Citizen-task benchmark
BMTC runs Bengaluru's real bus network. UTI is a synthetic reference implementation. This comparison asks a narrower product question: how clearly can a rider plan, judge freshness and recover when realtime data is incomplete?
Current evidence
BMTC observations are dated 26–27 August 2026; this UTI build is dated 28 August. Pending items stay visibly pending instead of being converted into assumptions.
The official Namma BMTC product advertises journey planning, schedules and estimated arrival/departure information across the operational network.
OTP plans street-level walking, feasible bus departures and transfers across 200 simulated routes and 56 selectable places.
The public product exposes real operational vehicles where source systems and service are available.
Google Maps renders a continuously replayed, explicitly synthetic AIS-140-style vehicle position.
The observed route flow refreshes vehicle data periodically. A final timestamped UI benchmark is still required before making a stronger claim.
Every vehicle is labelled live, recent, stale or scheduled, with observation age and a visible fallback state.
No public GTFS Schedule or GTFS-Realtime feed was discoverable in the commuter web application during interface research.
GTFS Schedule, VehiclePositions and TripUpdates are demonstrable through open JSON and Protocol Buffer endpoints.
To be assessed manually at a controlled time; no assumption is made about current degraded-mode behavior.
Journey planning remains available from GTFS Schedule and the interface stops describing the result as live.
BMTC is the operational source and provides broad real-network coverage.
The fixture covers 200 synthetic routes across familiar Bengaluru areas. It demonstrates interoperability, not actual BMTC network completeness.
Manual evidence gate
Website and live-service behavior changes with time, route and location. The final submission benchmark should therefore be captured once the deployed UTI URL is stable.
Open both products at desktop width and record the timestamp and URL.
Plan the same feasible Bengaluru journey and count interactions to the first useful answer.
Record whether direction, next stop, ETA, freshness and data origin are visible.
Repeat at mobile width and test the no-live-data or unavailable state.
Retain screenshots internally; publish BMTC captures only after attribution approval.
Submission position
UTI is not a replacement for BMTC's operational systems. It is a proposal for making their passenger-information outputs interoperable, inspectable and reusable.Try the citizen demo