Scott Dixon, a solutions engineer, created a Datadog dashboard to monitor the real-time status of the New York City subway system due to frequent service issues. He utilized the MTA's text updates on service status, which categorize lines by service division and status, to parse and send custom metrics to Datadog. Dixon wrote a custom Agent check to parse updates and generate the metric <code>mta.line_service</code>, which indicates if a line has "good service" or is experiencing issues like planned work or delays. By tagging the metrics with line names and statuses, the dashboard provides insights into the number of lines with good service and the performance of individual lines. Service-check widgets help quickly identify lines with issues, and an additional check monitors the availability of the MTA website, which is crucial for data reliability. This project highlights the versatility of Datadog, as users have applied it to various monitoring scenarios, encouraging others to explore its potential with a free trial.