Transit Now, like all other TTC tracker apps and even bus shelter screens, use an open data feed from NextBus.com to show real-time next vehicle info. Unfortunately, every so often, the live feed can go offline or crash. This seems to happen whenever there’s a big update to the TTC schedules, such as a new route being introduced (for example route 508 was newly re-introduced in Sept 2019).
We understand that next bus arrivals are EXTREMELY important for people’s day to day commute. We personally understand the frustration of not knowing when the next bus is coming since we take the TTC as well. That’s why we added a feature that shows TTC’s official time table (also known as “static schedule”) directly inside the app. Some other apps may mislead you to think that their live feed is working, even though it’s an estimated prediction (based on a static schedule). Transit Now explicitly tells you are viewing a static schedule instead of misleading you to believe it’s GPS based. If you visit @TTCHelps during an outage, you will see for yourself that the TTC is actively aware of the issue and trying to get it back online ASAP.
Why this hurts Transit Now’s future development
When there’s a live feed outage, a lot of people jump to conclusion that it is a problem with the app or that the developer has caused this issue. We worked so hard over the years on Transit Now and we take great care in making sure your app experience is smooth, however, sometimes these issues are out of our control. As a result, we receive a lot of complaints and poor app ratings. We hope this article helps you understand that we are working our hardest to improve the situation, such as giving transparent communication of the outage and providing an alternate source of info for bus schedules.
We hope this message helps you understand that we are all in this together. If you are unhappy with Transit Now, please email us your complaint. We value your feedback and will get back to you. It would be immensely helpful if you can help support us by writing a review if you are happy with our app.
Thank you all Torontonians for your love and support. We will continue to improve Transit Now for the years ahead!
Yours truly,
Transit Now Developer
