The Maryland Transit Administration launches Monday a much-anticipated bus tracking system for local routes in Baltimore and its surrounding suburbs, putting real-time bus arrival information at users' fingertips for the first time.
Riders have been clamoring for the system for years, complaining that MTA buses often operate outside of posted schedules — leaving them out in the cold and making their commutes unpredictable.
Officials at the agency said they have been listening to the concerns and hope the real-time tracking system, which the MTA initially expected to release last year, will help address them.
"Sometimes the hardest part of waiting for your bus is not knowing when it will arrive. MTA's MyBusTracker and GPS technology put that uncertainty to rest," the new tracker webpage reads. "Now you can locate your bus and know with up-to-the-minute accuracy when it will arrive at your stop."
Passengers took more than 68 million trips on local buses in 2013, the most recent year for which ridership numbers are available.
Starting Monday, estimated arrival times for individual buses at individual bus stops will be accessible on the MTA website via desktop computers and mobile phones, officials said. The tracking system will not be available as a downloadable mobile app.
Such real-time tracking is already available for MARC and light rail trains, and is being developed for Metro.
The MTA said that its buses were "on time" — arriving between 2 minutes early and 5 minutes late — about 82 percent of the time in 2013, slightly down from 83 percent in 2012.
Other transit modes managed by the MTA performed on time at much higher rates. Light rail and Metro both performed on time 97 percent of the time in 2013, while MARC trains were considered on time 93 percent of the time.
Officials hope bus riders will be able to use the tracker to minimize frustrations with buses falling off schedule, even as the agency works to improve the system overall through its ongoing Bus Network Improvement Project.
Many other cities, including nearby Washington, already offer bus tracking systems. Last month, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority began installing electronic signs at bus stops showing real-time arrival estimates.
The MTA's new system in Baltimore will operate in "beta" form for the first 100 days as the MTA collects feedback on its user-friendliness from riders and transit groups, officials said. Some initial complications are expected.
Tammi Bolden, MTA's manager of systems and equipment engineering, said the new system relies on older GPS and radio hardware, piggybacking on the bus system's existing Computer Aided Dispatch and Automatic Vehicle Location systems.
Because of that, buses will at times drop off the system if they lose their radio signal. Those buses will still appear in the tracker when users search it, but with an "s" in parenthesis next to their arrival times, indicated they are "scheduled" times and not real-time estimates.
The radio aspects of the system will eventually be replaced with a more reliable cellular system, but that is likely years away, Bolden said.
For now, every active bus stop in the system — 5,612 in all — will have an individual four-digit code associated with it, which users will be able to plug into the website to retrieve arrival times.
Each bus will send data every two minutes, Bolden said, and "whenever it realizes it's delayed and not on schedule, it will automatically send that information."
Bus stop codes and other information about accessing the tracking system will be posted on signs at bus stops throughout the system.
Users will also be able to use their addresses to locate nearby bus stops and check bus arrival times there. On desktops, users will be able to zoom in on a map of the network to visually follow the progress of individual buses.
Users can sign up to receive email or text notifications at specific times that will list live bus arrival times for specific stops. They can also text their four-digit bus stop code and three-digit bus route number, separated by a hyphen, to the MTA at 68263 to receive a response text with a list of upcoming bus arrivals.
The MTA has budgeted $3.2 million for the real-time system, and has spent $2.7 million to date on hardware, software, signage and other costs, said spokesman Rick Binetti.
The agency has a two-year warranty on the system, after which it will enter into a software maintenance contract with an outside vendor at an estimated average cost of $135,000 per year for the first five years.
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