I believe the main alternative is to drastically cut down on the amount of news that's consumed - which may or may not be something you need to do. Otherwise, how about listening to local radio for a short while when you're getting ready for the day or doing chores?

I'd say for most people, there's really not much true value that comes from news (compared to books). Sure, it makes us feel more informed and provides topics of conversation for friends and strangers but really, it produces so little nearly all of the time.

Unless your job or hobby is closely linked with news or activism, so much of it is simply consumed as entertainment to idle time away.

However, if your usage of it is so infrequent and only for finding out about transport disruptions; maybe it's not such a problem that needs an alternative? Or perhaps not knowing wouldn't really inconvenience you that severely anyway - that's entirely up to you.

> When there is a local event or situation, Twitter is pretty valuable

That seems like a perfectly fine use of Twitter. Not sure why you'd need an alternative?

You don't have to maintain a list of people to follow and watch your feed to get utility out of it.

I mostly interact with Twitter on a case-by-case basis. Either via events, looking at a specific users profile, or coming across tweets via the media or on Reddit.

Yup, this is absolutely my only use of twitter -- realtime events, following hashtags (which of course the native client still (probably) doesn't support, conferences, etc.