Since Muni has been made reluctant, thanks to the union, to release any details from customers' complaints, let's start our own website where people can submit reports. The data from those reports would get forwarded along to Muni, but it would also be aggregated so that the public can see actual statistics on which areas, drivers, and routes are causing problems. And like Chronwatch, you could also see how long recurring problems have lasted, and find out when Muni finally fixes them. Incidents would also tied to your YouTube videos, and Flickr pictures, and a Google map. You could call it "Busgripe" or "TransiChart" or just "Chartr" if you're all twopointohey.
There's a few obvious problems right off the bat:
- Maria Williams, Muni's head of customer service, probably wouldn't like it. She might refuse to accept Chartr's data, which would remove one of the big motivators for submitting complaints in the first place: the idea that your complaint might help improve Muni, or more deliciously, get someone in trouble.
- It sure would be hard to publicize it.
- Someone smart's got to build it and host it.
- Do you really think it could make enough Adsense to defray costs?
In this whole city, do you think there might be at least polite enough to broker an agreement with Muni, someone else shrewd enough to market it, and someone else smart enough to build it? Maybe even more than one? As Scott Adams might say, there's a nonzero change that it could work.
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