Agency overview | |
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Formed | 28 January 2020 |
Jurisdiction | England |
Ministers responsible |
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Parent department | Department of Transport |
Website | www |
The Bus Open Data Service (BODS) is a government-funded service in England, established in 2020 [1] as part of the Bus Services Act 2017. It was created in a partnership between ITO World, the Department for Transport and KPMG. [2]
The service is described by ITO World as "an international first", as it provides Open Data of bus timetables, fares and Automatic Vehicle Location of buses across England. [3]
As part of the requirements set by the Department for Transport in The Public Service Vehicles (Open Data) (England) Regulations 2020, [4] the Bus Open Data Service set deadlines for operators to provide data. [3]
The implementation requirements only applied in England [5]
Following the introduction of the Bus Open Data, there have been a number of uses for the system.
Despite providing fare, time and vehicle location, the Department for Transport has ruled out including key accessibility information on bus stops, stations and vehicles despite the Bus Services Act making specific provision for open data, 'for the purpose of facilitating travel by disabled persons'. [9]
A number of operators have struggled to provide the data required by the deadlines provided by the Bus Open Data Service, requiring providers to implement alternative solutions. [10] [11]
The Confederation of Passenger Transport, and operators of home-to-school transport, criticised the requirement for operators to provide data about registered home-to-school bus services, and the exemption of Section 22 community bus services. [12] [13]
Writing in Buses magazine, Centrebus Group owner Julian Peddle called the service "a horrendously bureaucratic and over-engineered system designed by well-meaning but clueless officials in London. It’s running late, does not work properly, and has involved the industry and local authorities in vast amounts of needless work. It’s supposedly been running since January 2021, but has not improved things in the wilds of Shropshire, and never will, because government bureaucrats don’t understand the problem, so have no chance of solving it." [14]
A bus stop is a place where buses stop for passengers to get on and off the bus. The construction of bus stops tends to reflect the level of usage, where stops at busy locations may have shelters, seating, and possibly electronic passenger information systems; less busy stops may use a simple pole and flag to mark the location. Bus stops are, in some locations, clustered together into transport hubs allowing interchange between routes from nearby stops and with other public transport modes to maximise convenience.
London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus services to TfL, controlled by the Mayor of London.
Stagecoach West Scotland is an operating region of Stagecoach UK Bus, comprising Western Buses Ltd based in Ayr, Scotland.
Bus deregulation in Great Britain involved the abolition of Road Service Licensing for bus services outside of Greater London. It began in 1980 with long-distance bus services and was extended to local bus services in 1986 under the Transport Act 1985. The abolition of Road Service Licensing removed the public sector's role in fare-setting, routes, and bus frequencies and returned those powers to bus operators.
Lothian Buses is a major bus operator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the largest municipal bus company in the United Kingdom: the City of Edinburgh Council owns 91%, Midlothian Council 5%, East Lothian Council 3% and West Lothian Council 1%.
First Glasgow is the largest bus company serving the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. The company operates within the area covered by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, a public body responsible for helping to co-ordinate public transport services in the Greater Glasgow area.
Diamond Bus Ltd., trading as Diamond North West, is a bus operator providing services in the districts of Bolton and Wigan in Greater Manchester, England, operating an extensive commercial network as well as franchised Bee Network bus services on contract to Transport for Greater Manchester. It also serves some areas of the districts of Salford and Trafford.
The Public Transport Information and Priority System, abbreviated PTIPS, is a computer-based system used in New South Wales, Australia, that brings together information about public transport entities, such as buses. Where applicable, PTIPS can also provide transport vehicles with priority at traffic signals.
TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, local authorities and passenger transport executives, and others involved in the provision of passenger information.
A journey planner, trip planner, or route planner is a specialized search engine used to find an optimal means of travelling between two or more given locations, sometimes using more than one transport mode. Searches may be optimized on different criteria, for example fastest, shortest, fewest changes, cheapest. They may be constrained, for example, to leave or arrive at a certain time, to avoid certain waypoints, etc. A single journey may use a sequence of several modes of transport, meaning the system may know about public transport services as well as transport networks for private transportation. Trip planning or journey planning is sometimes distinguished from route planning, which is typically thought of as using private modes of transportation such as cycling, driving, or walking, normally using a single mode at a time. Trip or journey planning, in contrast, would make use of at least one public transport mode which operates according to published schedules; given that public transport services only depart at specific times, an algorithm must therefore not only find a path to a destination, but seek to optimize it so as to minimize the waiting time incurred for each leg. In European Standards such as Transmodel, trip planning is used specifically to describe the planning of a route for a passenger, to avoid confusion with the completely separate process of planning the operational journeys to be made by public transport vehicles on which such trips are made.
The York park and ride is a park and ride network in the cathedral city of York, England, with sites operated by the City of York Council and bus services operated by First York. It is the largest park and ride network in the United Kingdom, with 4,970 car spaces across six sites: Askham Bar, Grimston Bar, Monks Cross, Poppleton Bar, Rawcliffe Bar and York Designer Outlet.
Stagecoach Cumbria & North Lancashire operates both local and regional bus services in Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, England, as well as Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group, which operates bus and coach services across the United Kingdom.
McGill's Bus Services is a bus operator based in Greenock, Scotland. The company has grown to operate a network of routes covering much of the council areas of Inverclyde, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, North Lanarkshire, Glasgow City, North Ayrshire, West Lothian, Falkirk and Dundee City. McGill's have several depots based in Greenock, Inchinnan, Johnstone, Edinburgh, Bannockburn, Balfron, Larbert, Livingston and Dundee. McGill's also formerly had depots in Dumbarton, Barrhead and Coatbridge.
The Wright StreetDeck is an integral double-decker bus manufactured by Wrightbus since 2014, originally delivered as standard with a Daimler OM934 diesel engine. Hybrid-electric, full-electric and hydrogen-powered variants have subsequently been produced. Production of the StreetDeck range was briefly suspended when Wrightbus entered administration in September 2019.
Diamond East Midlands, formerly Midland Classic, is a bus company from Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England. Since August 2022, the company is a subsidiary of Rotala.
The Bus Services Act 2017 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provides for local transport authorities to create partnership schemes to improve bus services in their areas, and to introduce advanced ticketing schemes. The Act also provides for mayoral combined authorities to partially re-regulate bus services by creating franchise schemes similar to the one operated by Transport for London. It, however, prohibits local authorities from reversing complete bus deregulation, which had taken place following the Transport Act 1985, by forming a company for the purpose of providing local services.
Fflecsi is a trial demand-responsive bus service administered by Transport for Wales (TfW) and local authorities, operated by local bus operators across Wales. Pilot trials of the service are conducted across Wales, which included a city-wide trial in Newport until September 2022. The effectiveness of the service is being monitored as full bus services resume in Wales during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pilots, fflecsi will replace some pre-existing scheduled bus routes in the service areas where it operates. The technology behind the service is made by ViaVan, and the pilot is funded by the Welsh Government, to invest in new approaches to public transport in Wales as part of their Llwybr Newydd strategy. The pilot was included in Welsh Labour's manifesto for the 2021 Senedd election, as part of their plan to increase investment in bus services, and reducing Wales' carbon emissions.
Bustimes.org is a transportation information website created to take advantage of Bus Services Act 2017 requirement for bus operators in England to provide bus timetables, fares and vehicle locations in an open data format, which can be utilised by app and website developers. This DfT service is called the Bus Open Data Service.
Centrebus Group, is a public transport company based in Leicester with bus services in the Midlands, North West and South East of England.
Bus transport in Wales is a significant form of public transport in Wales. In 2021–22 52.3 million journeys were travelled in Wales on local buses.