Why do real-time bus arrival times jump around at my stop?

[Scarlett.D]

I’ve been trying to figure out the new real-time passenger information display at my local bus stop, but the predicted arrival times keep jumping around by several minutes. It makes planning the last leg of my commute really unpredictable, especially in the morning.

[LukeIM]

Yeah, mine does that too. In the morning it jumps from a few minutes to eight or ten minutes, then back again. I think the board mixes live updates with the timetable, and when a lot of buses are on the road the estimate updates in chunks.

[LarryEW]

I actually logged it for a week. When a bus passed a sensor and the live feed refreshed, the number would snap to something different. I started leaving 2 minutes earlier on the routes that bunched up, and it helped a bit, but I still miss the connection sometimes.

[George21]

Could the issue be the headways right now more than the display? If buses come every eight minutes, a small delay can ripple and flip the ETA by several minutes, and the system might be compensating.

[Justin22]

Sometimes I switch to the map view in the app or watch a bus icon move. It’s a bit steadier than the numbers, even if it isn’t perfect.