Bus Tracker Issues

[TripleTransit1]

I wonder what's up with Bus Tracker. It's not showing any buses for the Forest Glen routes.

[joerailfan2015]

http://www.transitchicago.com/travel_information/alert_detail.aspx?AlertId=23093

This might be the reason.

[Busjack]

http://www.transitchicago.com/travel_information/alert_detail.aspx?AlertId=23093

This might be the reason.

The link timed out, so what was the reason?

[joerailfan2015]

The link timed out, so what was the reason?

That Bus Tracker was unavailable for certain bus routes due to an engineering problem.

[BusHunter]

Looks like all the ghost buses have been fixed #1462 is on the #54 and #1580 and #1589 are on the #9. Last night #6721 on Belmont was a ghost though.

[Busjack]

Sun Times: "Canceled CTA buses will now be noted on tracker apps." There will be lines through scheduled times of cancelled trips.. However, now only on the Transit app. 

[Tcmetro]

22 hours ago, Busjack said:

Sun Times: "Canceled CTA buses will now be noted on tracker apps." There will be lines through scheduled times of cancelled trips.. However, now only on the Transit app. 

I've noticed in the transit app that some departures are tracking as an "added departure" and the scheduled bus is showing up on the list (as what I am assuming is a duplicate, not real, trip), but untracked. 

[Busjack]

Tribune says the cancelled trip info  is also om the BusTracker website, but not yet on the Ventra app.

[Busjack]

On 8/5/2025 at 10:01 AM, Busjack said:

Sun Times: "Canceled CTA buses will now be noted on tracker apps." There will be lines through scheduled times of cancelled trips.. However, now only on the Transit app. 

A presentation is on the August CT Board video starting here. It's too complicated for me to understand fully, but it points out that CTA is now using Disruption Management software to track such things as bus trip canceled, breakdown on the street, bus not ending a trip before starting the next one, and reroutes. The reroutes may be planned (NASCAR) or unplanned (water main break). Thus, in addition to any paper or web Alert that the bus is not stopping at Michigan and Jackson, an app will tell you that the bus is not stopping there, and the time the bus will stop at State and Jackson. If it all works, it seems very clever.

[strictures]

28 minutes ago, Busjack said:

A presentation is on the August CT Board video starting here. It's too complicated for me to understand fully, but it points out that CTA is now using Disruption Management software to track such things as bus trip canceled, breakdown on the street, bus not ending a trip before starting the next one, and reroutes. The reroutes may be planned (NASCAR) or unplanned (water main break). Thus, in addition to any paper or web Alert that the bus is not stopping at Michigan and Jackson, an app will tell you that the bus is not stopping there, and the time the bus will stop at State and Jackson. If it all works, it seems very clever.

But none of this still explains why the Bustracker I use on the home computer I'm writing this on never, ever has a ghost bus, but Ventra does & that's the CTA's own app. Why are they using a different database for Ventra!

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, strictures said:

But none of this still explains why the Bustracker I use on the home computer I'm writing this on never, ever has a ghost bus, but Ventra does & that's the CTA's own app. Why are they using a different database for Ventra!

I don't think anyone uses a different database. If you look at @maths22's tracker (any of them), and find the Page Source command in your browser, it is not HTML, but calls to certain General Transit Feed Specification fields ( @maths22 pretty much confirmed that when asked how he got the data when Pace said, unlike CTA,* that it didn't release its real time data**). It's up to each developer to have its app pull the new data. Apparently Transit did.

Also, the complaints seem to be about the "next bus" view, not the map view. 

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*See CTA Developer Page.

**See Pace GTFS Data page.