← PROJECTS INDEPENDENT PROJECT · NOT AFFILIATED WITH TRANSLINK

GTFS-REALTIME / METRO VANCOUVER / SINCE APRIL 2026

TransLink
Bayes

“Every 5 minutes, I poll TransLink's live GTFS feed and save its arrival guess for every bus. Then I measure how those guesses change as the bus gets closer.”

A small home server does the polling, around the clock, across all of Metro Vancouver. The goal is simple: know how much to trust the number on your bus app.

BUILDING TOWARDS

01 / TRUST BANDS
“A plain band for every arrival estimate: how far it usually moves before the bus shows up.”
02 / ROUTE ATLAS
“A map of which routes and directions run steady, hour by hour.”
03 / EVENTS VS. NOISE
“Telling a big event night apart from an ordinary bad day.”

BY THE NUMBERS

  • 242 million arrival estimates saved, every one the feed published at every poll
  • Every 5 min since August, 99.8% of polls landed within 20 seconds of the beat
  • 1,527 buses reporting on one ordinary Thursday, running 22,916 trips
  • 14× more arrival estimates in the feed at 4 pm than at 3 am
  • 74 s how much later an estimate made 10–20 minutes out typically ends up
  • 1 in 6 trips have a stop whose estimate sits “under 10 minutes away” for 15+ minutes
  • 85% of buses that finish a trip late, with under 5 minutes of layover, are still estimated late at the start of the next
  • UTC−7 for good: BC stopped changing its clocks, and the project's tests caught it before November did

Counts as of 25 Oct 2026. The 74 s, 1 in 6 and 85% figures come from samples of trips on complete collection days.

A DAY IN THE FEED

Arrival estimates in the feed at each 5-minute poll, by hour of day (average of 10 weekdays in October).