Last Friday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey “announced” via social media that it would be holding a “Commuter Chat” session for feedback about the Port Authority Bus Terminal on August 12. Tomorrow’s session is part of the recently-announced “Quality of Commute” Improvement Program for the failing bus terminal, which according to the Committee on Capital Planning, Execution and Asset Management is “physically and operationally obsolete, operates beyond its capacity, lacks adequate bus staging/storage capacity, and is nearing the end of its useful life.” Considering that this bleak description has been enthusiastically verified by others (John Oliver declared it to be “The Single Worst Place on Earth“) one might think the agency would be making a more concerted effort to spread the word about the $90 million “Quality of Commute” Improvement Program.
However, this “announcement” appears to have only been made via the PANYNJ Facebook page and the PANYNJ Twitter feed, both of which are used primarily for service interruption announcements—any commuter can tell you that there can be dozens of these announcements in a day; so far today there have already been nearly 40 announcements posted to the agency’s Facebook, effectively burying any trace of Friday’s announcement—as well as via the rarely-used, barely acknowledged PABT Twitter feed, which has just one percent of the followers that the PANYNJ Twitter feed has. For anyone who doesn’t use Twitter regularly, news of this feedback session would be especially hard to find. As there is no calendar on the PANYNJ website, it appears the only other mention of tomorrow’s feedback session is in a report from the Committee on Capital Planning, Execution and Asset Management to the agency’s Board of Directors on July 23.
This same report notes that “enhanced communications” was mentioned in previously received customer feedback. If reliance on sparse and sporadic social media posts is the agency’s idea of “enhanced communications”, they are going to need all of the customer feedback from these “Commuter Chats” they can get.
They did announce it at the PA subcommitee meeting, but I was surprised not to get a press release advancing it.
Possibly there should be an express bus lane inbound in the evening so that both full and empty buses can reach the Port Authority Terminal in a predictable manner.
I sent an email to find out when, where. It took them 5 days to respond that they are forwarding my request to the proper address, since then nada..
That is the port authority idea of a good communication..
[…] from its current 10-year Capital Program to a plan for improvements under the working title “Quality of Commute.” A detailed plan on how the Port Authority will spend that money is expected to be presented at […]
[…] almost no advanced notice, highlighting yet another issue the Council should be focusing on: communicating service […]