RTA releases Travel Information Action Plan to improve rider experience

This week, the RTA published its 2025 Travel Information Action Plan, a three-year roadmap for improving how transit information is communicated across the region. The plan outlines immediate and long-term actions CTA, Metra, Pace, and the RTA will take to make public transit easier to understand and more seamless for all riders.

Clear, accessible, and accurate real-time travel information was a priority in Transit is the Answer, the region’s transit strategic plan adopted in 2023 and release of this Action Plan is a direct implementation step that outlines a list of tangible steps to improve how riders receive and use transit information – from signs and apps to real-time alerts and multilingual communication.

About the Travel Information Action Plan

The Action Plan builds on two decades of work by the RTA, CTA, Metra, and Pace to improve customer information; the plan uses an extensive inventory of current assets, an update of foundational research and transit user testing to develop eight categories of action with 29 action items to be completed by 2027. The plan concludes with an extensive list of future coordination activities. These actions will result in incremental improvements to the transit customer experience in the following ways:

By the end of 2025, customers will have access to better real-time information at their fingertips and access to an increased amount of digital infrastructure at transit stops and stations.
Advancements in 2026 will ensure more standardized information across all agencies, allowing further integration and consistency for riders who transfer between agencies.
By the end of 2027, upgrades to digital infrastructure will improve accuracy of real-time estimates, allowing customers to see reroutes in real time and be provided real-time estimates for connecting services on digital screens in transit vehicles.

The goal of the action plan is to guide activities of Service Board and RTA staff over the immediate future and begin to lay the groundwork for the more fully integrated customer information delivery as outlined in RTA’s Transforming Transit, which envisions a strengthened RTA serving as the rider hub for fares and customer service, including a single, unified regional app and rider hub to ensure access to simple, easy-to-understand fares and discount programs for all riders.

The Travel Information Action Plan is organized into an introduction, which includes a summary table of all 29 proposed action steps, followed by in-depth chapters focused on five key tasks for staff:

Steering Committee Engagement: describes the makeup and work of the steering committee, which included input from agency staff, advocates, and riders
Customer Information Inventory: A comprehensive review of how transit information is currently provided
Update Foundational Research: describes internal and external transit user research and best practices for information delivery and user experience
Transit Customer User Testing: details findings from eight individuals possessing a range of diverse perspectives who were observed and asked to provide feedback as they planned and completed transit trips across multiple operators
Further Coordination Activities: includes an extensive list of recommendation for immediate and long-term consideration to improve customer information delivery

Year One priorities

While the report details three years’ worth of immediate action items for transit agency staff, a sampling of year one activities demonstrate immediate needs to improve customer information.

Report Delayed and Cancelled Trips

While delays and service alerts are inevitable, a standardized means of reporting them promotes consistency across the system and can help reduce confusion among transit customers. RTA, CTA, Metra, and Pace are implementing Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) solutions that can update the status of transit trips as delayed or canceled. Currently, Metra deploys this standard in the Ventra App and on its train tracker and shows service alerts as updated or corrected, while Pace shows skipped runs are shown was scheduled service, and significantly delayed runs are not distinguished from on-schedule runs.

Help Customers Better Understand the Difference Between Scheduled versus Real-Time Arrivals

Real-time arrival information for transit stops at the beginning of a route or run is based on when a vehicle is placed in service by the operator. Scheduled arrival times are displayed when a route or run has either not commenced or when AVL is not functioning. Currently, when a predicted arrival time is based on real-time arrival information, the time is accompanied by a Wi-Fi icon. Third-party apps display this arrival time in a specific color (often matching the route color if present). When an arrival time is based on a scheduled arrival time, there is no icon (and third-party apps display this arrival time in a standard gray or black color).

As these are used as the standard across platforms, RTA, CTA, Metra, and Pace should show the definitions for these in the footers of real-time displays and explain this on bus and train trackers on websites.

Improve Reporting of Vehicle Locations

The emergence of global positioning system (GPS) technologies has changed the way in which customers engage with transit services. Using GPS, CTA, Metra, and Pace now can communicate the real-time location of every vehicle in service to its own displays as well as to customers interacting with trackers on agency websites and third-party apps. Transit customers are observed to have confidence in real-time information when vehicles are in motion and information is refreshing on a regular basis. Third-party apps often show the number of seconds elapsed since the last refresh of information is provided. When vehicles are stopped for extended periods or refresh rates remain unchanged for more than one minute, confidence in the information begins to decline and some transit customers begin to seek other sources of information for confirmation. To maximize customer confidence in real-time information, RTA in conjunction with CTA, Metra, and Pace will establish a common target refresh rate that is as fast as existing hardware and software will support. CTA, Metra, and Pace will include this target refresh rate in contracts with vendors for procurement of new hardware and software for vehicles and stations.

Other Year 1 priorities include establishing a common definition of when an arrival is “due” and incorporating bus stop identification letters in customer information displays.

Next steps

This Travel Information Action Plan is the first step of many toward a truly seamless and integrated customer information for all riders across the system.

Future work in this area will largely depend on availability of funding and whether the RTA is empowered with the reforms needed to serve as the hub for regional customer information. With the urgent need for legislators to enable a funding and reform solution by May 31st to avoid devastating service cuts, RTA is encouraging riders and residents to speak out and ask their legislators to support sustainable funding and strategic reform. Visit SaveTransitNow.org to sign a letter to your legislators and stand up for public transit.