Online social media platforms offer a communication network between transit agencies and their customers. It can be an effective way to communicate with users and identify their needs as a step toward establishing a client-oriented approach (Hosseini et al., 2018). Federal Transit Administration has several web policies that transit agencies have to follow. These policies include access for people with disabilities, the Freedom of Information Act, linking policy and disclaimer of endorsement, the No Fear Act, plug-ins and players, privacy policy, website inventory, and website maintenance policy.
Transit systems are required to follow the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) policies when using and setting up websites and social media in order to provide a fair and good service for customers. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA, 2022) provides financial and technical assistance to local public transit systems, including buses, subways, light rail, commuter rail, trolleys, and ferries. By following the policy about access for people with disabilities, transit agencies ensure that their websites and social media accounts provide information in appropriate alternative formats to meet the requirements of persons who have a disability (FTA, 2022). In order to obtain information “which is routinely available for public inspection, including records from docketed cases, broadcast applications and related files, petitions for rulemakings, various legal and technical publications, legislative history compilations, etc.” (FTA, 2022, para. 2), users do not have to file a special request. Furthermore, if the website or a social media account of a transit agency includes links to outside sites, according to federal policies, those links do not intend to reflect the importance of service offered on these outside sites.
As well as that, federal policies ensure that the transit agencies’ websites are helping with the paperwork reduction. This policy is aimed at the collection of many different kinds of information that is renewed and updated regularly. When it comes to plug-ins, players, and readers, the FTA “provides information on its website in a variety of file formats that best match the transmittal and display requirements of the information while taking into account the level of resources typically available to its visitors” (FTA, 2022, para. 8). Most of these formats are easily read and showed by standard web browsers. However, there are some files that have been specifically developed for transmitting content, such as multimedia. These files can require the use of additional software to be displayed correctly (FTA, 2022). Thus, the policies ensure that the agencies use the available resources to present information in the best way possible.
When it comes to privacy, the policy prevents websites from collecting information. Following the privacy policy, the websites do not collect any personal information unless a user specifically chooses to provide such information to the agencies. Website maintenance policy ensures that available online systems are highly reliable and available. Thus, the policy enables the transit agencies to periodically bring down systems for service, software updates, repairs and performance tuning. However, FTA recognizes that such occurrences can cause an inconvenience; thus, on the occasions when it is necessary to bring down the systems, appropriate notifications have to be posted on the home page (FTA, 2022). Therefore, the customers will be notified beforehand and the inconvenience will be reduced to the minimum.
Overall, the federal policies and recommendations enable travel agencies to provide a client-oriented approach. The policies, such as access for people with disabilities, freedom of information act, linking policy, and disclaimer of endorsement, enable the websites to provide all available information in appropriate formats. Moreover, policies such as plug-ins and players, privacy policies, and website maintenance policies ensure that the websites are properly maintained and information is provided in the correct format. Therefore, the policies help the transit agencies’ websites to be up to the best available format.
References
Federal Transit Administration (2022). FTA Web policies. Federal Transit Administration. Web.
Hosseini, M., El-Diraby, T., & Shalaby, A. (2018). Supporting sustainable system adoption: Socio-semantic analysis of transit rider debates on social media. Sustainable cities and society, 38, 123-136. Web.