Sick transit from HBR 2008 ideas by et al

Sick Transit Gloria
by Mark Kuznicki, Eli Singer, and Jay Goldman

The Toronto Transit Commission runs the third-largest public transit system in North America. Its buses, streetcars, and subways serve 2.4 million riders daily. The TTC was once hailed as a model of enlightened, well-run urban transportation, but in the mid-1990s underfunding and rapid population growth started to take a heavy toll. The system began to creak, and rider discontent became rampant.

A public entity, the TTC is obligated to consult regularly with its customers, a process that became increasingly contentious as rider frustration grew. In public meetings, cash-strapped TTC officials cowered as angry riders protested the system’s aging infrastructure, from the rolling stock to the stations to the commission’s once highly praised website. It was clear that communication was among the most badly broken parts of the system—an impediment to constructive action.

The stalemate might have persisted if not for the serendipitous convergence of social networking technologies, a growing army of technology and transit geeks, and an open-minded new TTC chairman named Adam Giambrone. He accepted a pitch from local bloggers on how to revitalize the TTC website: Use the geeks’ lively networks as conduits for ideas.

On February 4, 2007, Giambrone and a number of other TTC officials participated in a unique live event dubbed TransitCamp. Created by members of the Toronto blogging community, the grassroots meeting melded citizen activism with crowd-sourcing. About 120 attendees used real-time Web 2.0 collaboration tools to engage one another live and in person. The happening emulated an innovative open-source problem-solving framework known as BarCamp. A BarCamp event is self-organizing; participants gather to think creatively, across disciplines, about areas of shared concern. Some BarCamp-style meetings last several days, and many attendees bring sleeping bags and extra clothes to “camp out.”

In the case of the one-day TransitCamp, participants set out to collaboratively debug the transit system as if it were a complex piece of software and, ultimately, to reform riders’ experience. The organizers (we were among them) set ground rules intended primarily to keep the tone constructive: TransitCamp was styled as a creative “solutions playground” rather than a gripe session. Among the participants were transit activists, ordinary riders, technology geeks, visual artists and designers, and web developers. Some of the TTC representatives in attendance came out of simple curiosity about the new community Giambrone was seeking to engage. Won over by the participants’ passion, most of the officials canceled their other plans and stayed for the entire day.

TransitCamp was promising in both its process and its results. The on-site use of social networking tools allowed many ideas to be put forward quickly and iteratively as the day unfolded. The event moved the TTC to entirely rethink its website redesign plans. In impromptu closing remarks, Giambrone called the participants an inspiring voice for change. The icy relations between the TTC and the riding public have since begun to thaw. A previously issued RFP for the new website was canceled and a new one was developed from the principles that were articulated at TransitCamp. The commission is still short of funds and facing possible service cuts and fare increases, but it has begun a frank, constructive online conversation with riders about which trade-offs make the most sense. A similar dialogue will soon take place in San Francisco, where the creators of BarCamp have organized TransitCampBayArea for late February 2008.

The TransitCamp experience demonstrates the power of a new, technology-supported model for social and community change. This model empowers citizens to engage cooperatively with public officials in an otherwise unlikely civic—and civil—dialogue.

TransitCamp reformed a transportation system by reinventing the way stakeholders collaborate with decision makers. To learn more, visit hbr.transitcamp.org.

Mark Kuznicki is the principal at Remarkk Consulting. Eli Singer is the director of social media for Segal Communications, a Draftfcb agency. Jay Goldman is the president and cofounder of Radiant Core. All three authors are based in Toronto.

From
Breakthough Ideas for 2008
Harvard Business Review
February 2008