The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route.
Hi folks,
I take the bus often to get to hospital appointments. Google Maps used to be fairly accurate about when I'd need to leave to get somewhere on time, but the traffic now is terrible. My bus gets caught up in it and I end up late.
Out of sheer curiosity, I wanted to see how my route was actually performing. To my surprise, the NTA / TFI don't surface this at all. They only publish overall network performance and even that only comes out quarterly. Way behind how things actually are right now on the day to day.
I'm trying to solve this by building rootrue.ie. It takes the NTA data and shows not just the baseline network stats from their reports, but performance route by route. On top of that I'm trying to capture the real commuter experience... which times you should give yourself more leeway based on past data and where a bus tends to get caught up most. Right now the route by route view gives you a recap of the last 7 days, while the network view can show anything from today so far back to 7 days ago.
After about a month and a half work, I launched the site a few days ago and it's in a very early state. If you wouldn't mind having a look and telling me what's working, what's not and anything you'd want to see, I'd really appreciate it. Look up your usual route and tell me whether the data matches your experience or if anything looks off.
Ghost buses are a huge problem of course. Right now the API only flags cancellations the operator confirms. I've been able to pick ghost buses out with high confidence. The 40E for one, loses about 1 in 4 of its scheduled trips this way. It's already built into the live stats, so these missing trips count against a route's score instead of passing as on time. An update in a week or so will show them directly on the site.
If there's interest, I'd like to add rail journeys or bus services in other cities.
Thanks