TFI Live - Real Time Transport Planner App

Sadly it's the only way I know if my bus is coming.

Somehow the days and dates are screwed up in the database.

It’s displaying the schedules for the following day for any given date.

And were they showing live stop times ?

Neither the old or new app ever showed diversions in Limerick but not sure if they still showed phantom stop times.

I thought your stop was one of the cancelled ones. I get you now.

So ya we have the same problem with buses. For instance my bus didn't show the Paddy's Day diversions. It was always that way on the old app down here as well.

I see. I'd put money on someone has changed the First Day of Week setting somewhere on the back end from Monday to Sunday. Have seen it done with similar outcome elsewhere

The new app is a disaster. It trys to be everything for everyone and fails to be any good at all. The old app was far superior and much better. I still have it and still use it.

I've deleted the old & new app! Bustimes.org is the best thing I've come across for buses in Dublin yet. Easy to use, shows all bus info and map is easy to navigate.

Why can't these app designers just create a basic version similar to it for regular commuters to track their buses and then a journey type planner one for other folks/tourists etc? the new TFI app is so user unfriendly to both sets of customers.

NTA/TFI have such a talent for disimproving services, hats off to them I suppose.

They've been blowing up my phone with notifications about the old app no longer being supported, pity they didn't put the same level of effort into the new one.

The new app isn't great but it's definitely an improvement on the old app. The old app was terrible. My list of saved bus stops was frequently erased meaning I'd regularly have to re-add them which was very frustrating. You couldn't even change the order. The old live map wasn't much use either.

The new TFI app is a disaster. Its unused friendly and tge way it is designed makes no sense whatsoever.

I preferred the real time Ireland App. It was user friendly at least.

Also its a pity the apps do not tell you what kind of bus is running on each service. So for my go-ahead service there is these horrible single Decker buses that should not be anywhere near a country road. The seats are crap in them too. No back support at all. I always have a sore back after being in them. Hate them.

There is also the nice luxurious Double Deckers with proper comfortable seats in them and if the app said DD at 11:30 S at 12:30 , 13:30 and 14:30 then a DD again at 15:30 at least I could choose which bus and time I want to go on and at. The single Deckers in my opinion are not suited for long journeys. They are OK for short journeys and that is it. They are meant for airports not long journeys on rural roads.

Plenty of quality single deckers in the continent. I suppose, there aren't many options for Ireland? Or do we just buy the cheapest options? Coincidentally, I've just a single GOI decker today and I can agree that the suspension is very hard and the bus is very shaky and making weird sounds. Haven't noticed the seats problem, but only took for 15 min. Some people are sitting with a backpack still on a back rather than taking it off - perhaps that's the issue? Bustimes.org is amazing - it's a huge, consistent and painful kick in the NTA's balls for them not managing to create something similar.

Some buses now appear on bustimes, but some of them have no bus route number. It looks that BE data is also affected.

I wish they'd done the stops on the map in a better way. Now what you've got is "2" everywhere, then you have to zoom in pretty close, and then try to click the correct stop to get the stop times you need. If it's an area you don't know very well, you probably end up clicking on both stops to get the correct one.

It's worse in some places, if you have more than 2 stops - one example would be centre of Ashbourne. There's a pair of stops, but one side has no departures at all - the stop you actually want to click is further up the road.

I'm not an app designer, but I just wish they had just one stop to click in most places, and then they could list "towards city centre" or something like that. Or they could show routes on the map instead of having to play "guess the route/stop" to find out a bus you need. There is the "list" tab, but again unless you are actually at the stop (or you know the stop number), it's not very handy.

Also I'm not a fan of the "cancelled" buses info - often buses show as cancelled, but they still run - and sometimes buses shown as running are actually cancelled. It's just not reliable info, which would really be something that's needed with all the bus cancellations going on.

They need the controller to actually manually cancel them and that doesn’t always happen.

There are occasions though where a “scheduled” bus can appear - for example, where the GPS tracking equipment on the bus fails.

Lazy is probably the opposite of reality - it’s a very busy job and there's just so many cancelled services at the moment due to the driver shortages that I suspect some are falling through the gaps unfortunately.

So again, it's a bad management. No good decisions been made in time. Ie, hire more people instead of waiting for too long. No, I understand this is a public body and they have to deal with some paperwork and make arrangements before even publishing about the opening. But again, things can be foreseen and prevented. And the NTA looking to be like those headless chickens, but even those are better as they show energy and enthusiasm.

I don't bother with the ones that say scheduled. They nearly never run. I think they are ones that they don't have a driver for, are scrambling to find one, which they might get (say a driver doing an extra run) but not guaranteed.

The summer is a tricky time as drivers get their well earned two weeks leave at this time, so even more pressure on resources. We can only hope from September, things will start to bed down.

Have people seen the Transit app? It seems to be a much improved interface compared to the NTA app.

Same data feeds presumably.

Anything that says "scheduled" within the next hour or so is usually cancelled (but not always).

But is there any way of knowing which live tracked buses have actually departed and are running on the route? My local stop is about 10 minutes from a terminus, and many of the live buses do not exist. As in, it might say "5 mins" for the next bus, but that bus will never arrive - the time jumps up and down or gets to "due", and then just disappears from the app.

And then there's the occasional stealth buses that are neither "scheduled" or live, but still run.

I think the system and the app need a lot of work.

I had two experiences of "scheduled" buses today that did operate. One was visible on the tracking map. The other wasn't but interestingly was appearing on the bus stop real time displays. Do these have a different source to the TFI app?