“Improving communication would really lower the temperature of people’s frustration with the buses. If you had more accurate information, you would be less frustrated.”
Wednesday night into Thursday morning, OC Transpo riders found themselves unable to get real-time updates on their phones as the Transit app was down.
The shutdown came as “an update was performed that resulted in an outage to the system that feeds real-time prediction data to these travel tools,” City of Ottawa transit spokesperson David Jones said in a statement.
The issue was resolved later on Thursday morning, and Transit was “investigating the cause of this outage to prevent future occurrences,” Jones said.
OC Transpo started endorsing the use of the Transit app in June 2023 after discontinuing its own app. At the time OC Transpo said in a statement that the change of app was due to the need to “focus on improving the quality of our real-time data and other web solutions like the Travel Planner.”
Many riders rely on the app to help them plan their commutes as it provides GPS tracking of buses, allowing users to see exactly where the next bus is.
Some organizations, like Ottawa Transit Riders, are advocating for greater accuracy from OC Transpo.
The group aims to improve transit in the city, including looking at the reliability of services provided. Kari Glynes Elliott, a board member of the group, said the outage this past week was not the only issue the app had faced.
“It’s really important for OC Transpo to provide good, up-to-date information for people,” she said.
She said the real-time GPS tracking must be improved. “If I look at my bus app and it says it’s not coming for 40 minutes, I can make alternative arrangements. If it’s lying to me, then I’m stuck,” she said.
Evening Update
OC Transpo updated all its systems to general transit feed specification (GTFS) in October. The goal was for riders to “find accurate and consistent real-time information across each option,” it said in a statement. GTFS also allows for other applications, like Google and Apple Maps, to include real-time tracking of buses.
This technology is now being used on the app, time departure screens at stops and when using their 560560 text number.
However, like all technology, it still has flaws. For one, if a bus loses its GPS connection, the real-time information for that bus would be unavailable.
While switching to GTFS has providing more accurate information and arrival times, users are still experiencing issues in the real-time tracking.
Elliott said the other day she looked at the transit app and it indicated her bus wouldn’t be coming for 17 minutes. She chose to walk to an alternative bus stop, but as she was walking away from the first stop, the bus she had been waiting for came around the corner.
If the app accurately says a bus is going to be late, you can make alternative arrangements, like walking to another stop or getting an Uber or taxi, but, if “the app says it’s coming in two minutes, you’re going to wait,” Elliott said.
While Elliott couldn’t say for sure why real-time updates were experiencing these issues, she speculated it stemmed from the GPS data provided. “OC Transpo is deeply reluctant to make the GPS information accurate,” she said.
“Our deep suspicion is that they don’t want to provide this information because then it would document how many buses are really late and how many buses are actually cancelled,” Elliott said.
Google Transit says the biggest issues it sees with real-time tracking involve timestamps, trip updates, vehicle positions and alert information. All of this comes back to the data it is provided with: If the data isn’t being inputted correctly, it can lead to inaccurate wait time notices.
Elliott also points to the risks these inaccurate wait times can pose to those facing health issues and those left out in the cold. “Our weather is very severe. Leaving people out at bus stops, (that) sometimes don’t have shelter, it can get dangerous,” she said.
As for what OC Transpo could do to improve riders’ experiences, Elliott says communication is key. “Improving communication would really lower the temperature of people’s frustration with the buses. If you had more accurate information, you would be less frustrated,” she said.
While the Transit app is the primary app riders use, other options available for tracking include Google Maps, BusBuddy Ottawa and Moovit.
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