BusNeighbor

BusNeighbor shows you where Philadelphia's buses and trolleys are right now, on a map with data refreshed every 30 seconds. Pick the routes you ride, and the map keeps them in view.

I ride the bus back and forth to Center City, and I built BusNeighbor to see where my bus really is. When a friend who needed accessibility features installed it the day we met, I made it work for him too.

WHAT IT DOES • Live vehicle positions on a street map, with the route number on every marker. • Tap a vehicle to see the stop it's near and the service alerts and detours for its route. If two vehicles sit on top of each other, BusNeighbor asks which one you meant. • A vehicle that hasn't reported in over a minute is drawn hollow and shows when it last reported, so you can tell a live bus from a stale one. • A small chip on the map always tells you how old the data is. If the live feed stops, the map says so instead of going quiet. • Fit All Markers pulls the map back to show everything on your routes at once. • Closest Vehicles Readout, an optional list of the nearest vehicles with the intersection each one is at and how far away it is. Turn it on under Display Accessibility, then tap any row for details. • App and data status, in the More menu, shows how current each kind of data is and can run a quick check.

BUILT TO BE READ, NOT JUST SEEN Designed with blind and low-vision riders in mind, and everyone gets the benefit. • Twelve map palettes, six light and six dark, each tuned for text contrast. Two are near-monochrome so the vehicle marker is the only color on the screen. • Three marker styles: Dot, Chip, and Circle. • Brightness, contrast, grayscale, and inverted-color filters on top of any palette. • Every control has a VoiceOver label. Vehicle entries read as the route, the intersection, and the distance. • Pan the map and BusNeighbor announces the nearest stop and how far it is from the center of the screen, so you always know where you are looking. • Large text sizes are honored throughout. Map markers keep a fixed size so they stay legible against the map.

YOUR LOCATION IS YOURS Location is optional and is never requested when the app opens. The map starts at City Hall; tap My Location when you want it to find you. Your position is used only on your device, only while the app is open, and is never sent anywhere.

OFFLINE MAP Download the Philadelphia-region base map once (about 36 MB) and the map stops asking the internet for map data at all. Only the live vehicle positions still need a connection. Without it, if the detailed map can't load, BusNeighbor shows a simplified built-in map instead of a blank screen.

NOTHING COLLECTED No accounts, no ads, no analytics, no crash reporting, no tracking. The privacy policy is short and written in plain English.

PHILADELPHIA ONLY BusNeighbor covers bus and trolley service in the Philadelphia region. Outside that area it will tell you so and open at City Hall.

Vehicle positions come from SEPTA's public real-time feed and can be delayed, missing, or wrong. Please do not rely on BusNeighbor as your only source of arrival information. BusNeighbor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by SEPTA. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.

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