BC Transit buses in Victoria will have real-time tracking by late July

A slight delay for the installation of real-time tracking technology on BC Transit buses in Victoria means that passengers of the city’s public transit fleet can expect to use the new upgrade by late July.

According to spokesperson Shellene McConnell, fitting the new NextRide technology on transit buses in Victoria has proved particularly difficult due to the city’s “diverse” fleet.

See also:

• Victoria transit buses to introduce on-board announcement and tracking upgrades

• BC Transit is bringing real time bus location tracking to Victoria

“We were initially planning to have NextRide installed on all of our buses and go live for the end of spring and we based this estimation on rollout times in other communities,” McConnell said in a statement to Victoria Buzz.

“Each time we install the NextRide technology on a bus, that bus has to be pulled out of service. For example, we have 69 double decker buses in our fleet and each takes two days for installation.”

Once installed, NextRide will let commuters check the location of their bus and its predicted arrival time at their stop in real-time. The system will be hosted on a dedicated website, allowing transit riders to check bus details on any device that can connect to the internet.

While the crown corporation will have this real-time tracking available on all of the 292 buses in Victoria’s fleet by July 2019, about two-thirds of transit buses in town are already equipped with on-board audio and visual announcements.

For more information about upgrades, check out BC Transit’s website here.

With files from Adam Chan.