Over half during rush hour. No public GTFS feed. No accountability on paper. This is what a broken commuter contract looks like when a rider builds the tracker herself.
The Ghost Bus Tracker scrapes the public Hudson Link website every two minutes and logs every live trip. Trips that appear on the published schedule but never produce a tracked vehicle — or vehicles that vanish from the live feed mid-route — are flagged. Operational since April 7, 2026. For the live view, see the dashboard.
Not every route is equally affected. Three routes generate the overwhelming majority of flagged events.
H03 (Monsey ↔ White Plains) carries the highest raw cancellation volume. H07 (Palisades ↔ Tarrytown) carries the highest downstream cost per cancellation: it is the Metro-North connector. When H07 ghosts, riders miss the train.
Cancellations are not randomly distributed. They cluster in the windows when Rockland commuters most need the bus.
| Window | Share of flagged events | Why it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| AM rush (6:00–9:30) | ~35% | Missed Metro-North, late to work |
| PM rush (4:00–7:00) | ~25% | Stranded at train station, home late |
| Midday (9:30–4:00) | ~30% | Missed appointments, childcare disruption |
| Late (after 7 PM) | ~10% | Riders stranded at White Plains or Tarrytown |
More than 6 out of every 10 service failures happen during the weekday commuter windows. A rider planning around the published Hudson Link schedule has the highest chance of a ghost bus at the exact time they cannot afford one.
Hudson Link is a publicly funded commuter service, but NYSDOT does not publish a public GTFS-Realtime feed for it.
GTFS-Realtime is the open data standard every major transit agency in the country uses to publish live cancellations, vehicle positions, and delay status. Without it, there is no public, machine-readable record of whether Hudson Link is meeting its service obligations.
The data in this report only exists because we built the infrastructure ourselves. The tracker scrapes the Hudson Link website every two minutes and reconstructs what a GTFS-Realtime feed would normally provide. Transdev's own systems clearly track every bus's position and delay in real time. The data exists. It is simply not being published.
Fix Hudson Link is preparing a Freedom of Information Law request to NYSDOT's Records Access Officer for on-time performance data by route, trip-level data, cancellation records, service complaints, the operating contract with Transdev, any penalties assessed, and GTFS-Realtime feed status — plus a standing request that NYSDOT publish a public GTFS-Realtime feed going forward. Read what we're asking for and why.
Publishing a GTFS-Realtime feed for Hudson Link should be a baseline requirement in the new operator contract. The data exists. Publishing costs nothing. Making it public would bring Hudson Link in line with the transparency standard every major transit agency already meets, and would end the absurdity of citizens building their own scrapers to answer basic questions about a publicly subsidized service.
The official rider-facing app, built by MSF Global Solutions, has a 1.6★ rating on Google Play.
Reviews describe crashed ticket screens, random logouts, and schedule data that is frequently wrong. This matters because it is how riders plan every trip.
Patterns captured by the tracker and observed by riders in the last two weeks:
Fix Hudson Link is not asking for more buses. We are asking for accountability on the buses already on the published schedule.
These are measurable. They are enforceable. And they are exactly what our two weeks of data show is missing from the current operator's accountability structure.
The data shows what is happening at the system level. The rider stories show what is happening at the kitchen-table level: the jobs narrowed, the kids scrambled, the neighbors who gave up and drove past the stop.