so unexpectedly cool Tweet

Yesterday, in a windy city where trees are in full bloom yet my toes nearly fell off frozen in my shoes, I decided to take the subway instead of walking two tram stations. I'm fortunate to have a subway station exit in front of my block of flats' entrance. Enchanted was I to see a new train arriving in the station: the shiny, guarded trains finally made it to the yellow line! Enjoying my short subway trip more than I would've expected, I also noticed a city map of the four lines, introducing more than 20 city zones (!) that weren't the typical six administrative sectors. Once home, I rushed to the Metrorex [RO] website—sporting the refined logo—to find out more, and discovered that:

- the blue line (I think!) will be developed to incorporate the so far left out neighbourhood of Drumul Taberei, and other lines are to be extended as well;

- there's no information about an extension to the Baneasa/ Aurel Vlaicu (BBIA) and Otopeni/ Henri Coanda (OTP) airports, which would make the trip to either faster and more enjoyable (what with all the bad outdoor advertising and hectic building sites on the DN1/ E60 road);

- the Flash maps of the four lines don't work, and there's no static image alternative;

- there neither is any information about the 20 city zones;

- there is useless information on the homepage, like exchange rates for the main international currencies and a weather report (very important for underground trains, you see);

- there is limited information about the new Activ magnetic card [RO] (they call it electronic wallet), without clearly indicating that extended info only resides on the dedicated RATB page [RO] and that it can only be bought and topped from RATB points of sale;

- there are links to RATB, Tarom, and SNCFR; well-thought, wish those returned the favour.

Speaking of which, the Metrorex website is a lot better than:

- the RATB website [RO], a dusty mess where one can hardly find about the new Activ card without priorly knowing the exact/ direct link;

- the Tarom website, which suffered a few minor upgrades but remains as big a pain in the ass as any other airline website you can think of;

- the SNCFR website, which looks worse than their worst printed brochure and cannot display information about the Istanbul rapid train, that is, in case it ever loads.

However, God bless them, their information service by phone is available at any given hour, day and night. But don't try to find a train traveling past March, and neither try to buy a ticket with more than three months in advance!

Somewhat OT, this reminds me of a funny discourse a Project Manager from SNCFR adopted at one PM Cafe meeting last year, in the lines of: we had good experiences with website developers because they understood our need for change and didn't mind that we knew very little about our requirements and thus, changed them several times along the way.

To which I replied: it sounds very similar to a coding project for Japanese clients, and one good reason why I stay away from Japanese clients is them not understanding one project management phase that guarantees project completion within time and budget—project freeze.

Well, SNCFR does understand it, in its own way. Their website is frozen in the past. And that sort of speech, heard one too many times, keeps me away from PM Cafe, as well.

Update, March 1st 2007: one way Tarom sports change on its website—Welcome! We wish you a pleasant journey in search of the most useful TAROM products and services. Aside from the dubious copy, welcome?! All the years spent pleading with clients to forget this welcome are obviously not enough.