The co-founders of altr, a digital marketing startup with offices in Cambridge and Salem, have a track-record of solving problems. On Tuesday, altr’s ambitious two-person team decided to focus their attention on what has arguably been Boston’s biggest problem over the last month: the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Commuter rail rider Christine Pillsbury, altr’s founder and director of experience design, says she’s “abandoned” the T. Subway patron Geordie McClelland, altr’s co-founder and director of business and user insights, sums up his recent commuting experience in one word: “stuck.” Together Pillsbury and McClelland asked: “How can we fix the MBTA?”

The answer, they quickly realized, is that they can’t. So now, they’re just trying to help “unfuck your morning commute.”

That’s the catchphrase Pillsbury and McClelland feel best describes DELAID, a conceptualized mobile application the altr heads believe would offer a better way to predict MBTA delays and breakdowns.

The way McClelland describes how DELAID would work sounds equal parts risky, ingenious, and simple. To a create a “predictive model” for train delays and system failures, McClelland says, DELAID would rely on social media, MBTA performance data, and weather trends.

That description inadvertently makes DELAID sound complex; it’s not. And that’s a compliment.

Perhaps the best way to explain DELAID is to inject some personal perspective into this article. As a reporter covering the MBTA on a daily basis, I’ve found the MBTA Twitter handle to be rather unreliable when it comes to posting information about delays or other issues; a statement other reporters and commuters who are active on Twitter would surely attest to. So my initial source of information about delays, more often than not, is riders on social media.

But riders’ MBTA tweets are sometimes hyperbolic or blatantly false, which poses a potential problem for DELAID’s reliability.

Pillsbury acknowledges that “there’s never a guarantee of 100 percent certainty” when it comes to predictive tools, admitting the tweets DELAID would use to provide a stream of commuting information requires some form of a vetting process.

“Smart filters can weed out a lot of bad stuff,” Pillsbury says, adding that determining what tweets DELAID will use is “one of the top three things” the app’s founders are trying to solve.

McClelland agrees that relying on Twitter poses a certain amount of risk, though, he believes “people act with good intentions most of the time.”

Aside from, what Pillsbury calls, “erroneous tweets” (like the one sent in regards to commuter rail delays Wednesday morning), DELAID’s potential to provide information that’s entirely inaccurate seems low. For example, the app would calculate what percent chance an individual subway and commuter rail line has of being delayed, by looking at the MBTA’s Twitter feed history under similar weather conditions.

While the DELAID concept is innovative, analytical and data-driven, Pillsbury and McClelland aren’t pitching the app as a cure to MBTA problems. “We’re just hoping to ease the pain,” McClelland says.

Apart from being a beneficial, predictive tool for T riders, DELAID would also, its creators hope, make users laugh.

The idea for DELAID “relies a lot on Boston’s sense of humor,” McClelland says. “As people who rely on the MBTA, it certainly is a brand. It’s part of who we are as Bostonians.”

Hence the tagline, “unfuck your morning commute.”

The communal experience DELAID would offer – one that requires its creators to trust riders to provide each other with accurate information and laugh when things go wrong – could take some of the heat off the MBTA.

“Consumer experience is the brand,” says Pillsbury, a marketing and public relations pro with over 17 years of experience.

Since, from a marketing standpoint, the MBTA’s image appears to be at an all time low, the self-deprecating nature of DELAID could change riders’ perception of the T. The sooner that happens for the transit agency, the better.

The good news for the T – and riders – is, DELAID is on a fast track. As soon as Friday, Pillsbury says she and McClelland could sit down with with developers “to start trying to figure out a game plan.”

When asked whether the T or the state Department of Transportation has expressed interest in DELAID, Pillsbury offers a coy response. “Working with the MBTA would give DELAID the greatest chance of success,” she says.

Images courtesy of altr.