Your bus is always late, the heating’s always broken on your train, and the station timetables are missing. It’s easy enough to grumble to your co-passengers, but have you ever stopped to think what might happen if you all got together to do something about it?
Well, of course, many have, hence the fine heritage of transport pressure groups in this country. But equally, many of us have far more important things to do, and so we shut up and put up.
Now there’s a middle ground.
FixMyTransport, the latest project from mySociety, allows passengers to report issues on any public transport in the UK – train, bus, underground, tram, or coach. We’ve found, with previous projects, that putting issues in the public domain can sometimes get them solved. Not all of them, admittedly – but it’s a start.
If you’re a passenger
FixMyTransport makes it:
- Easy You don’t have to know who to contact or even which operator runs the line; all you need to know is where you were travelling to and from. We’ll automatically send your report to the right contact.
- Transparent Transport operators are accountable: your report will also be publicly visible online to anyone, and so will the operators’ replies.
- Social FixMyTransport automatically creates campaigns. When someone makes a report about the same issue as you, you’ll be grouped together on the site, creating more impact than all the complaints individually.
There’s no more to it than that. No meetings to attend, or posters to stick up – although if you want to find the people to band together with to do those things as well, it’ll help with that.
Report a problem now or browse recent problems.
If you’re a transport operator
Are we at mySociety trying to put the boot in? Absolutely not. As it happens, we are keen users of public transport who, thanks to our dispersed working arrangements, probably clock up more miles on the UK’s transport system than most.
For operators, we hope FixMyTransport will make the complaints process:
- Rapid Your customers are at the front line of your services: often they will know about the things that are broken even before you do. Thanks to FixMyTransport, you will hear about the issues that matter to your customers as soon as they occur. That means you’ll be able to fix them faster, and receive fewer complaints as a result.
- Efficient Because FixMyTransport reports can all be viewed online, it is less likely that separate passengers will contact you over the same issue: instead, they’ll be invited to join the existing report. This way, you won’t be contacted several times about the same problem, and you’ll be able to communicate directly with a group of affected passengers with a single email.
- Fair By putting problems and their replies in the public domain, we are giving you a chance to show what is being done to fix things. It’s easy for the passenger to grumble: well, now you have a right to reply.
- Easy We have a track record with this kind of project. FixMyStreet.com is our website that allows residents to report problems such as potholes and broken street lighting to their local council, also putting the conversation online. Many councils have welcomed the service, with several commissioning us to build versions for their own websites.
Visit FixMyTransport now and find routes that you operate.
Like what you see? We can also build you a customer feedback system that sits on your own website, fully hosted and branded to your template. Contact us for more information.
Contact us
If you’d like to ask a question about FixMyTransport, please feel free to do so below, or mail us.
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