Public transit real-time arrival boards show 'ghost buses' that never appear because GPS pings stop transmitting when vehicles deviate from scheduled routes

Commuters waiting at bus stops in cities like Chicago, Seattle, and Washington D.C. see real-time arrival signs or app predictions showing a bus arriving in 3 minutes, only to watch the countdown reach zero and the bus never appear. The prediction then either vanishes or jumps to the next scheduled bus 15-20 minutes later. These 'ghost buses' occur when a vehicle's automatic vehicle location (AVL) system stops transmitting GPS data due to equipment failure, the bus being rerouted around construction, or the driver pulling the bus out of service mid-route without dispatch updating the system. So what? Riders who trusted the real-time display and skipped alternative options (walking, calling a rideshare, catching a different route) are now stranded for an additional 15-20 minutes. So what? Repeated ghost bus experiences cause riders to pad their commute by 20-30 minutes of buffer time, negating the productivity benefit real-time information was supposed to provide. So what? According to Mobility Lab research, frustrated riders switch to driving or rideshare, reducing transit ridership and fare revenue. So what? Lower ridership weakens the political case for transit funding, leading to further service cuts. So what? The communities most dependent on transit -- low-income workers, elderly residents, people with disabilities -- lose mobility options that have no substitute. The structural root cause is that transit agencies procure AVL/CAD systems that assume buses follow fixed routes and schedules. When reality deviates -- detours, short-turns, mechanical breakdowns mid-route -- the system has no protocol to distinguish 'bus went offline' from 'bus ceased to exist,' so it keeps projecting arrival based on the last known position and scheduled speed.