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For those who don’t know, the MBTA is Boston’s public transportation authority, running subways, busses, commuter rail, and the like.

To say the least, many people are unhappy with the way it is operated. So, as a subject near and dear to my heart, I decide to make MBTAsux.

What it is: grabbing twitter messages and posting them in a format that allows easy skimming, in addition to extracting some data from the text.

The things I’m interested in:

    * Rudimentary sentiment analysis, i.e. how are people feeling about the MBTA right now?
    * Location tracking. I want to figure out where people complain the most. Control that for the “size” of the stations (Park and South Station would probably win the popular vote here).

Things I’ve yet to implement that I think are essential:

    * Submission form, and a mobile version of it. You know, for people who don’t use twitter.
    * Map. Alas, people are not really mentioning their exact stops when they complain. So there is a really small percentage of twitters coming in that would be mappable. This brings me to the next feature:
    * A nano-format for complaining about the MBTA on twitter and other media. Something like: s:kendall someone just played the Marseillaise on the hanging pipes #mbtasux

      How I wrote it:
          o Python
          o Google App Engine
          o Latest version of the code will be released soon under a BSD license.

      Enjoy!

I used to hate MBTA until I moved to London. The system is much more poorly maintained here, and the fact that it's bigger is no excuse. Only in London will you hear an announcement like "All lines except the Northern line are operating with severe delays." On top of that it used to be twice as expensive per ride [1]. However, it is in human nature to complain about everything. :) [2]

For example, if you happen to take the Circle Line or any of the lines it shares tracks with, it is common that the train would stop 1-3 times between stations, because of "traffic" ahead. Something like that would be very rare on the MBTA, even on the Green Line.

[1] Now it is 1.5x more expensive, only because of exchange rate fluctuations. The cost has not changed in terms of average British income.

[2] See fmylife.com

The main goal I have is to be able to figure out what it is that triggers the most ire. People will always complain, but something like this will let the MBTA prioritize appropriately, not just based on what a committee decides is most important.

Re:the tube: The older a system is the more complaints. The london underground is the oldest system in the world, and one of the reasons for traffic is the tiny horrible tunnels that they are constantly trying to prevent from caving in. The MBTA is America's oldest system, though it isn't really plagued by antiquated anything anymore.

The Circle line tracks are ridiculous. But may I suggest the Victoria line, the Central Line, the Piccadilly Line?

The regular busses and the night busses are so much better than what the MBTA's offering, as far as surface transport.

What do you use to calculate the Rage Meter (and mood in general)?

I've seen mood calculation before on ConceptNet: http://web.media.mit.edu/~hugo/conceptnet/

Currently there is only one mood tag "angry", which is handled with keywords and some simple rules. With more data, more complex and interesting rules can be derived.

Then the rage quotient is calculated, i.e. what percentage of people are angry (actually, it takes the number of angry posts in the sample and divides by half the sample size). The quotient is then mapped unto a list of verbal descriptions. This means that I can add or remove description as needed.

Looks like twitter only. But I think there might be a niche for this kind of watchdog - branding. Better than surveys.

Don't know about monetization, but certainly solves a pain!

where's the silver line? surely that generates plenty of hate.

People don't seem to post about it! If they did, I'd be catching it.

Besides the fact that it takes a really long time for it to arrive, I haven't had many problems with it.

MBTA Sux - capturing the public transportation zeitgeist