'Clever' Communication for Commuters

As a native of Port Washington, Joshua Crandall always understood the "commuting culture" on Long Island. He said he realized how technology keeps people connected, but that commuters are often not connected to one other.

After being laid off from Morgan Stanley in 2006, Crandall came up with an innovative business model based on that premise. He wanted to find a way for commuters to alert and update fellow travelers about delays, weather-related issues and all other slowdowns related to mass transit through their mobile messaging devices.

"I started it as a frustrated New Jersey Transit commuter," Crandall said, "and grew it into a 10,000 person network that is part of the fabric of the daily commute for thousands of area commuters, including the LIRR."

Clever Communicator, LLC, was born with a handshake agreement between Crandall and five of his fellow commuters. The free-to-use service known as Clever Commute now has thousands of commuters from MTA Long Island Rail Road, Metro North and New Jersey Transit signed up.

"I just wanted to help people get back and forth quickly and I did not want to replace other transit alerting systems," Crandall said. "This service is different because it is the only source of traffic or transit information that is exclusively generated by the commuters themselves. Clever Commute is purely peer-to-peer and in many instances it makes the alerts faster and better."

The system is easy to access even for the computer illiterate, according to Crandall. The service only requires a free one-time sign up, where the user identifies themselves as a rider of a given train or bus line. They are then given an e-mail address to use to communicate with all other participants on their line. When any rider using the service learns of an issue during their commute, they can send an alert to their fellow travelers that describes what they are seeing. Crandall said members help notify each other of any travel issues they encounter while in commute.

"We have found our alerts to be more user-friendly, action-oriented, targeted, and in many cases they are more timely," said Crandall, who explained that it is more of an alerting network rather than a social one and members can go days without any messages being sent. "Clever information can be better and faster than anything shared by the official sources."

Port Washington resident Andy Lipset uses Clever Commute when taking the LIRR into Manhattan daily. He said he finds the service to be the ultimate in real-time information for delays on the line. "Since joining the service, I can tell more people joined the service on the Port Washington branch because of the increased updates I am receiving," he said.

Lipset explained that he once received an alert that his train was stuck in Little Neck due to mechanical issues. Then a few minutes later, he received an alert that the train was being held in Bayside. Yet when he boarded the train in Port Washington there was no mention of the delays. Without Clever Commute, he said he wouldn't have know why he was being delayed.

"Delays are going to happen, but I don't like surprises on the ride home and Clever Commute helped to avoid those," Lipset said. "To me, this service is like a huge loudspeaker that every commuter can shout into and update everybody else on what is going on."

Crandall said that Clever Commute is now a profitable business and that running the site is now his full-time job. He explained that the site earns money from advertising and aggregating transit and traffic data and selling it to TV, radio and Web channels. The business is also awaiting patent approval.

Clever Commute has expanded to include several buses, ferries and light rail lines along with the LIRR, NJ Transit and Metro North. It is also now functioning in Chicago and Boston.

"I still want to grow with a deeper penetration in New York-area suburban trains," Crandall said. "Eventually, I want Clever Commute to have access in other domestic and international markets as well."