Type of site | Bus Timetable Website |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Founded | 2013 |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Founder(s) | Joshua Goodwin [1] |
Current status | Live |
Written in | Python 3.9+ |
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. [2] This DfT service is called the Bus Open Data Service.
The website also provides information on bus services in parts of the UK to which the Bus Services Act 2017 information requirement does not apply, as well as in Ireland.
Location data from operators such as Lothian Buses is supplied to the site via the Transport for Edinburgh Open Data system. [3]
The site uses data from AVL tracking to determine and transmit the geographic location of a vehicle, such as data from Ticketer machines and the iBus system, in order to display live bus positions on a map.[ citation needed ]
The site also uses data from the National Public Transport Gazetteer, and bus stop locations from NaPTAN.
The live tracking system was added in response to the Department for Transport stating that they wanted "to see more people taking the bus, and those who do take it to have the best possible experience." [4] with fares for companies operating the Passenger MyTrip system being added in 2022. [5] Vehicle details (such as colours, registration plates and fleet numbers) are all added by enthusiastic contributors using the edit vehicle information section by making an account. [6]
The website was criticised by Centrebus Group owner, Julian Peddle, as lacking authority, not being an "official website", and questioning if trust can be placed in its information [7] in an article in Buses Magazine about bus timetable information.
National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the passenger services previously provided by the British Railways Board, from 1965 using the brand name British Rail. Northern Ireland, which is bordered by the Republic of Ireland, has a different system. National Rail services share a ticketing structure and inter-availability that generally do not extend to services which were not part of British Rail.
Metlink was the marketing body and umbrella brand for public train, tram and bus transport operators in Melbourne, Australia. On 2 April 2012, the operations of Metlink were transferred to the newly created public transport planning and management authority, Public Transport Victoria.
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.
Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) is the public body responsible for co-ordinating transport services in the West Midlands metropolitan county in England. It is an executive body of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), with bus franchising and highway management powers similar to Transport for London. TfWM's policies and strategy are set by the Transport Delivery Committee of the WMCA.
Lothian Buses Limited 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%.
The Transport Direct Programme was a division of the UK Department for Transport (DfT) to develop standards, data and better information technology systems to support public transport. It developed and operates the Transport Direct Portal which is a public facing multi-modal journey planner. It also supports the creation and management of comprehensive databases of all public transport movements in the United Kingdom with Traveline. During 2010 two key datasets were released as Open Data and published on www.data.gov.uk.
Hednesford railway station serves the town of Hednesford in Staffordshire, England. The station, and all trains serving it, are operated by West Midlands Railway.
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.
The OV-chipkaart is a contactless smart card and integrated ticketing system used for all public transport in the Netherlands. First introduced in the Rotterdam Metro in April 2005, it has subsequently been rolled out to other areas and travel modes. It fully replaced the national strippenkaart system for buses, trams, and metro trains in 2011, and the paper ticket system for rail travel in July 2014.
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.
National Express Coventry is a bus operator providing services in Coventry. It is a subsidiary of Mobico Group operating on the operators licence of National Express West Midlands.
Nottingham is the seventh largest conurbation in the United Kingdom; despite this, the city's transport system was deemed to be poor for its size in the 1980s. In the early twenty-first century, the UK government invested heavily in the transport network of Nottingham, which has led to the re-opening of the Robin Hood Line and the construction of a light rail system, Nottingham Express Transit.
Tyne and Wear is a metropolitan area covering the cities of Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland, as well as North and South Tyneside, Gateshead and Washington.
Bus Vannin - styled as bus vannin - is the government-owned and operated bus service on the Isle of Man. The name was adopted in June 2009 to replace Isle of Man Transport. The company was founded on 1 October 1976, as National Transport, which was an amalgamation of two other operating companies.
iBus is an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system to improve London Buses using technology installed by Siemens. The system tracks all London's buses, providing passengers with audio-visual announcements and improved information on bus arrivals, with plans to trigger priority at traffic lights.
Buses in Milton Keynes are run by a mixture of operators on a network of urban and rural routes in and around the Milton Keynes urban area. These services have a varied history involving five different companies. At the foundation of the 'New City' in 1967 and for some years afterwards, Milton Keynes was served by a rural bus service between and to the pre-existing towns. Apart from a small-scale experimental service, urban buses arrived on the scene with deregulation in 1986. Since April 2010 the core local services have been provided by Arriva Shires & Essex. Long-distance coach services also serve MK, often via the Milton Keynes Coachway located near junction 14 of the M1 motorway.
Yourbus was a bus operator in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It ran commercial and tendered local bus services from its base in Heanor.
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.
The Bus Open Data Service (BODS) is a government-funded service in England, established in 2020 as part of the Bus Services Act 2017. It was created in a partnership between ITO World, the Department for Transport and KPMG.