New Norwegian Trend? The CTA Website

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Jan 13, 2009 3:30PM

It seems there are a lot of Norwegians coming to town or there are lots of public transit enthusiasts. It seems Norway ranks first in total hits from foreign countries for the CTA's website, having registered 15,395 hits on the CTA's bus tracker website from the country over the last year. But why? Tourism plans, sure. Maybe they're researching the home city of President-Elect Barack Obama, who's considered a "celebrity" in Eruope. Or, perhaps, they're trying to steal our secrets. Whatever the case, it seems the visits are intentional.

But it doesn't appear that most of those 15,000-plus Norwegian folks happened along to the Bus Tracker site by accident because 75 percent of them clicked through to visit other pages on the CTA Web site and spent more than 18 minutes there before moving on, officials said. "Many people just like to watch buses on their computer, even if they are not planning a trip," CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney said.

Enthusiasts just watching mass transit systems? Hmmm. Sounds familiar. Filipinos spent the longest average time on the site at 32 minutes, which is usually how long we have to wait for the North Ave. bus. ZING!