Dive Brief:

• In Kansas City,  Mo., construction of a streetcar line and an underground utility are causing pedestrians and drivers a world of problems. Twitter is helping to solve them.

• Last week, frustrated pedestrians sent dozens of tweets to city officials last week to tell them construction barricades had pushed traffic into the crosswalk at a busy intersection. So the office in charge of construction responded by moving the portable orange walls back by five feet to allow ample space for walking.

• City Hall also responded to each tweet, and then sent the Twitter handle @downtownkc to TV stations and asked them to refer to it in newscasts so commuters and pedestrians can continue to alert officials about problems.

Dive Insight:

The city also created a website, kcstreetcar.org, where people can see live pictures of construction before they venture downtown.  A telephone hotline is also available for those who don’t use social media or the Internet. Meghan Jansen, from the KC Streetcar Constructors office, asked viewers of one nightly newscast to keep tweeting: “Please,” she said, “have that dialogue with us.”