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."