After years of rider complaints about “ghost buses” — buses that show up on transit tracker apps but fail to arrive in real life — the CTA has started publicly sharing data about canceled bus runs.
The data is available on the CTA’s online bus tracker at ctabustracker.com, CTA spokesperson Manny Gonzales said.
The CTA has not yet started sharing canceled bus information on its ticketing app, Ventra, which also has a bus and train tracking function. Gonzales said the agency was working with the Ventra team to make the information available there.
The third-party Transit app has begun using the agency’s data to alert riders when a scheduled bus has been canceled, the Chicago Sun-Times first reported Monday. The Transit app has been marking canceled bus runs with a strike-through, said the app’s policy lead, Stephen Miller.
“Hopefully this allows people to have a lot more confidence whenever they take CTA to know if and when their bus is coming,” Miller told the Tribune.
Over the last several years, ghost buses have been a source of frustration for some riders. Because the tracker apps rely on both real-time and scheduled service data, they sometimes display arrival times for buses that are not actually coming.
The ghost bus issue was particularly severe in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading exasperated transit activists to post stickers on bus stops around the city asking “Tired of being ghosted by the CTA?”
At the time, the transit agency attributed the unreliable service to staffing shortages which it says have since largely eased. The agency said it has since reduced the number of canceled trips.
The CTA started testing the canceled bus data-sharing late last year, according to the agency’s social media. Gonzales said the CTA started consistently publishing the cancellation data garage-by-garage in May, with data from buses at all CTA’s garages online by early July.
The CTA is also working on publishing canceled train information, he said. In the future, the CTA also plans to make public data about where buses on detours have been rerouted.
In a statement, the CTA’s acting president, Nora Leerhsen, described the new cancellation data as a “critical step in transparency.” Leerhsen said she was “looking forward to our continued implementation of data-informed, technological initiatives that empower our riders.”
The change comes as the CTA, along with the region’s other mass transit agencies, are facing an impending budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If state lawmakers don’t find more funding for transit soon, the agencies have warned, they could be forced to slash up to 40% of service next year.
