The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us and all areas of society. Public transit has been hit hard, with ridership way down, and many agencies moving to fare-free service. Bus drivers are on the front line. At the same time, transit remains a core essential service for many, including medical personnel who need to get to hospitals and clinics.
Riders who still rely on transit need good information now more than ever. Unfortunately, it has been difficult for agencies to keep their GTFS schedule information up-to-date, with many service cuts, and sometimes drivers out sick and unable to work, resulting in canceled trips. The result has been that information shown in OneBusAway has not always been correct.
One important bit of progress here is that King County Metro in Washington State has recently implemented a transit alerts tool, which is allowing both route and trip level cuts to be reflected correctly in the OneBusAway real-time information, even though the trips are still in the GTFS schedule. The OneBusAway team is continuing to work on improving the accuracy of displayed information, including targeted and up-to-date service alerts.
In the meantime, here are pages for a number of our partner agencies that provide their most up-to-date information on current service reductions:
- King County Metro (Puget Sound region, Washington State): https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/schedules-maps/reduced-schedule.aspx
- MTA (New York City): https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/subway-and-bus-service
- SDMTS (San Diego): https://www.sdmts.com/schedules-real-time/covid-19-updates
- WMATA (Washington DC): https://www.wmata.com/about/news/Covid-19-Public-Information.cfm
- YRT ( York Region -Canada) – Updated GTFS schedule & real-time package to be released on April 26: https://www.yrt.ca/en/news/covid-19-service-reduction.aspx