Monitoring the NYC subway system with Datadog

The author, a solutions engineer at Datadog, developed an MTA Service Tracker dashboard using real-time status updates of the New York City subway system. They parsed text updates from the MTA website to extract meaningful data about various subway lines and sent this information as custom metrics to Datadog. The check created a metric called mta.line_service, tagged with the name of the subway line and its status. Service-check widgets were added to quickly identify problematic lines. Additionally, an HTTP check was implemented to monitor the availability and responsiveness of the MTA website. This dashboard provides valuable information for commuters navigating the struggling NYC subway system.