V3 API — vehicle position/labeling issues on specific commuter rail cab cars

[Nathan Zhang]

Hello,

I built a commuter rail tracker for railfans that uses the V3 API to show which locomotive is leading each consist: https://lightning-stripes.vercel.app. Users have surfaced a few equipment-specific data issues in the vehicle feed:

• Cab car #1815 never reports a position — trains running with it simply don't appear on the map at all. This one likely needs the onboard AVL/transponder hardware serviced, and fixing it would help every MBTA tracker, including MBTA Go.
  
• Cab #1846 frequently reports as #1806 (wrong label).
  
• Cab #1859 frequently reports at the wrong location and gets confused with #1716.

The last two are lower-impact and mostly affect niche use cases like mine, but #1815 going completely dark is the most significant since it's an outright gap in the live feed for all trackers including those meant for passengers. I understand these may be hardware or upstream data issues that aren't quick to resolve, but I wanted to flag them in case they're helpful. Happy to provide specific dates/times or example trips if that would make them easier to track down.

Thanks for maintaining the V3 API. It's been great to build on!

Best,
Nathan

[Developer at MBTA]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for reaching out about this use case of our API!

We and our partners at Keolis have been looking at the equipment you've flagged. Car 1716 has been confirmed to have been mistakenly programmed as 1859, and has since been corrected. Staff are actively inspecting both 1815 and 1846.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you see any further accuracy issues in the future.

Regards,
Developer@MBTA