METRO’s expensive blogger recently commented on the redesign of the transit organization’s website, lauding one feature in particular:
Perhaps the biggest feature you’ll appreciate is the search engine we’ve incorporated. Want to look up the next Board of Directors meeting date? Enter key words in the search window and let the computer find it for you.
As is often the case with METRO, actual user experience deviates somewhat from the celebratory press releases. Here are the first two comments on the post:
John said:
What ever happened to MetroLink? That service that sent you alerts of certain streets were going to be closed and route changes, etc. I can’t find it anywhere on the site. Try searching for it on that searching for it and the links provided all went to the standard 404 not there page..
# April 3, 2008 5:39 PM
Elizabeth said:
John, it took some digging, but here’s a working link for MetroLink:
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/METROLink/content/default.asp
# April 3, 2008 8:12 PM
The 404 message* seems appropriate for METRO, actually.
* Since few people actually follow links any more, here is the blockquote from the wikipedia page on 404 messages that I linked:
The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but either the server could not find what was requested, or it was configured not to fulfill the request and not reveal the reason why.
That sounds like our transit organization to me!
