Twitter alerts back on track for NYC subway after week off

FILE – A Twitter logo is displayed outside the San Francisco offices of the company, December 19, 2022. New York City service alerts on subways, commuters trains, and buses were again available via Twitter Thursday, May 4, after transit officials refused to pay for the platform.

Jeff Chiu/AP

NEW YORK, NY (AP) - Service alerts on New York City's commuter trains, subways and buses returned to Twitter on Thursday after transit officials refused to pay for the information.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) lost access to Twitter's application program interface for sending out automated alerts regarding service changes and emergency situations. Last Thursday, the MTA announced that it would no longer be publishing service updates to Twitter. The MTA said they were opposed to Twitter's decision to charge for its application programming interface.

Twitter has reversed its position and restored free access for verified government services, as well as 'publicly-owned' services to tweet alerts.

Twitter got the message, and has reversed its plans to charge the MTA over half a million dollar per year for these notifications. Now, no transit agency is required to pay.

Twitter alerts were posted by the country's largest transport network in time for Thursday evening's commute.

Last week, the MTA said it was also concerned about technical problems which had caused two recent outages to its Twitter alerts. The authority announced Thursday that it had received written assurances that Twitter's platform would be reliable.

Twitter's Communications office received an email asking for comments.

Elon Musk's efforts to make Twitter profitable have led many Twitter users to change their service.