Bus Arrival Times are unavailable for a second day in a row (23 Jan 2026), as the Land Transport Authority works to reset the Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) system.
Issues stemming from bus on-board systems were first detected on 10 January 2026, with more issues detected across the week. As a result, erroneous ETA timings were displayed across mobile applications, including LTA’s MyTransport.SG and Citymapper, which all draw ETA timings from LTA’s Datamall platform.
Since 21 January, 8pm, all bus ETA timings have been unavailable across all apps. Passenger information displays at bus stops and bus interchanges have been mostly observed to be blank.
However, some SBS Transit bus interchanges have been observed to be displaying bus timings, possibly retrieving its departure timings from its scheduling system. Departure screens at Tampines Bus Interchange reflect all SBS Transit-operated bus service timings, but do not reflect those (3, 67, 68, 969) operated by Go-Ahead, SMRT and Tower Transit.
LTA announced in a press release on 21 January that the system would be reset. However, it is not known when the timings will be made available again.
Ghost buses 👻
The term ghost buses, or ghosting, originated primarily as a bus spotters’ term. It refers to:
- Buses that are operating but do not appear on ETA timings
- or buses that do not appear despite having ETA timings reflected
Although instances of ghost buses appear to be relatively common, bus spotters have observed the problem to be typically confined to specific vehicles rather than a systemic issue. There have also been instances of specific vehicles appearing on ETA timings but displaying the wrong bus type or wheelchair accessibility status (Double-Decker appearing as Single-Decker.)
In the recent months, there has been an unexplained increase in ghost buses. In 2024, LTA awarded tenders for New ticketing and fleet management systems for public buses, and works to modernise these systems have been underway. It is not known if the issues stems from these hardware upgrades.
Resumption of ETA System
The ETA System was restored on 23 January 2026. However, many buses were still not visible on the system.
The Land Transport Authority attributed the issue to a transmission issue. A memory cache build-up in the on-board systems was disrupting data transmission in about 50% of buses. Clearing the cache and reconfiguration of the system will take around 4 days to complete.
Bus timing is still down and wrong. I think its worst than even before the fix.
No wonder Sengkang west services are mostly normal and accurate, because the buses are all the newer e-bus. Plus most SWDEP taros went for refurbishment.
LTA bug…