Alert! A look at RT operations

I'm a great fan of Sacramento Regional Transit's efforts to alert riders to system outages or other disruptions. You can subscribe to the news feed and see all of the alerts, or you can sign up for individualized email. (See my earlier explanation.)

These alerts are only available currently for the "Neighborhood Ride" service. The alerts obviously won't be really useful until the system is expanded to cover all bus and rail routes. Still you learn a lot about the system, the district's priorities and stuff RT probably wouldn't brag about.

For example, read between the lines of this alert:

May 11, 2009 12:14 PM

Route 10 is going to be canceled from 4:46 pm to 7:20 pm due to operator availability. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Can you imagine a light rail route cancelled for the entire evening commute because the operator called in sick?