In the frozen fortnight between Monday 4 and Sunday 17 January, Metro’s web site received almost 1.8m page views, which is almost two month’s traffic in 14 days.

Using information provided by the MetroLine call centre, as well as bus and rail operators, Metro’s Public Relations team was able to update the site from 6am to beyond 10pm throughout the bad weather. Metro has been given much praise with people describing the site as the most reliable and comprehensive source of information.

In the same period the MetroLine call centre received almost 34,000 calls about bus and train services, which is 12,000 more than usual.

“These are the highest daily figures we've ever had for the web site and Metro’s investment in new servers meant it held up without any of the wobbles we have experienced at very busy times in the past,” said Metro PR Manager Martin Driver.

“We were also pleased at the very positive response to our Twitter service, which is a fairly recent innovation for Metro but one which seems to have worked very well.”

Numbers of people following Metro’s transport Tweets at Twitter.com/metrotravelnews also increased from around 200 at the start of January to over 660 now. Many of those people recommended Metro’s messages to their followers and regularly re-tweeted them meaning they got to an even wider audience.

Metro’s Assistant Director of Customer Services Diane Groom said, “Overall we are pleased with the information service we have been able to provide but are now going to sit down, review what happened, discuss any lessons learned and improvements we might make for similar events in the future.”