Image by Michael Perkins licensed under Creative Commons.

Right now, there are regional efforts underway to create a dedicated funding source and a governance system that makes sense for Metro to help improve operations over the long-term. In the meantime, riders across the region continue to use Metro daily. GGWash wants to be part of the big picture solutions and the day-to-day efforts to make Metro better.

So while GGWash is working on the big picture advocacy, we're also working with WMATA to crowdsource ideas for better Metro passes and we're connecting riders to MyTripTime to spread the word and help improve the tool.

The MyTripTime tool makes individual, personalized data accessible to riders. That’s great! Riders should be able to test their subjective riding experience against data about how long their trips actually take.

But we think MyTripTime could be even better. First we want people to know what the tool is and what it does and doesn't measure. Second, we want to create an opportunity for riders to set targets for their personal on-time scores, and challenge WMATA to meet them. Lastly, we want to share participants' data so we can compare riders' on-time performance.

Do you ride Metro? Will you participate?

By participating, you'll get to know your personal on-time performance stats over time (since we'll be sending you an email to remind you to check it every month). You'll also get to set a target for what you'd like your personal on-time score to be.

Is it 75 percent now and you wish it was higher? Here's your chance to tell WMATA to step it up!

You'll also lend your individual, anonymous data to a public database so you can compare your personal on-time stats to those of riders across the system, which GGWash will use to do some analyses (of course these won't be held to rigorous scientific standards since we're using crowdsourced data).

Signing up and participating is easy

We've created a simple website (thanks Derek Hogue!) where riders like you can share your personal on-time scores over the next three to six months.

Go to whatsmytriptime.com to participate.  Image by the author.

Sign up today by going to the whatsmytriptime.com site and clicking the “sign up for the challenge” button. You'll be prompted to create a login, then to share your current on-time scores, and set an on-time target that meets your standards! The whole signup process should take about five minutes.

Then you’ll get monthly, personalized reminders via email to log in to your MyTripTime dashboard and share your data through the site. All you have to do is transpose your MyTripTime data from the dashboard into GGWash's form a handful of times and voila! We'll have a database of customer on-time stats!

Each month we'll also send you some quick analyses of the data we've got so far, track your progress toward your on-time target, and of course, make the full database public at the end of the initiative.

Sign up now!

This post is part of GGWash's community engagement program, where we contract with organizations (in this case, WMATA) to run programs which better engage people in crowdsourcing ideas or information to aid in decision-making. Client organizations are never allowed to write or approve the specific copy, and our volunteer Editorial Board reviews all published materials to be sure they maintain GGWash's independence. Have questions? Contact us here.