Send Alerts with the Transit Terminal

Use the Transit Terminal to notify your riders about service disruptions or planned changes to your routes. Subscribed riders will receive these alerts as push notifications, just like a text message.

On this page:

• About Service Alerts
• Best Practices
• Publish a Service Alert
• Get Help

About Service Alerts

On Transit’s home screen, a small triangular symbol next to a line indicates an active alert. To see the alert, tap the line, then tap the Service Alerts banner.

To subscribe to service alerts, tap the Push Notifications box.

Read more about Service Alerts in our user-facing help center: Get Notifications About Disruptions on your Line

Best Practices

• Service alerts should contain information about transit service only. Please, no advertisements for unrelated events, promotions of other apps, etc.
• Clickable links and formatting (bold, italic, etc) are not supported.
• Use line breaks to make your service alert easier to read.
• While there is no character limit for service alerts, users will be viewing alerts on mobile devices. Please be concise.

Publish a Service Alert:

1. Sign in to the dashboard.
2. On the left of the screen, select Alerts.
3. Select Create Alert and fill the following fields (required fields are in bold):
   1. Affected lines: Select the affected line. Selecting Any Lines will display the alert on all your lines. 

   2. Affected stops: Select the affected stop. 

      
      

      Note: You can specify either an affected line, an affected stop or entrance, or an affected stop on a specific line. Stop-based alerts do not appear for all users of the affected line(s); they only appear to users if their itinerary begins, ends, or passes by an affected stop. Read more about stop-based alerts here.

      
      

      Once a line and/or stop are selected, the dashboard will display the number of people who will receive a push notification for the alert.

   3. Effect: specify the type of service change. This field will automatically update the push notification checkbox to either send a push or not, but that checkbox can be overwritten by Terminal users on a per-alert basis.

      Caution: If you select “No Service,” Transit will remove the stop and/or departures from the app. If you select "No Service" for a line, Transit will display an alert symbol instead of arrival times. If you select "No Service" for a stop, Transit will hide the stop. It will not be considered by the trip planner, and the list of nearby transit options will show the next closest stop.

   4. Cause
   5. Start & End date and time: The time is in 10 minute intervals. If you set a Start Date in the future, the alert will display in the app one week in advance of the Start Date under “Future Alerts”.
      1. All times use the local time zone of the transit agency selected.
      2. If no End Date is specified, the alert will display in Transit until it is removed manually.
   6. Alert title: This is what will show up at the top of the push notification. Keep the title concise.
   7. Alert description: Additional details, such as detour route, effective date/time, etc.
   8. Push notification checkbox: Checked on or off by default based on the severity of the selected Effect. This check box will send users who have subscribed to that service a push notification. This push notification will appear on user's phone lock screen, so it is not to be used for every alert and is to be used for only the most critical messages. If you check the box, a push notification will be sent to users on the set Start Date of the alert.
4. Save the alert as a draft to finish it later, or publish the alert to send push notifications to subscribed users (if that box has been selected).

After you've published:

• Once an alert has been published, it can be modified by selecting the alert and pressing Update alert. Do not send an additional push notification unless the change is significant.
• Once an alert has been published, it can be removed. Find the alert in the list view and select the trash icon.
• Tap on the Export button to download a .csv of the alerts sent through the Terminal.

Get Help

Need help with the dashboard? Need another account for sending alerts?

Contact us at partners@transitapp.com. 

If you are experiencing problems with service alerts, please include a specific example of an affected alert.