ChiTransit Terms of Service

Not affiliated with the CTA

ChiTransit is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or approved by the Chicago Transit Authority.

“CTA”, “Chicago Transit Authority”, “Ventra”, the ‘L’ and the names of the eight rail lines are the property of their respective owners. They appear in this app to describe the transit system it shows, which is nominative use — not a claim of any relationship.

Transit data comes from the CTA’s public developer APIs and from its published GTFS schedule feed. We are a consumer of those feeds on the same terms as anyone else.

Transit information is not guaranteed

This is the part worth reading twice.

Arrival times, train positions, service alerts and journey plans are estimates produced from data we do not control. They can be wrong, late, missing, or contradicted by what is actually happening on the platform. Specifically:

• CTA’s predictions are generated from track-circuit occupancy. Its trains carry no GPS, and a position can be up to about half a minute old before we ever receive it.
• When live data runs out, times fall back to the published timetable. ChiTransit marks these as scheduled where they appear — a scheduled time is not a prediction that a train is coming.
• Journey plans are built from the CTA’s static schedule. They do not know about a train that is delayed, rerouted, cancelled, or standing still.
• Service alerts are reproduced as CTA publishes them, including any errors or omissions.
• Step-free (“accessible”) journey filtering relies on CTA’s own accessibility data for each station. A lift that is listed as present may still be out of service.

Do not use ChiTransit where being wrong has consequences you cannot accept — catching the last train of the night, making a medical appointment, reaching an airport for a flight, or any situation affecting your safety. Check CTA’s own channels, and leave margin.

Using the app

You may use ChiTransit for your own travel, free of charge.

Please do not:

• Automate, scrape, or otherwise script requests against our service, or use it as a data source for another application. It runs on a small budget and a shared upstream quota; one abusive client degrades the app for everyone using it.
• Work around the rate limits, or extract and reuse the API key embedded in the app.
• Reverse engineer, resell, or redistribute the app, except where the law says you may regardless of what these terms say.
• Use the app to break the law, or to interfere with the service or with other people using it.

We may rate-limit, block, or withdraw access from a client that does these things. Since there are no accounts, this applies to traffic rather than to a person.

No accounts, nothing stored about you

ChiTransit has no sign-up, no login, and no profile. Saved stations and preferences live in your phone’s own storage and are removed when you uninstall the app.

What the app does and does not handle is set out in full in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

The app is provided as-is

ChiTransit is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied — including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the app will be available, uninterrupted, timely, or error-free, or that the transit information it shows is accurate or complete.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is the case, the exclusions above apply only to the extent the law permits, and nothing here limits rights you have that cannot be limited.

Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, ChiTransit and its developers are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any missed connection, missed appointment, delay, lost time, lost opportunity, or cost, arising from your use of the app or from reliance on the information it shows.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Changes to the app and the service

ChiTransit is developed by a small team and may change. Features can be added, altered or removed, and the service behind the app may be interrupted for maintenance, or discontinued. We will not always be able to give notice.

Third-party sources the app depends on — the CTA’s APIs, its GTFS feed, and MapTiler’s map tiles — may themselves change or become unavailable, which can break parts of the app without warning.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change, the effective date above changes with them, and the new version is published on this page before the change ships in a release. Continuing to use the app after that means you accept the revised terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. ChiTransit is operated from Chicago, Illinois, and the service and the data it handles are processed in the United States.

Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to the developer email address shown on the app’s Google Play listing, under “App support”.