Metro News Release

For immediate release: August 4, 2005

Metro Offers Syndicated Version of Its Metrorail Service Disruptions

Starting Monday, August 8, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) is making its Metrorail service disruptions available in an electronic format so more Web sites will be able to carry information about Metro service.

Metro is publishing this service disruption news feed in a standard format, known as RSS, which is used by thousands of Web sites worldwide. RSS, which stands for "really simple syndication," is a standard means of preparing simple text files to indicate the name of the publisher, the headlines of stories available, the publish date and associated Web links back to the publisher’s site.

"We want to put information about the status of Metro service into the hands of more people so that they can plan accordingly," said Leona Agouridis, Metro’s Assistant General Manager for Customer Communications. "Through RSS feeds, employers, news organizations, and other transit providers can seamlessly provide real time information about Metro service to the thousands of people who visit their Web sites each day."

Individuals wishing to track Metrorail service disruptions can use the same news feed as well. For individuals, the appeal of the RSS is that they can use many free or inexpensive RSS reader software packages to add the news feeds of the news sources they wish to track. The reader software then polls the included sites at the specified intervals, returning a list of stories available from each of the included sites.

Details on how to use this new service disruption news feed are available at www.wmata.com/rss/rss_howto.cfm.

News release issued on August 4, 2005.