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Appendix C: Telephone Interview Invitation Letter Dear Transit Agency Manager, I am writing to ask you to participate in a Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) project exploring the use of the Web for customer information in the transit industry. The research is being conducted by Multisystems, Inc. It is part of a larger project, TCRP J-09, eTransit: Electronic Business Strategies for Public Transportation. For this part of the project, the project team is focusing on three advanced features that are becoming the state-of-the-art on transit agency Web sites: Itinerary Planning, Real-time Information, and E-mail Notification. We are recruiting a small number of agencies and organizations that have these advanced features to participate in our study. During our literature search and Web site review we identified your agency as having either Web-based automated itinerary planning, real-time information display, or an E-mail notification service. We would like to emphasize that the report will focus on best practices, and we have selected your site because your application has interesting characteristics. Specifically, your name was provided by [insert name of person who recommended them here], who felt that you would be the best person at [insert organization here] to speak with about this subject. If you have been contacted recently by other researchers, I would like to assure you that this study is unique and important for a number of reasons. Firstly, our study focuses specifically on the advanced features mentioned above, while previous studies have tended to review all aspects of transit agency Web sites. Secondly, our study is part of a high-profile TCRP project and will be distributed electronically to a wide audience. The final electronic version will include live links to the participating agenciesâ Web sites. In order to learn more about your [insert advanced feature here], I would like to conduct a telephone interview with you. The interview will be approximately one hour in length and will cover the following areas: ⢠Current [advanced feature] on-line practices; ⢠[advanced feature] system design; ⢠[advanced feature] administration and maintenance; ⢠Potential improvements; ⢠Current and planned software and technology; ⢠Project objectives; ⢠Value creation; and ⢠Implementation issues and lessons learned. Your input on this subject is very important for us to compile the best practices report. If it is convenient for you, I would like to schedule the interview within the next couple of weeks. Please feel free to respond to me by phone at 617-864-5810, ext. 205, by e-mail at jconklin@multisystems.com, or by fax at 617-864-3521 to schedule the interview. Iâll contact you by phone if I do not hear from you within a couple of days. Also, if you feel there is someone else at your organization who would be a better interview candidate on this subject, I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know who that person is. I look forward to speaking with you. Thank you. Joana Conklin Multisystems, Inc.
