How this map is made
The map and the bus pages of tango.blue are built from public live data, using the traces of the vehicles themselves. This page explains what is shown, where the data comes from, how it is processed, how reliable it is, and who does the work.
What it shows
Live positions of city buses in Buenos Aires, stops, each line's route and the neighbourhoods it crosses, the subway, shared bikes, crime statistics, sights and historical places, all on one map. Each line page (in Spanish) shows how many buses are on the street right now and the route.
The strike page counts, hour by hour, how many buses are transmitting their position and compares it with a normal day, answering in numbers whether there is a strike today.
Where the data comes from
Vehicle positions come from the City of Buenos Aires API Transporte, published every 30 seconds. Route shapes come from the national transport ministry's metropolitan dataset (April 2023 edition). Stops come from the city's stop registry. The base map is OpenStreetMap, rebuilt once a month.
The service names in the live API often do not match reality, and the static timetable dated from 2021. Only position, headsign and service ID could be trusted, so everything else is rebuilt from those.
How it is built
Positions are stored every 30 seconds and grouped into traces per vehicle. For each service and direction, the longest trace supported by the others is chosen as the backbone. The backbone is densified to 30 m and matched against the national route shapes; a line number is assigned when at least 75% of its points fall on that shape. Near ties between lines sharing a road are resolved by stop coverage. What cannot be resolved is left unnumbered.
Stops within 40 m of the backbone are attached from the city registry. Every 20 minutes, only the services that changed are rebuilt.
Data is kept in two layers: the raw intake is never modified, and derived data lives in a separate layer. This design, and the method for rebuilding routes from traces, are provided by KUON GEO, the geospatial division of Kuon R&D. tango.blue is a separate business that receives the technology.
Reliability and limits
Because numbers are assigned by shape overlap, some services remain unnumbered and are shown without a number.
Arrival estimates are corrected daily by comparing predictions with actual arrivals. A line's normal bus count is not shown until 12 measurements are available, so that a single measurement is never called normal.
Positions are used as the city API publishes them. A bus that is not transmitting does not appear.
Who does the work
Editing and publishing: tango.blue. Data design and the route reconstruction method: KUON GEO. Reporting and photography on the ground: Shino Onaga, who is not involved in the map or bus data.