I got an email this morning from Josh Crandall, the creator of clevercommute.com — which got written up in an October 8, 2007 New York Times article entitled “BlackBerry as a Weapon in the Fight to Commute.”

Having initially organized his grass-roots, peer-to-peer Web 2.0 service to provide information about delays and problems with the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), Metro North, and all of New Jersey Transit (as well as a few bus lines), he says he’s now working on a similar service for Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston.

If only he could do the same for airlines! I spent several frustrating hours in the Detroit airport a few days ago, trying to get a straight answer from American Airlines about which of their flights to New York were going to be canceled and/or delayed. It’s not entirely their fault, of course: the airlines are at the mercy of the FAA and the flight controllers at various airports. And the flight controllers are, ultimately, at the mercy of the weather — which answers to no man. Still, it would be terrific to have an airline version of clevercommute that I could access from my Web-enabled cell phone when trying to decide whether I should even bother going to the airport to waste several hours surrounded by official misinformation.

Anyway, Josh is obviously onto something useful here, and I suggest you bookmark clevercommute.com to see how it evolves in the months to come.