ORLANDO, Fla. – LYNX riders say they miss the convenience of the LYNX bus tracker app, which provided real-time bus schedule updates at their fingertips.
When the app was removed from app stores a few years ago, many riders noticed the gap it left.
“It was just convenient. It was easy to load the money onto the card. Since I looked at the schedules, it was a lot faster. It just helped out a lot,” Kenneth Ramos said.
“It’s really surprising that they haven’t actually put more money into the public transportation in a lot of different ways in Orlando, because there are so many more people that use this.”
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Although the LYNX bus tracker app is no longer available, some riders continue to use an app that Lynx offers to pay fares, but feel it is inadequate.
“Well, the old app, you could actually look at all the schedules, like if you’re looking at a paper schedule, and you can actually see all the times where the different stops are. And now the new app, you have to click on the stop itself to see the times of the bus coming to that stop,” rider Frank Manning explained.
LYNX intends to back the tracker app. The board of directors voted Thursday on a $511,177 contract with Quebec Inc., the makers of the Transit app, to create a LYNX bus tracker app.
“We were authorized to negotiate and award a contract to the company known as transit app,” LYNX’s marketing director said in a statement Thursday. “It won’t be live until sometime early in 2026.”
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According to the agenda, the new app “will provide information on the location of all buses in revenue service. Users will be able to see buses operating on the network with identification of what route they are serving.” The map will also display bus stops and provide the real-time estimated arrival time of the next bus for each stop served.
“I think they should invest,” rider Tawana Smith said. “They have a lot of people out here, people getting back to work, going to school and picking up their kids and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it helps.”