At the Pittsburgh International Airport on the night of Feb. 18, travelers braved freezing temperatures to wait for a bus that never showed up.
Armin Samii was one of those hopeful Pittsburgh Regional Transit [PRT] riders. After he checked the 28X’s projected arrival time on Transit, a popular third-party app that operates in multiple U.S. cities, Samii weighed the pros and cons of taking an expensive Uber or Lyft. When his brief wait turned into an hour, he regretted his gamble on public transit.
“If I knew that I would have to stand there for [an hour], then suddenly paying $50 for an Uber makes sense,” he said.
Samii posted this story on X, formerly Twitter, racking up 67,000 views. One response came from PRT, apologizing for the inconvenience and assuring him that it has been reported.
Samii described himself as a fairly frequent flier, and said he has often witnessed inaccurate arrival information for the 28X recorded in the app.
“It’s a very common occurrence,” he said. “More than half the time when I fly into the Pittsburgh airport, a bus won’t show up. It’ll be a ghost bus.”
A ghost bus is a scheduled bus that appears on bus tracking apps but never arrives.
Adam Brandolph, PRT’s director of public relations, said the likely cause was a shortage of operators. “It’s the single biggest issue facing our system and many other transit systems across the country,” he wrote, adding that they have offered overtime for drivers who help to fill in the gaps.
Beginning to roll out before this summer, “PRT will be expanding customer service hours to provide riders with the ability to reach a live person earlier in the morning and later in the evening by phone or through our digital options, such as our live chat,” wrote Brandolph. This would allow riders to report missing and late buses outside of the current operating hours.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit [PPT], a group of transit riders and workers advocating for accessible public transit, has concerns with ghost buses in the PRT system.
“It’s great if you can track your bus, but if your bus disappears on the app, then you’re not really sure what to do next,” said Daeja Baker, PPT’s digital organizer.
“Buses are right now less than 70% on time,” Baker added, which she said doesn’t reach PRT’s own goal of 73%. “People aren’t able to get through their day and navigate the transit system in a way that’s beneficial to them.”
Certain routes are more prone to late arrival than others, but not everybody experiences consistent hiccups with their commute. Hiro McCutcheon, a Pittsburgh resident and frequent bus user, finds bus tracking to be a reliable tool for scheduling his day. He uses TrueTime, PRT’s own bus tracking service, which is one of the many public transit apps in the Pittsburgh area.
“I do feel like I can count on the apps most of the time,” he said.
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