Help & Support

Every CTA bus route, all eight L lines, and all eleven Metra lines. CTA and Metra have separate departure lists. Your favorites include both. Metra rows show a clock time and a countdown, and the clock time is colored the same way as CTA times.

Pace buses and other suburban bus service are not covered.

Stratus calculates how long it takes you to reach each nearby stop or station. It learns your pace from how you walk. Then it compares that time, plus any extra time you set, with each departure. Each time shows one of three results: comfortable, tight, or too late. Too late means you cannot reach the stop before the bus or train leaves.

Extra time covers things like leaving your building or waiting for an elevator. Set it in Settings under Departure buffer, from 0 to 15 minutes. Stratus adds it to your walk.

Long-press a departure row and choose Favorite, or swipe right on the row. Favorites stay at the top of both the CTA and Metra lists, even when you are far from them. Free includes one favorite stop. Premium includes up to five.

Tap a departure row, then choose where you are getting off. Stratus then follows your trip.

Premium adds a live countdown on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island, and an alarm that tells you when to leave. You set how early it fires in Settings. The countdown keeps updating while your phone is locked, from before you board until you arrive.

See Stops shows every remaining stop on the route, for the bus or train you're tracking. View it as a list with live ETAs for each stop, or switch to Map to see the route, where the bus or train is now, where you are, and where you board and get off. Free for everyone.

It opens when you follow a trip: tap a departure row and choose where you are getting off.

The Guide has maps, fares, and help for CTA and Metra. It is free for everyone.

Maps shows CTA rail, Metra, and the CTA bus routes you pick. You can show or hide each line, search for a station or stop, and tap one to see the routes it serves and its upcoming departures.

Icons explains the symbols the app uses. Fares lists CTA and Metra prices, and How to Pay covers cards, passes, and other ways to pay. Tutorials show you how to get more from Stratus, and FAQ opens this page.

The "Accessible stations only" filter, in the Nearby filters, shows only stations built with elevator access. When a live CTA alert reports an elevator out of service, the wheelchair icon disappears from the affected rows and the alert appears in the alerts banner.

Stratus is built for VoiceOver, with labels throughout the app, and supports Dynamic Type up to the largest text sizes. The haptic buzz for boarding and arrival cues still fires when your phone is on Silent, so you feel it even when you can't hear it; other haptics in the app respect Reduce Motion.

Free: Live CTA bus and train departures and Metra departures, each shown with your walk and colored by whether you can catch it. The Guide. Filters for line, mode, and direction. Following a trip, with See Stops and the map. Service alerts. The accessible-stations filter, with warnings when an elevator is out of service. One favorite stop.

Premium: Everything in Free, plus Live Activities on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island, Apple Watch, departure alarms, a heads-up before your stop, home-screen widgets, up to five favorites, sharing your ETA through a link, and offline CTA rail schedules.

Premium costs $1.99 a month or $14.99 a year, with a 14-day free trial.

Open your device's Settings > [Your Name] > Subscriptions, find Stratus Transit, and tap to manage or cancel. You can also access this from within the app via Settings > Manage Subscription. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

Stratus shows stops and stations within your travel radius. Set a larger radius in the Nearby filters. Also make sure the line and mode filters are not hiding it.

Departure times come directly from CTA's Train Tracker and Bus Tracker systems and from Metra's own real-time feed, and are estimates. Buses and trains can be delayed, rerouted, or cancelled without notice. Metra also publishes a timetable, so Metra rows show the scheduled clock time alongside the countdown. If you're consistently seeing inaccurate data, pull down to refresh or check the service alerts within the app. If the issue persists, let us know.

No. Your GPS coordinates stay entirely on your device and are never transmitted. When Stratus fetches departure data, it sends only stop or station IDs (public CTA and Metra identifiers) to our server.

When you track a trip, we send a small set of trip details and a push token so updates can reach your device while it's locked. These records are short-lived — deleted when the trip ends, and in any case within two hours. None of them identify you on their own, and we don't combine them with anything else. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Stratus is made by CloudPath, LLC, an independent software company based in Chicago. We're not affiliated with the Chicago Transit Authority or Metra. We built Stratus because we ride Chicago transit every day and wanted a better way to catch the bus and train.