Anyone else having trouble with the Transit app and buses?

Submitted by alleyes007 t3_126joq2 in boston

Until recently, the Transit app has been pretty reliable for figuring out when the buses are due on my commute. The last couple weeks or so though, not so much. I’ve seen it changing the ETA seemingly at random (13 minutes away, now 16 minutes away, now 5) and have more than once run into ‘ghost buses,’ where it says the bus has come and gone and I’ve been standing at the stop the whole time.

Anyone know what’s going on? Is it even an app issue, or is it an MBTA problem? Usually the buses have been the reliable part of my commute compared to the trains.

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dante662 t1_je9gsgy wrote

Mbta buses often switch routes due to driver shortages.

Hence the phantom bus issue.

They also don't track every single bus, many shown are just the scheduled arrivals.

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ImpressiveEffect8212 t1_je9j4gf wrote

Transit uses the MBTA API to retrieve data about the schedule and about where buses are currently. They provide this guide to determining whether the data you see is based on a schedule or realtime data https://help.transitapp.com/article/445-how-to-track-departures-on-your-transit-line. If the realtime data you see is off/flaky, it’s the MBTAs fault because the data is taken from the MBTA API. If the ghost buses are based on schedule time data and not realtime data, that means the bus is either delayed relative to the schedule or that run was cancelled by the MBTA (and not reported as such on the API). I recommend only looking at realtime data for the buses unless you’re near the beginning and end of the route since realtime data is typically much more accurate (but often realtime data only starts reporting once the bus leaves its origin stop)

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stn912 t1_je9rf7j wrote

The mbta API was having problems yesterday (based on an app and a web site I check) so it may just be going on the scheduled times if it can't fetch real time updates.

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_jeah5ia wrote

They’ve been having issues since the schedule changes at the beginning of the month I think the API isn’t fully updated to account for some of the changes

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