In beta
Live bus arrivals for Oakland and Chicago.
Type in a stop number, or find every stop within a short walk, and see exactly when the next bus is coming. Busboy has no accounts, no ads, and no server of its own — your saved stops never leave your phone.
Busboy is not released yet. Store links will go live with the first public build.
What Busboy does
One app for two bus systems, built around the two questions you actually have at a bus stop: when is my bus coming, and where is the nearest stop from here?
Arrivals by stop number
Enter the number printed on the sign and get a live countdown board — route, destination and minutes until arrival, down to Due. Filter to a single route when a busy stop serves several.
Nearby stops, by walking time
Search by how far you are willing to walk, not by an abstract radius in metres. Use your location, or tap a point on the map to search from anywhere — useful before you have left the house.
Chicago works offline
Every CTA bus stop — roughly 10,695 of them — ships inside the app. Finding stops near you in Chicago needs no network at all, and your coordinates never leave the device. Arrival times still need a connection.
Saved stops
Keep the stops you use every day one tap away. They are stored only on your device, and kept separate per agency so a Chicago stop number never collides with an Oakland one.
Service alerts and detours
When a stop is affected, an alerts button appears on the search bar. Open it for AC Transit's service bulletins or the CTA's active detours, each expandable for the full detail, cause and effect.
Maps and bus details
Track a specific bus on its route, get walking directions to a stop, or tap a departure to see how late it is running. On AC Transit you also get the vehicle itself — make, length, propulsion, seating, Wi-Fi and air conditioning.
Always fresh, never fake
Arrival times refresh on their own every 60 seconds. If a refresh fails, Busboy says so and shows you when the data was last good — it will not quietly leave a stale countdown ticking down.
Usable by everyone
Screen-reader labels that read as whole sentences, generous touch targets, and layouts that keep working at the largest system font sizes. Light, dark or follow-the-system, on phones, tablets and foldables.
Nothing to sign up for
No account, no email address, no password. Open the app and it works. There is no Busboy server to hold your data, because there is no Busboy server at all.
Two cities, one app
Pick your agency in Settings and the whole app changes with it — including its colours. Busboy wears the colours of the city it is showing you.
Oakland & the East Bay
AC Transit
The fullest version of Busboy — AC Transit publishes more about its buses than most agencies do.
- Live arrival predictions and route filtering
- Official service bulletins
- Rich vehicle detail: make, plate, length, propulsion, seating, Wi-Fi and A/C
- Nearby stop search by coordinate (requires a connection)
Chicago
CTA buses
The most private and most resilient version — Chicago's entire stop catalogue travels with you.
- Live arrival predictions and route filtering
- Active detours, surfaced as alerts
- Nearby stop search that works fully offline
- Your coordinates are never sent to the CTA
Privacy, in short
Busboy has no accounts and no server, so most of the usual privacy questions simply do not apply. The one genuinely sensitive thing it touches is your location — and the full policy explains exactly where every request goes.
Read the full privacy policy- No accounts, no sign-in, no advertising
- Your location is never written to storage
- Saved stops stay on your device
- No advertising ID is read or transmitted
- Nothing is sold or shared with data brokers
- Usage data sharing can be switched off in Settings