STB reader Brian brought to our attention problems that have surfaced with KC Metro’s bus tracker:

Ever since the MetroKC Bus Service Revisions on Feb. 9, the online Bus Location Tracker service has been on the fritz. Specifically, the route names that tell you the destination of a bus are no longer listed. At busy stops, this makes it tricky if not impossible to tell which direction a bus is headed. For example, for the UW Hub stop, the destination for all buses is listed as North Seattle, regardless of whether they are headed for Ballard, Lake City, or the U-District. This is a recurring bug that seems to happen with every service revision and is a major hassle for those of us who rely on the otherwise indispensable location tracker. Nobody likes waiting in the rain for a bus that’s running late; the tracker solves that problem and removes one more barrier to taking mass transit.

Wow, yikes, with no way to tell whether the bus is going toward or away from your destination, that tool becomes pretty much useless. The problem seems to be with the NextBus system KCM is using, so it surfaces not just with KCM’s own tracker, but with third party trackers like MyBus as well.

I’ve put in some calls to people in KCM, hopefully we’ll hear back good news about this.

8 Replies to “Bus Tracker On The Fritz?”

  1. At least Metro’s online bus schedule seems to be working fine… Time it takes a route 194 to go from Seatac airport to Westlake station: 30 minutes. And from Sound Transit’s site, the time it will take Link to go from just just the Tukwila Blvd. Station to Westlake Station: 31 minutes.

  2. I contacted KCM through their web site form when the problem popped up last month. Not too shockingly, I didn’t get any response at all to my message. Hopefully you’ll have better luck with your direct sources.

  3. Also, to be clear, this problem impacts some routes more severely than others.

    For example, with the 7Xs, those heading downtown will say “Seattle SODO” while those heading north will say “North Seattle” – so in many cases that’s enough information.

    But for the 48, all destinations are “North Seattle” no matter if it’s heading north or south. Not helpful at all.

  4. Seems like a bad idea, switching up the “Destination” so that it doesn’t mean anything…

  5. I noticed that they’ve changed to North Seattle, instead of Univ District. I like them this way. I’ve always wished that the direction was more descriptive (like North East) rather a destination.

  6. It’s definitely a subtle problem. Typically, routes that start and stop in the same geographic region are the ones affected. My favorite routes, the 65 and the 74, are both North Seattle coming and going (http://tracker-loc.metrokc.gov/avl.jsp?id=5518)

    The old labels for the 65 used to be “North Seattle – Lake City” and “North Seattle – University District”, which is a nice combo of global and specific destination.

  7. Sam,

    The difference is wiped by the lower frequency of the 194, the quality of the ride, and the uncertainty associated with the freeway.

    But heck, let’s do it your way: we’ll have one stop in downtown Seattle, one at the U, and one at the airport. Who cares if there’s service where people actually live?

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