Overview
Spare gives you two day-of-operations screens for watching service unfold in real time. The Live Map shows where your vehicles are on a map, and the Live Schedule shows the day's blocks and duties on a Gantt-style timeline. This guide covers how to read each screen and the basic actions available.
Part 1: The Live Map
The Live Map is a full-screen map with a collapsible Active Blocks sidebar. Vehicle positions update live. When it loads, it zooms to fit all your stops and depots.
What you see on the map
Vehicles — markers update in real time; the vehicle for a focused block pulses.
Routes — colored polylines; non-selected routes dim when filters are active.
Stops and depots — appear as you zoom in (roughly zoom level 11 and closer). When a trip is focused, only that trip's stops show.
Deadhead paths — gray polylines for in-progress or selected deadheads.
Map controls
The controls in the bottom-left let you tailor the view, and your choices persist:
Map Layers — toggle Traffic, Stops, Routes, Vehicles, Geofences, and Small Vehicle Icons.
Vehicle Label — choose what text appears on vehicle markers: Vehicle ID, Block ID, Driver, Route, Passenger Count, or Provider.
Map base style — switch between Basic, Satellite, and Detailed.
Fullscreen — expand the map to fill your screen.
Note: Whether vehicles are colored by status or by route is an organization-wide setting ("Color Vehicles by Route on Live Map"), not a per-user toggle on the map.
Searching and selecting
Search — the top-left box finds a block, driver, vehicle, or location. Block results open and focus that block; a location result pans, zooms, and drops a marker.
Hover a vehicle — a tooltip shows its ID, status, block, driver, provider, speed, passenger load, and last-updated time (plus alerts like "Silent alarm activated" or "No Connection").
Click a vehicle — opens its block panel.
Click a route — opens the route detail panel and isolates that route on the map.
The Active Blocks sidebar
The sidebar lists active routes as colored cards, with a "{n} vehicles shown" subtitle (routes with no visible vehicles are hidden). Expand a direction — for example "Outbound (3)" — to see a table of Block | Status | Vehicle, and click any row to open that block. If a route has an active detour, an Active detour banner with a Manage link appears on its card. You can collapse the sidebar with the ✕ and reopen it from the pill.
Filtering
The Filter button narrows what appears on both the map and sidebar. You can filter by Vehicle Status (In service — Early / On time / Late — plus Off Route, Deadhead, Layover, No Connection, and No Vehicle Assigned), by Route, and, if you have them, by Provider. My Operations limits the view to your own provider's routes. Select Done to apply or Clear to reset; a badge shows how many filters are active.
The block detail panel
Opening a block shows a summary (status and lateness badge, Block ID, Vehicle, Driver, Passengers) and an itinerary split into Past Trips and Active & Upcoming Trips. From here you can:
Expand a trip card to highlight and zoom the trip on the map and see its per-stop timeline — scheduled vs. expected/arrived/departed times with lateness, the in-progress stop, and passenger counts on and off.
Review deadhead and layover cards — click a "Deadhead to {destination}" or "Layover at {depot}" card to show its path or location.
Read and post comments, and open a Conversation with the driver when dispatcher chat is enabled.
See active adjustments — a "{n} adjustment(s) active" note links to Manage Adjustments.
Reading vehicle status
Vehicles report one of these statuses: Early, On time, Late, Deadhead, Layover, Off Route, No Connection, or No Vehicle Assigned. When markers are colored by status, the defaults are: On time = green, Late = yellow, Early and Off Route = red, Deadhead / Layover / No Vehicle Assigned = gray, and No Connection = black. Status shows up in the Active Blocks table, the block summary, marker colors, hover tooltips, and the status filter.
Basic actions
Most actions are permission-gated. From the block and trip menus you can edit passenger counts or mark a stop complete, manage adjustments, remove or move a trip, add a trip, assign a different vehicle or driver (which jumps to the Live Schedule), end or remove a layover, view Time Travel, create a new case, and post a block comment.
Part 2: The Live Schedule
The Live Schedule is a Gantt-style timeline of a single day's operations, found under Live Schedule in the sidebar. Each row is a block (or duty) and columns are the time of day.
Picking a date
Use the date picker in the header, with previous/next day arrows and a Today button. When you're viewing today, a vertical blue current-time line appears and updates each minute.
Blocks vs. Duties
The center segmented control switches between Blocks (showing vehicle assignment) and Duties (showing driver assignment) — there's no separate Vehicles tab. You can sort by start time or by ID, and the Search box matches block/duty IDs and assignments, scrolling to the matching row.
Reading the timeline
The left columns stick in place and show status, the block/duty ID, and the Assignment (vehicle or driver, or "None"). On the timeline itself:
Trip bars — solid colored chevrons in the route color, with a tooltip for route, pattern, time, duration, and headsign.
Deadhead bars — outlined gray bars (thin ones collapse to a line).
Layover bars — thin square bars labeled "Layover at depot".
Operations base markers — squircle markers at a block's start and end.
Live vehicle progress marker — a white disc with a blue chevron on the in-progress block (Blocks tab, today only) showing where the vehicle is.
Scroll horizontally through time and vertically through rows, and zoom with the − / + buttons or Ctrl/Cmd + scroll.
Trip status and color
On this screen a trip is Scheduled (solid), In progress (solid with emphasis), Completed (faded), or Missed (diagonal stripes). There is no "late" status here — that lives on the Live Map. Live vehicle positions reconcile stale statuses automatically.
Filters, import, and export
The Filter button lets you filter by Assignment (All / Assigned / Unassigned) and Routes, with a My Operations toggle. Permission-gated Import and Export buttons handle assignment CSVs — vehicle assignments on the Blocks tab, driver assignments on the Duties tab. (The stats row you may know from the Day Templates editor is not shown on the live view.)
View mode vs. Edit mode
The page opens in read-only View mode (and returns to it when you change the date). Selecting the pencil switches to Edit mode, which enables selecting segments, the selection action bar, rubber-band multi-select, and drag-and-drop. Select Done to return to View mode.
Selecting and inspecting
In View mode, click a bar for a popover with View on Live Map plus a hover tooltip. In Edit mode you can select a trip or layover (it glows blue) or multi-select by dragging a box or using the Selection dropdown. Note that deadhead bars can't be selected on either screen.
Basic actions
You can assign or change a vehicle (Blocks) or driver (Duties) at any time by clicking the assignment field and searching, or clear it to unassign — this works in either mode. In Edit mode you can add a block or trip, move a trip (with the Move button or by dragging), remove trips, and end or remove layovers, including bulk variants. Empty blocks can be deleted with Delete Block.
Live Schedule vs. Day Templates
It's worth knowing the difference between two similar-looking screens. The Live Schedule shows the realized blocks and duties for a specific calendar date, with live statuses, the current-time line, the vehicle progress marker, assignments, and import/export. The Day Templates editor instead shows block and duty templates by day of week, with the stats row, copy-to-other-days, Work Rules, and Optimize/Regenerate — but no live status or progress marker.
Questions about the live views? Reach out to our support team and we'll be happy to help.