During the morning panic as yesterday’s subway deluge set in, the tracks weren’t the only part of the MTA flooded. Its Website was overwhelmed with visitors — 44 million of them in a few hours, according to some sources — and the system just couldn’t handle the pressure.
With this outage, bloggers and reporters across New York are noting something I noticed in July when their site went down during the East Side power outage. Similarly, Todd has long railed against the oft-down MTA Website on his own site and in the comments section of mine.
Now, with another big rain storm on the horizon, the MTA is readying its system both online and off. This afternoon, MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander spoke about the emergency plans in place for Friday.
“We will be strategically placing pumps throughout the system at potentially flood-prone locations, strategically placing management and customer personnel at key stations throughout the system to help our customers navigate in case of service disruptions,” he said. “We’ll be adding additional support personnel — such as signal ventilation and drainage maintainers — so that we can immediately address any situations that may arise.”
This all sounds great for those tracks such as the ones underneath Queens Boulevard that are prone to flooding, but what of the glorious Internets? In a post noting how hard it is to navigate the MTA’s Website (something I’ve long since chalked up to the ills of bureaucracy), Chan found some folks at the MTA willing to talk about the site:
On Wednesday, the authority’s Web site recorded 44 million hits…according to Wael Hibri, the authority’s chief information officer. But an untold number of riders were unable to reach the site because the authority was using an old firewall. Mr. Hibri said the authority had scheduled an upgrade of the firewall; the upgrade is to occur this weekend.
Mr. Hibri said the authority had more than enough server capacity to handle the demand. It was the old firewall, he said, that hindered many people from entering the site.
The M.T.A.’s Web site is one of the busiest in the country, [an MTA Executive Director Christopher P.] Boylan said…During the height of the transit chaos on Wednesday morning, Mr. Hibri said, the site got 3.8 million hits. By comparison, the authority got about 2 million hits an hour during a brief power failure in parts of Manhattan and the Bronx on June 27.
So while Sander has men in the tracks ready to pump out the subway, Hibri is relying on the old wing-and-a-prayer method. After all, the same firewall in place on Wednesday won’t be upgraded until this weekend at the earliest.
Friday is bound to be another taxing day for the MTA’s site. As soon as the first drops fall, people at their desks across the city will flock to MTA.info expecting the worst for the subway systems after Wednesday’s debacle. It sounds like that old firewall might once again stifle traffic.
We’ll find out later if millions of New Yorkers trying to will their way to an easy start to their weekends once again overwhelms the MTA. Good luck to them.
Meanwhile, if the MTA’s firewall blocks you out, I’ll have all of the service alerts, and I’ll be updating them as often as possible. So check back early and often when the rains fall. Or just chead on over to Chris’ site. He has all the MTA alerts you’ll ever need.
7 comments
That 404’D picture is hysterical. The MTA should use it!
The guy in charge said that the firewall needs to be upgraded. How is that “a wing and a prayer”? Do you realize what firewalls do?
Marc, it’s a wing and a prayer today because they haven’t had time to upgrade it yet. They’re expecting a big crush this afternoon, and it’ll take a semi-miracle to keep the site up if the same problem from 48 hours ago hasn’t been solved yet.
The rain must have clogged the Internet tubes, too.
I know nothing about making websites, but it seems amazing to me that the MTA didn’t build in the capacity for theirs to withstand sharp spikes in traffic. Isn’t that something just about anyone could have predicted they’d need?
From the front page today’s NY Times:
Ten minutes after a suspicious package was found at a subway station in Washington on Wednesday, riders read about it on the electronic screens at all of the system’s 86 stations.
At 5:30 a.m. the same day, New Jersey Transit bus and train riders were sent the first of 30 alerts on their cellphones and BlackBerry devices as rainstorms pounded the region. In San Francisco, riders planning a subway trip can download maps and schedules onto their iPods.
. . . During Wednesday’s crippling storm, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Web site was overwhelmed by people seeking the latest information and directions, legions of commuters had to rely on station agents scrawling updates on white boards.
What is wrong with this picture? Why can’t the biggest subway system in the country have the best communications? It’s a joke to have to rely on white boards and unintelligible PA announcements. Whatever it takes, the MTA has to improve communications. (But not at the expense of the 2nd Avenue subway as a letter writer in today’s paper suggested. One thing has nothing to do with the other.)
[…] the agency has made a real effort to improve their digital presence since the August flood knocked out its Website. Yesterday, New York City Transit unveiled a series of improvements to its Trip Planner designed to […]
[…] 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. […]