CTA officials on Monday promised a radical change in service — buses that actually run on a reliable schedule — with the expansion in two weeks of a bus-tracking system that delivers projected arrival times at bus stops to anyone with a computer, cell phone or other wireless device.
Thirteen bus routes will be added to the Bus Tracker program April 7, enabling riders to locate the whereabouts of all buses on a total of 14 routes, and also help the transit agency reduce bus bunching and gaps in service, which are the biggest complaints received from bus customers, according to officials.
When working properly, the system enables riders to go online and view a countdown chart showing the number of minutes until the next bus arrives at their stop, or to glance at a real-time computerized map showing all buses on a route.
The CTA has invested $24 million in the Bus Tracker, and it eventually wants to introduce a “next-train” service that churns out predicted train arrival times at all of the agency’s 144 rail stations.
But there is work to be done first. Some riders on the No. 20 Madison route, which since 2006 has been the sole bus line used to test and refine Bus Tracker, say the system often is more than several minutes off the mark in predicting bus arrivals and that it fails to ease bus bunching.
“Sometimes it’s off by as much as 10 or 20 minutes,” said No. 20 rider Betty Brown, pointing to an electronic Bus Tracker sign in the bus shelter at Madison and Jefferson Streets in the West Loop. The sign is designed to display the number of minutes until the next bus arrives at the stop.
“I know the CTA is trying to fix the bunching, but when the bus comes is when the bus comes,” added Brown.
CTA President Ron Huberman said the Bus Tracker software is complicated and it is still being tweaked.
“This is definitely a work of art in progress, but we are confident it will get better,” Huberman said.
Bus Tracker uses GPS to locate buses. It then uses a mathematical formula, which takes into account traffic flow and other factors, to project an estimated arrival time. The data are updated every minute.
All 154 CTA bus routes are expected to be monitored by Bus Tracker by spring 2009, officials said.
The CTA does not have immediate plans to add more electronic signs at bus stops, due mainly to the expense. But about 82 percent of CTA riders have Internet access, according to a recent CTA customer survey.
The CTA initially said Bus Tracker would be expanded to about 25 bus routes last summer and operational throughout the entire bus fleet by early 2008. But technical difficulties related to the accuracy of generating real-time bus-arrival projections, and a decision to not deploy Bus Tracker on buses that will be retired soon, delayed the rollout, officials said.
On Monday afternoon, a Tribune reporter monitored the Bus Tracker sign at the Madison/Jefferson bus stop for 45 minutes and found the accuracy to be hit or miss.
Sometimes the sign’s information was dead on, reporting that the next No. 20 bus was “due” at the stop just as the bus approached.
But four pairs of bunched buses appeared during the Tribune’s 45 minutes.
At 3:45 p.m., the sign said the next bus was 20 minutes away, when in fact a No. 20 bus pulled up to the stop only one minute after the No. 20 bus in front of it.
In general, the Bus Tracker system is supposed to be accurate within plus or minus five minutes when a bus is 30 minutes away from a specified stop, and accurate within plus or minus 75 seconds when a bus is less than five minutes away, said CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney.
how will it work?
Here’s an example: On the No. 49 Western bus, which is supposed to operate every 7 to 11 minutes from about mid-afternoon until about 6 p.m., riders should not expect to wait any longer than that when the route gets Bus Tracker on April 7.
If buses are running late or are bunched up, CTA supervisors on the street will identify the problem using laptop computers and make changes, officials said. It might call for running a bus express to another portion of the route, or bringing an extra bus into service to fill a gap, CTA President Ron Huberman said.
