Send Alerts with Transit Terminal

Our alerts tool, available in Transit Terminal, lets you quickly and easily notify riders about service disruptions, including stop closures, detoured or delayed routes, cancelled service, and significant delays.

Published alerts are displayed in Transit and subscribed riders receive alerts as push notifications on their mobile device.

💁‍♂️ Publishing alerts with Transit Terminal is available to Transit partners who subscribe to Royale. Tap or click here to learn more about becoming a partner.

Publish a service alert with Transit Terminal

Sign in to the dashboard. On the left of the screen, select Alerts. Select Create Alert and fill the following fields:

Affected lines: Select the affected line(s). Selecting Any Lines will display the alert on all your lines.
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. When a stop is specified, the alert will be visible on the impacted stop(s). Users will see the alert on the main screen when the nearest stop is impacted. In trip plans, the alert will be visible on itineraries that start, end, or transfer at an impacted stop.

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 (if an alert is sent).

⚠️ Effect: Specify how **service is disrupted. It’s very important to select the appropriate effect for an alert— otherwise, riders may see incorrect or misleading information in Transit.
There are nine possible values to choose from, each corresponding to one of three alert levels. See the table below for more detailed information.

Effect	App severity level	Notes
No Service	Severe (will send push notification)	Will close all selected entities on the home screen and in the trip planner. Trip cancellations will also appear with a strike-through in the list of departures.
Reduced Service	Warning (will send push notification)
Detour	Warning (will send push notification)
Significant Delays	Warning (will send push notification)
Additional Service	Info
Modified Service	Info
Other Effect	Info	Transit may analyze the text of the alert to provide a more specific effect.
Unknown Effect	Info
Stop Moved	Info or Warning (Will send push notification)	Warning when alert contains a stop ID, info if only at the route level.
Accessibility	Warning for users with step-free settings, hidden for others	Accessibility alerts affect the trip planner for/are only visible to users who have step-free access enabled.
No Effect	Not displayed

This field will automatically update the push notification checkbox to either send a push notification or not, but that checkbox can be overwritten by Terminal users on a per-alert basis.
Avoid using "Other Effect" and "Unknown Effect", if possible.

⚠️ Caution: If you select “No Service,” Transit will remove the stop and/or departures from the app and display an alert symbol instead of arrival times. The trip planner will not propose trips on routes or stops that have an active service alert with a “No Service” effect. If you use this option, ensure you have selected the correct stop and/or route.

Cause: The cause may be used as a fall back when other text fields are left empty.

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”.

All times use the local time zone of the transit agency selected.
If no End Date is specified, the alert will display in Transit until it is removed manually.

Alert title: This is what will appear at the top of the push notification. Keep the title concise.

Alert description: Additional details, such as detour route, effective date/time, etc.
Add language: click to add translations for any of the eight languages that Transit supports. Transit will display translated text if the user’s device language is the same as the translation and the language is supported. Otherwise, the user will see the alert text in the feed’s default language (whether it’s a supported language, or not).
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 on the set Start Date of the alert. 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).

⚠️ Push notifications appear on users’ lock screen

Best practices

⚠️ Effects

Caution: If you select “No Service,” Transit will remove the stop and/or departures from the app and display an alert symbol instead of arrival times. The trip planner will not propose trips on routes or stops that have an active service alert with a “No Service” effect. If you use this option, ensure you have selected the correct stop and/or route.
Avoid using "Other Effect" and "Unknown Effect", if possible.

📆 Start and end date/time

When possible, include future alerts, so riders can prepare for service changes.
Only publish information you know to be certain – it’s better to not provide an end date than to include an incorrect one.

📝 Copy

As a general rule, service alerts should explain why service is disrupted; when the service alert applies; and whattransit services are affected.
Alert copy should concisely explain how to plan around the service disruption. If a stop moved, it’s important to tell the rider where it went. If a line is detoured, include a description of the temporary deviated route.
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.
Service alerts should contain information about transit service specific to the affected line, stop, or trip only. Please don’t use them to advertise unrelated events or promote other apps.

Limitations

Terminal only supports one active period per alert.
Trip alerts aren’t currently supported in Terminal.

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 all alerts, past and present, sent through the Terminal.

How service alerts are displayed in Transit

Severe level alerts

Severe level alerts (”No Service” effect) replace the arrival time to the right of the affected route name or number with a warning triangle. Riders can tap the route and the alert banner for more information.

Warning level alerts

Warning level alerts appear as a small warning triangle next to the affected route name or number. Riders can tap the line to get more information and then tap the alert banner to read the alert.

Info level alerts

Info level alerts appear only after riders have tapped on an affected route or stop. Again, riders can tap the alert banner to read the alert.

Stops

Stops associated with a severe or warning level alert are highlighted with a red or yellow circle. Riders can tap the stop, then the callout to check alerts for the affected stop.

Easy! Riders can simply pin the transit line for which they’d like to receive service alerts. To do so, riders should select the relevant route and then tap the pin icon. Riders will then be prompted to select during which hours they’d like to receive notifications.

If there’s an active alert on a particular route, riders can also tap on the alert banner and then “Tap to change notification settings” to set up service alerts.

Get help

Need help with the dashboard or have a question not answered here? Need another account for sending alerts?

If you are experiencing problems with service alerts, please include a specific example of an affected alert and attach screenshots if possible.