Coaches not updating properly, departure predictions inaccurate

[kona314]

Hi there,

I've noticed some strange behavior in the GTFS-rt feeds that I wanted to bring to your attention.

Essentially, coaches seem to get "stuck" at a stop. From that point on, estimates are generated assuming it's about to depart that stop, the coach does not roll into its next trip, and the future departures are shown as very late—it's as if the bus is just sitting there. However, the coordinates continue to update and show that it's moving.

The example below shows a case of this this morning. Coach 809 got "stuck" at Lakeway Dr & Humboldt St, and it stayed on that trip (533 to Downtown). If you plug in those coordinates, you'll see it's actually along the alignment of the 540 to Downtown, consistent with a trip two trips later in its block (1802).

The associated stop time updates continue to show that stop "about" to be served (every refresh has it seconds away), well over an hour late. The subsequent trips on the block, including the one it's apparently actually on, also show as massively delayed.

Because the coordinate appears to be accurate, this looks like an issue with the system not detecting when the coach has departed the zone (or you have a lot of buses sitting around and the coordinate is made up based on expected activity, which seems unlikely). I've not been able to link this to any particular stop, trip, coach, block, etc..

At time of writing, it looks like seven other coaches in addition to the given example are affected by this issue.

Please let me know what I can do to help!

vehicle {
  trip {
    trip_id: "1535020"
    schedule_relationship: SCHEDULED
    route_id: "533"
  }
  position {
    latitude: 48.76867
    longitude: -122.41211
    bearing: 180.0
    speed: 8.49376
  }
  current_stop_sequence: 20
  current_status: STOPPED_AT
  timestamp: 1657042815
  stop_id: "288"
  vehicle {
    id: "809"
  }
}