Kevin's last blog post on BartRage.com inspired me to bring up GetSatisfaction.com.  It's a user-powered customer service forum when customers and company and organizational representaitves can interact and share their experiences.

Transit is an important part of people's lives, and its users talk about it in many different aspects.  GetSatisfaction.com seemed like a way to expose some of those conversations, find some of the most useful suggestions which might otherwise never make it to decision-maker's ears, and stop the same questions from being asked over and over again.  In short, it seemed a perfect fit for transit.

And, when I pitched to HTA that they should embrace the idea of open, user-powered customer online service, I was really happy that they saw it's value and let me link to GetSatisfaction.com for Humboldt Transit from the HTA homepage.  Not many transit agency's, I've learned, are this open and progressive — staff from Samtrans and Caltrain will answer queries on GetSatisfaction.com unofficially, but the agencies refuse to see the value of communicating directly and openly with their riders, as per the Company-Customer Pact (this is very cool and well worth the checking out).  It's really a great credit to HTA that they've gone ahead and done this.

So what's happened?  Well, one of the most interesting threads was started by Carol Moné of Trinidad, commenting on the service schedule update and what it means or doesn't mean for Trinidad riders.  Carol has been going to HTA to ask for more service for decades, but it wasn't until this forum that she realized that HCAOG, the County of Humboldt, the cities, and the state are the places to go to make sure transit is better supported.  Plus, the resulting conversation included discussion of options including Redwood Coast Transit service between Trinidad and Arcata, the casino bus, and rideshare.

Getting these conversations out in the open is a great first step to creating solutions.  The best solutions will come from groud-up effort, and involve lots of partnerships between citizens, governments, businesses, and organizations.