CTA bus tracking just got a little more accurate.
For the first time, the Chicago Transit Authority is sharing data about which buses have been canceled so they don’t show up as “scheduled” buses in transit apps.
The CTA says this is the next step to eliminating “ghost buses” — when buses appear on transit tracking apps but are, in reality, not actually there.
The CTA began publicly sharing the data on canceled buses earlier this spring. But it wasn’t until recently that the phone app Transit began showing canceled buses to CTA riders — marking them with a line through their scheduled time. It is currently the only application that has incorporated CTA’s new data.
The Ventra app, Google Maps and Apple Maps don’t show canceled buses yet — but they will soon, according to the CTA.
The CTA was already sharing real-time bus tracking information publicly. Transit-focused applications use that data to give riders a heads up when buses are coming to their stop. But until recently, riders did not know if a bus that showed up on a tracker as “scheduled” was actually coming.
“Before there was no certainty in the information,” says Stephen Miller, policy lead at the app Transit. “If there wasn’t a real-time prediction, riders would have to ask themselves: Is it canceled? Or is the tracker not working?”
CTA’s update now provides that certainty, he says. Miller commended the CTA for doing the work to provide that info, which he said was not easy for the agency.
Providing that correct info is important to keep riders confident in the CTA, Miller said. The agency has struggled to draw back riders to buses and trains since the pandemic. Average weekday ridership is currently around 69% what it was in 2019, according to CTA data.
“In order to make sure people have confidence in public transit, giving them that certainty is critical,” Miller said.
The updated tracker system is an additional step in CTA’s effort to eliminate “ghost buses.” The phenomenon was widespread shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the CTA suffered a shortage of operators and was running fewer buses and trains than were scheduled.
At the time, the CTA explained that ghost buses were rampant because CTA had no technical way to remove the scheduled buses that were never expected to run due to short staffing. Those unstaffed buses could only be removed twice a year, when the CTA was allowed by its union contracts to updates its bus timetables.
Now, the CTA says it has mostly resolved the staffing issue, and therefore fixed a lot of the scheduled but canceled buses that show up on online bus trackers. The agency has more bus operators than it did before the pandemic, and the CTA has nearly as many train operators as before, according to the agency’s public data dashboard.
In June, the CTA ran 98.8% of its scheduled buses and 88% of scheduled trains, according to agency’s dashboard.
The tracker update may show that the CTA is “trying to develop a sense of reliability,” says Stephanie Farmer, professor of sociology at Roosevelt University.
“If they implement other changes, I don’t think it will create a massive shift, but I think it could attract more riders,” Farmer said.
The CTA says its next step in further eliminating ghost buses is to update its systems to reflect bus detours and reroutes with transit apps.
Interim CTA President Nora Leerhsen took over Feb. 1 from retiring Dorval Carter Jr., who was criticized for being seemingly tone-deaf to complaints about safety and reliability during the pandemic. Last week, Leerhsen told a City Council committee that she is taking those concerns seriously. She said the CTA has deployed supervisors in the field to monitor service delivery, resulting in “90% reliability” and “very significant drops in complaints” from riders.