Detroit Automation Academy

The Triumphant Return

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition: on October 15, SMART returned to Live Transit Detroit the same day it was removed — 5,437 stops restored, on a licensed Swiftly feed.

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The Trip Your App Doesn't Show You

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition in plain language: of 24 best two-transfer Detroit bus journeys tested, Google showed 2 and Moovit showed 5.

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The Invisible Middle Leg

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Case study of two-transfer invisibility in Detroit transit routing: optima invisible to Google at 0.89 and to Moovit at 0.78; controls surfaced 7 of 8.

Read on the site · More from Live Transit Detroit.

Shut Down by the Meter

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition: on October 15, 2026, Netlify quota-paused Live Transit Detroit's live-data service, and DDOT's BusTime key hit its daily cap.

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Every Stop, Counted

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The QLINE joins Live Transit Detroit on its own tracks, the stop registry is rebuilt at 10,583 stops, and the SMART fallback is labeled for what it is.

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QLINE Streetcars Now Live on Live Transit Detroit's 3D Map — on Their Real Track Alignments

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Press release, October 14, 2026: The QLINE streetcar is live on Live Transit Detroit, on its real GTFS track alignments, with all 12 stations.

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The QLINE Sign Error

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The QLINE track rendered as a floating diagonal bar, mirrored kilometres north of Woodward Avenue. Cause: a sign error in one coordinate of qline-3d.json.

Read on the site · More from Live Transit Detroit.

The Signal is now a transit newsletter

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Signal repositions to transit: the buses, the rails, the maps, and the people building them. Why the shift, what stays, and what comes next.

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Beyond 8 Mile

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Live Transit map no longer ends at the city line. The street mosaic now covers the full SMART service area, and route ribbons are smoothed at every zoom.

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The People Mover Is Under Construction

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Live Transit map rebuilt its People Mover layer as what the system actually is: an elevated, automated, single-track loop. Build notes on the rework.

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Belle Isle, Rendered — True-Form Island Geometry for Live Transit

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

DDOT route 12 serves Belle Isle, but the Live Transit map rendered no island. Build notes on sourcing the true OSM outline, verified against GTFS stops.

Read on the site · More from Live Transit Detroit.

Postmortem: Activating Empirical Timetable Substitution

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Postmortem on Phase 2b-ii of the Forge Line live transit layer: reported active, found inert, misdiagnosed twice, root-caused to a page-index/GTFS-ID gap.

Read on the site · More from Live Transit Detroit.

Build Notes: October 6 Promotion — Nine Changes to Production

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Build notes for the October 6, 2026 Live Transit promotion: transition engine, Kalman-filtered bus motion, landmark massing, and depth-ordered tap picking.

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Who Is It For?

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Detroit 2126, installment two: the median Detroit household earns $39,938; new builds list at $511,180. Who is it for? It's arithmetic.

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What the Pictures Say Now

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition: a site-wide alt-text audit — 50 images across 16 pages — against the University of Michigan's 10-Week Accessibility Challenge guide.

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The Rulebook Changed Again — and the Robots Keep Moving to Detroit

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

BIOBUZZ Team Updates 01 and 02 rewrite defense and the human-player role — plus Robotize and Teradyne Robotics planting flags in metro Detroit.

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Every DDOT Bus, Live, in 3D — Now With Trip Planning

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition: the Live Transit open beta — every DDOT bus in 3D, now with trip planning, live delay badges, and ride guidance.

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The Ride Is Free

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Detroit 2126, installment one: the region voted to connect its transit system. What a century of fare-free, automated movement looks like.

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Thirty Days to Keep the Doors Open

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A Signal special edition: the Detroit People's Food Co-op — a community-owned grocery store in the North End — has about a month to keep the doors open.

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Your Ballot, Decoded: The Detroit Voter Guide Is Live

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Detroit Voter Guide is live: 10 races, 63 candidates, 3 ballot questions — every claim sourced, every gap flagged.

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BIOBUZZ, Week Two: The Three Bets That Win This Season

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The coach's read on the three bets that will decide the BIOBUZZ season: the launcher, the last 60 seconds, and the human player.

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BIOBUZZ Is Here: What the New FTC Season Demands

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The 2026-27 FIRST Tech Challenge game is BIOBUZZ: how the game scores, the six rule changes that matter, and why the rulebook rewards the spirit of the rule.

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Sprint 3: Privacy-First Spatial Intelligence

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Sprint 3: CoreLocation and MapKit for spatial context, Photos framework highlights, and on-device narrative generation — the zero-knowledge architecture intact.

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Sprint 2: Building a Privacy-First Diary on Apple Native Frameworks

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Why we chose native Apple frameworks over third-party SDKs for a private on-device diary app — MusicKit, EventKit, CoreData with CloudKit.

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Registration Live: From Zero to Cloud Run in One Session

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

How we took a broken multi-tenant registration build — Go backend, React frontend — to a live deployment on Google Cloud Run in a single engineering session.

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Fixing Our CI/CD Pipeline: Submodules, Empty Commits, and the QA Gate

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

A post-mortem on recurring deployment failures — Hugo builds with missing content, uninitialized theme submodules, and the automated QA gate that caught them.

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Digital Stoicism: The Pause-and-Pivot Protocol

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Mastering the gap between a digital stimulus and your response: a 60-second firewall, a three-question audit, and the minimalist intervention.

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Stability through Shared Storage: The App Group Milestone

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Implementing a shared App Group architecture so an iOS app and its widget read and write the same SwiftData store — eliminating the empty-widget problem.

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