mySociety, the high-tech British not-for-profit organisation, today launches FixMyTransport.com, a new website to help citizens group together to overcome common public transport problems.
FixMyTransport is an attractive new tool which makes it extremely easy for users to send problem reports and complaints directly to transport providers, even if they have no idea who is responsible for a specific route or stop. It covers the whole of Great Britain, from Lands End to the Shetland Isles, and every operator is represented whether its a billion-pound train company or a tiny community minibus service.
FixMyTransport builds up and extends the successful model of its sister site FixMyStreet.com (which had over 60,000 problems reported in 2010): as well as sending the passengers report to the operator, it also publishes it online. FixMyStreet has been copied around the world, from Brazil to South Korea, and mySociety is working on versions for the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. mySociety's hope is that FixMyTransport will be similarly popular across the globe - after all, wherever you find a public transport system, therell probably be something going wrong...
Small Campaigns
FixMyTransport users can do more than just send complaints - they are given the opportunity to rally support for persistent problems, by creating a campaign page which other transport users can then put their names to. FixMyTransport then offers a powerful toolbox to help them spread the word and lobby for changes.
Big Ambitions
Data has been drawn from the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR) and National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) data sets, which provide route names, stops and operators - over 300,000 bus, train, tube and tram stops are represented on individual pages. Dozens of volunteers have helped crowdsource the contact details of hundreds of operators, to make sure problem reports go to the right place. Many transport providers were invited to visit the site prior to launch, and their feedback has informed its fine-tuning - you can now leave praise as well as complaints.
Notes for Editors
mySocietys Director Tom Steinberg is available for interview to talk about how FixMyTransport could help transform public transport in this country. During the short weeks the site has been in beta testing, more than 70 real-life problems have already been reported.
For more information about the inception and history of the new site, please see this page: http://www.mysociety.org/fixmytransport, or to visit the site go to http://www.FixMyTransport.com itself.
mySociety is the project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy (1076346). mySociety runs most of the best-known democracy and transparency websites in the UK, sites like http://TheyWorkForYou.com and http://WhatDoTheyKnow.com.
mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives.
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