The Chicago Transit Authority hopes it has eliminated most “ghost buses” and “ghost trains” in apps that rely on its data. Why did it take a while to get to this point?

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 CTA says its next step in further eliminating ghost buses is to update its systems to reflect bus detours and reroutes with transit apps.

I would have guessed that the CTA would have tracked trains and buses with GPS trackers. The internal data and apps would then reflect where vehicles were at that current moment. This is what apps like Uber or Lyft offer; you can see vehicles moving around in real time.

It sounds like this system worked with scheduled trips and then could not adjust if the bus or train was not there. Is there not the ability to see CTA routes in real time? Or do they not want to share that data?

It would be interesting to hear more about how this system developed. Decades ago, how did the CTA keep track of all of their routes? Was there some massive command room where a team of people updated maps and then helped make decisions about changes?