New York’s Mass Transit System Curbs Relationship with Twitter After Price Increase

Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it's curbing its relationship with Twitter after raising prices. This will end the real-time service updates and information to riders for the city's subway, train, and bus.

Ending Real-Time Service Updates

New York City's mass-transit system will no longer post or update real-time service alerts on Twitter, as Metropolitan Transportation Authority announces departure on the platform. According to Bloomberg's report, MTA curbs its relationship after Twitter raised its prices to $50,000 a month to continue access to the application programming interface.

Among the affected accounts includes @NYCTSubway, @NYCTBus, @LIRR, and @MetroNorth. While these accounts will no longer be used to push out communication like real-time service alerts to riders, the transit system said that their employees will still monitor those handles and respond to messages from their followers.

Riders or commuters that use the bus, train, or subway in New York City can still have access to real-time service information and alerts on MTA's phone applications, MYmta and TrainTime. These services will also be included on its website and on WhatsApp.

Curbing Relationship with Twitter

Since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, Twitter has been in constant flux with its terms and conditions, with users experiencing an irregular transition of verified checks and other account labeling features, including gold checks for verified organizations and gray checks for government organizations, and their affiliates.

As per Gothamist's report, this announcement comes after the agency's access to Twitter was involuntarily interrupted twice in the past few weeks. MTA's Acting Chief Customer Officer Shnifah Rieara said that it would not be the best for MTA to use its resources on the platform when they have other internal features and functions that are more reliable and safer.

She also argued that the interruptions, paired with recent actions were taken by Twitter, a sign that the platform is prioritizing verified accounts that signed up for its monthly paid subscription of Twitter Blue. Rieara added, "We want to communicate with our customers through all platforms, but we need a platform that is reliant and consistent and up to date."

Twitter announced that it would suspend its access to its API on February 9, offering a new paid-tier structure to use that would go into effect at the end of March. Twitter did not offer a timeline for when older accounts would lose their respective access, hence why the agency decided to announce it earlier.

While MTA argued Twitter's reliability, the transport system has a $600 million budget deficit this year that is set to grow to $3 billion in 2025 as the federal pandemic aid slowly runs out. The agency is now hoping to New York Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators for their plan to help curb the system's financial problems.