TreKing is an app designed to assist you in identifying nearby bus stops, if any, for the Chicago Transit Authority, and does real-time tracking of operational buses.

The Chicago Transit Authority suffers from an extremely poor reputation when it comes to budget difficulties, corruption, and most of all, persistent problems with tardy and poor service. It’s daily cursed by commuters, and often the subject of derision by local media outlets, who target it as an egregious example of mismanagement and waste. When the CTA Bus Tracker Service, which is web-based, was unveiled by them, it certainly took a number of people by surprise.

The premise offered is a simple and effective one: you get to select your direction, route, and stop. The page which displays the relevant results tracks the locations of buses that are GPS-equipped, in real time, and calculates the estimated times of arrivals for most designated bus stops. You don’t have to hang around for hours at a bus stop any more, a particularly onerous occupation considering Chicago’s less than ideal weather patterns, and extremely frustrating when you don’t have any idea when your bus will get there, or even if it will arrive at all.

The CTA service is comprehensively covered by TreKing, as well as effectively streamlined, and the app also offers up many great extra features.

It’ most basic function is covered by its Trek Tracker, which handily condenses the multiple-page presentation on the site of the CTA into a number of menus in drop-down form. Presenting it in this way significantly cuts down on page reloading, which is an enormous advantage for mobile connections. Users have the option to change over to a map view in Trek Tracker, set the app’s notification to temporarily watch the relevant route, and have an alarm sound shortly before the bus’s estimated time of arrival. Treks can be saved in order to use them again in the future, which for people who are regular commuters is a very helpful function. Improving the idea even more, you have the ability to group Treks according to your own preferences.

Train stops and bus stops that are close to you are identified using GPS location in the Quick Treks and Find Stops features. Quick Trek calculates the routes that you can possibly take from the location that you specify. Trek Planner is quite similar to Trip Planner from the CTA, but it also tracks trains, in anticipation of the promise by the CTA to equip trains with GPS.

In the most recent update to TreKing, the bus routes of Pace were incorporated, as well as the normal fixes for bugs. CTA’s Bus Tracker is itself a great web application, but TreKing effectively adds even more functionality and value to it.