Students are experiencing difficulty tracking the Wolfline buses through the TransLoc Rider app, an app promoted by NC State, causing confusion for those attempting to ride buses to and from campus.

The TransLoc Rider app is intended to be a resource for individuals who would like to track where the Wolfline buses are at all times, and the app is supposed to provide accurate arrival times for each Wolfline bus for every route. 

Dylan Bates, a second-year Ph.D. student studying applied math, recently commented on a post on the Wolfpack Students Facebook page expressing issues he has had tracking the Wolfline buses on the TransLoc Rider app.

“The idea of the app is amazing, instead of having to look at a schedule online that may or may not be accurate,” Bates said. “… But then there’s traffic and delays and the buses aren’t always there at that time.”

According to Bates, he has experienced issues with the estimated time that the bus was scheduled to arrive at the station.

“Time and time again, it’ll say the bus is however minutes away,” Bates said. “It was eight minutes away and it was counting down every minute and when it was three minutes away, it disappeared and it said the next one was 55 minutes away, and that kind of blew my mind.”

While Bates has experienced issues with the app, he said a majority of the time he has no issues, and he does appreciate how the TransLoc Rider app can be helpful when the buses are not running exactly on schedule.

Byron Bryant, transit manager at NCSU Transportation, said that, while he has not heard of this specific issue, he has heard other complaints about the app such as problems with predicting arrival times.

According to Bryant, the function used to show the estimated times of arrival on the app does not follow NC State’s set schedule due to what is called “slack time,” which accounts for traffic, picking up passengers and sitting at traffic lights. Buses are also meant to stay at certain locations for a set amount of time to maintain their schedule.

“The prediction function does not use the schedule,” Bryant said. “It uses the actual GPS location of the bus, so if the bus is just sitting there, and it’s very close, then it continues to say the bus is one minute away.”

The exact locations of the buses are tracked by GPS systems implemented on the buses by NCSU Transportation. That information is then sent to TransLoc.

“We have a Geographic Information Systems guy in the office… [he] goes out and he uses a little device whenever we move a bus stop, or get a new bus stop, and he gets the GPS location,” Bryant said. “He gives that to me, and he puts that in a file that we maintain. This is done every semester or as needed.”

Starting in August, however, instead of sending the information to the company, NCSU Transportation began to update the locations in the TransLoc Rider app itself.

“We are actually in a pilot program with TransLoc and all that stuff is actually being done internally here now,” Bryant said. “So we can actually go in and move a bus stop, change the shape of a route internally now.”

Yolanda Jones, the communications manager for NCSU Transportation, said that the bus schedules on the Transportation website, under the Wolfline tab, are the best resources for students to use.

“It’s going to give you the exact time the buses should be running,” Jones said. “When I say exact it’s relative to whether it’s stopped at a stoplight or stopped behind a car. It might not be exact times.”

Jones encouraged students to not only rely on the Rider app, but also make sure they pay attention to signage at bus stops, the regular fall and spring schedules, the announcements sections of the locator (online and on the app) and the general ‘Find My Bus’ resource that is available online.

“Let’s say someone has a class at 8 a.m. in the morning, and they’re trying to figure out what time they want to be at the bus stop,” Jones said. “So, not just relying on the Rider app to say the bus is this far away, but seeing what time it’s going to be closest to you, gives you a planning tool.”

Students having issues tracking the Wolfline can reach out to the NCSU Transportation Office through a Wolfline feedback form.