Case Study: Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) delivers faster real-time rider updates and coordinated incident response with Slack

MTA New York City Transit moves transport forwards with Slack

MTA New York City Transit (NYCT), North America’s largest public transit agency serving about 5.5 million riders daily and 50,000 employees, faced sudden operational upheaval during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Rapid service changes, nightly shutdowns for cleaning, staff shortages and fragmented reporting methods (radios and multiple systems) made it difficult to deliver timely, accurate customer updates and coordinate field operations.

By expanding an existing Slack deployment, NYCT created channel‑based workflows and mobile reporting that centralized real‑time updates from operators, dispatchers and station staff into a single source of truth, and used Slack Connect to collaborate with external partners. The result was faster incident response, clearer and more consistent customer communications across web, apps and in‑station screens, reduced silos, quicker vendor troubleshooting, and improved day‑to‑day coordination that keeps millions of riders better informed.

Metropolitan Transit Authority

Sarah Meyer

Chief Customer Officer