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Current versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox
and Safari are capable of displaying TimeTrack results.
You can download one of these TimeTrack compatible browsers by clicking on
a logo below.
A Note to Visitors Using Browser Pop-up Controls:
If you are using browser pop-up controls, you might experience difficulties using TimeTrack and other services at Metrobus Dot Com.
To avoid problems, disable pop-up controls either permanently or temporarily for Metrobus Dot Com in the configuration settings
of your pop-up control software. |
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What is TimeTrack?
Time track is our real time information service that will
provide customers with actual running times of every bus that is in service.
Customers will be able to log on to Metrobus Dot Com and find out whether
a particular route is running behind schedule, and if so, by how many
minutes.
How does it work?
For the customer, TimeTrack is a cinch to use and understand.
All the customer has to do is click on the TimeTrack logo from our main
page. This
will send a command to our Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) server
instructing it to display the most recent running times of all buses in service. This whole process takes about a half a second to perform.
Is it really 'real time' information?
Our AVL server
gathers information about buses that are in service and 'feeds' our
website this information every 90 seconds (1.5 minutes). You can't get much more 'real time' than that.
How do you read the TimeTrack information?
It's pretty simple. Once TimeTrack has loaded,
a table will appear that consists of 3 columns and one row for each of our route/run combinations. It will look like this on the TimeTrack screen:
In this example, we have shown results for the route 15-1,
21-1, and 21-2,
as is indicated in the 'ROUTE' column on the far left. In this
example, the route 15-1 is operating 'ON TIME' and the status of the bus
changed to 'ON TIME' on April 27 at 7:48 pm. The time is displayed in
military format. A bus that updated on April 27 at 9:00 am would be
represented as APR 17 0900. The second row of this example indicates that the route
21-1 is operating 5 minutes behind schedule as is indicated by 'B 5 MINS'.
The operating status for this bus changed at 7:30 pm on April 27.
Finally, a route that is not in
service is indicated when no information appears in the 'STATUS' or
'UPDATED' columns (like for the 21-2 in the example above).
On occasion, a route/run will not appear in the list
that is actually in service. This happens when there is a
communications problem caused by malfunctioning equipment or if there is a
server error.
Information about this particular route/run will not appear on the TimeTrack screen until we've had an opportunity to replace the faulty
equipment, change the bus that is being used to service the route/run, or
to correct the server error.
You'll become quite comfortable reading TimeTrack information fairly quickly.
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