‘Ghost buses’ haunt transit agencies and frustrate riders

Noah Appelbaum was freezing on a bitterly cold evening as he stood waiting at a Chicago bus stop in January. He was headed to work and didn’t want to be late. The bus-tracking app on his smartphone kept showing that the next bus would be there in just a few minutes. But that time kept being pushed back, and the bus never showed up. He ended up boarding a later scheduled bus that finally arrived after he had been shivering for 40 minutes. “It’s extremely frustrating,” said Appelbaum, 34, a guitar teacher and actor. “There’s not just the unpleasantness of waiting in the cold. It also throws off ...