom blog and, of course, Second Ave. Sagas.

Bloggers worked as they are wont to do on Wednesday. Gathering reports from news sources and MTA officials, the sites worked fast to keep their readers updated on the state of mass transit. During the hourlong power failure, the bloggers went to work while the MTA’s site went down. While a few of my readers e-mailed me about this outage and have expressed concerns about the MTA’s site in the past, The New York Times dug a bit deeper into the outage. William Neuman wrote:

When the power went out in a broad swath of the Upper East Side and the Bronx on Wednesday, a record number of commuters turned to the Internet to learn if their subway lines or commuter trains were running. But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Web site provided no help. The site became inaccessible shortly after the electricity went out at 3:41 p.m. and was down for about an hour, a little longer than the 49-minute power failure.

“Because the incident occurred right before people were getting ready to leave the office, we had a huge surge of traffic at one time, unlike anything we’d had before,” Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the transportation authority, said yesterday…

Mr. Soffin said that technicians had determined that the firewalls that protect the authority’s computers were not able to handle the record Web traffic, making it impossible for users to access the site. He said that the authority had been planning to install new firewall technology and that it would be in place within two months.

Now, as a frequent subway rider and active subway blogger, I love the MTA’s site. The revamped newsroom with its RSS-supported Press Release section is a great resource. These schedules, I learned this past weekend, are actually somewhat accurate, and the service advisores are invaluable.

But if the site for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the nation’s biggest and most popular public transportation system, can’t keep its Web site up and running during a huge spike in traffic, it’s in trouble. Much like most MTA projects, the installation of a new firewall is going to take about two to four times as long as it should.

So as we head into a summer where blackout concerns are rampant in the city, we may yet face another power outage that brings down the MTA’s site. While the Authority is the ultimate word on the status of the subways, for now, you’re safer with bloggers. If the power goes, you’re better off with Gothamist, Cityroom or me than you are with the MTA. And as good as it feels to pat myself on the head, that is definitely not a good state of affairs.