Muni wait time predictions inaccurate, will be messed up for weeks to come

Public transit riders who use Muni regularly will be waiting retro-style as prediction arrival times on both NextMuni signs and on NextMuni/NextBus apps are grossly inaccurate. Said signage will continue to display bogus arrival times for weeks to come.

Reports SFist: “To blame is a glitch that's rendered as many as 40 percent of buses and Muni vehicles ‘invisible’ to the NextMuni system: A bus or light rail train could arrive far sooner than indicated, but the problem, which emerged this week, is not expected to be resolved for several weeks.”

Before blame is placed exclusively on SFMTA for this snafu, the culprit here is the third-party app that the agency uses for their prediction times. Per the SFMTA blog:

NextMuni, known more widely as NextBus, is a third-party vehicle tracking system used by many transit agencies to provide information to customers and transit service managers.

It uses data from GPS (Global Positioning System) devices and transit schedules to provide customers an estimated time for when their vehicle will arrive, displayed on digital screens and online at NextMuni.com. We also use those screens to display info about Muni service, such as alerts about delays, and our transit service managers use NextMuni information to monitor Muni vehicles and make adjustments.

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose tells SFBay that his agency is "working aggressively" to fix the issue. Until then, don’t believe what these signs are telling you.

• Wildly Inaccurate Muni Wait Time Predictions Will Continue For Weeks In Major Glitc [SFist]
• Why Muni Arrival Times Are Off This Week, and How We’re Working to Fix Them [SFMTA]
• Muni ‘NextBus’ outage could stretch for weeks [SFBay]