#nextbus

I created an app – munitime.app – that displays arrival times for the San Francisco Muni transit system.

Muni Time is a web app that runs in a browser, but I built it so you can bookmark individual stops and stations, which will then open like a native app. 

Nearly 20 years after it was first installed, SFMTA is getting ready to overhaul the NextMuni arrival predictions system.

Muni riders have relied on NextBus, known in San Francisco as NextMuni, either at bus shelters, subway station platforms or on smartphones, but the outdated 2G cellular network technology that supports NextBus has become unreliable and the transit agency is ready to move on.

SFMTA's newest Muni vehicles and an upgraded radio system can relay more information, like the trains using the weight of passengers to estimate how crowded they are.

With all the added information and the incredible advances in navigation software over the last ten years, it's time to start over.

Features of a new system will offer alternative routes if one Muni bus is taking more than 15 minutes to arrive. The display could inform riders that another Muni bus line a few blocks away is coming sooner.

During last Tuesday’s San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors meeting, Ed Reiskin, [director] of transportation, said of the outage:

“I recognize that it was very significant and inconvenience for a lot of folks and so I want to apologize to our riders and anyone else impacted… and fully take responsibility for that outage.”

Reiskin added:

“We don’t expect anything like that to recur in the future.”

The SFMTA was left in a lurch when AT&T shut down the 2G network NextBus was using before the SFMTA had finished upgrading the modems, which agency reports they expect to have 100% of vehicles modems upgraded this week.

Public transit riders who use Muni regularly will be waiting retro-style as prediction arrival times on both NextMuni signs and on NextMuni/NextBus apps are grossly inaccurate. Said signage will continue to display bogus arrival times for weeks to come...

We've already experienced time almost an hour, but it doesn't mean a bus isn't coming, it's simply not broadcasting its location. While we wait for the fix, remember the Muni map also serves as a frequency guide with all red and dark blue lines running every 10 minutes or less.

Before blame is placed exclusively on SFMTA for this snafu, the culprit here is the third-party app that the agency uses for their prediction times.

NextBus launched in 2002 using a combination of GPS and a pretty advanced 2G cellular network in order to provide reasonable accurate arrival time predictions.

Fast forward fifteen years and AT&T is now decommissioning that 2G network so the bandwidth can be put to better use elsewhere. The shutdown timeline had been announced well in advance, NextBus simply hadn't completed all the upgrades in time.

With this suddenly dropped on them, the SFMTA can only estimate it will take weeks to fix but expects to have a better answer soon, once they have a better handle on the situation.