Bus operators and local authorities in England must use this
service to publish bus timetable, location and fares data.
Contents
-
Register to start
publishing on the Bus Open Data Service
-
Who must publish bus
data
-
Publishing your bus
data
-
How to publish location
data
-
How to publish fares
data
-
Helping others to use
your data
-
Contacts
Register to start publishing on the Bus Open Data
Service
If you run a local bus service in England you should have
received an email inviting you to register for an account.
If you’ve not received an email, or you’re a new operator,
contact the Help Desk.
Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to access publish your bus data.
Who must publish bus data
All operators who run local bus services in England outside
London must publish their data. This includes operators of
cross-border services such as those running into and outside of
London and Wales – or Scotland into England.
Community bus operators with exemptions under Section 19 or 22 of the
Transport Act 1985 do not currently have to publish their
data.
This includes:
- coach services
- tour services
- unregistered dedicated school services or those services
which have been voluntarily registered as a dedicated school
service
However, tour services are not exempt if they take any passengers
on point-to-point journeys rather than a full tour. All other
local bus services are in scope for data publication.
Publishing your bus dataHow to publish
timetables data
All data must be published using the latest version of the
TransXChange PTI profile. The detailed documentation describing
the PTI profile is held on the PTI website.
TransXChange is the UK standard for exchanging bus schedules and
related data. The TransXChange web pages
provide an overview on TransXChange, including the TransXChange
2.4 schema, which explains the technical rules for producing
TransXChange.
The easiest ways to produce TransXChange are to use:
- your existing timetabling software
- our TransXChange tool
TransXChange tool
The TransXChange tool enables you to produce PTI compliant
TransXChange bus timetable data.
Download the TransXchange tool for
Windows (XLSM, 17.3 MB).
If you require a version for Mac or Libre Office, or if you need
additional support, contact bodshelpdesk@kpmg.co.uk.
How to publish location data
We recommend that you contact your electronic ticket machine
(ETM) supplier and
ask them to share the automatic vehicle location (AVL) feed. They should be
expecting your request and will know the information you will
need.
Once you have this information, use BODS to publish this feed.
How to publish fares data
Operators who have ETM suppliers can also talk
with them about hosted NeTEx solutions, or they can use the free
‘Create fares data’ service
to produce data in NeTEx standard format.
Helping others to use your data
The bus open data service will provide bus timetable, vehicle
location and fares data for every local bus service in England.
The ‘Find bus data’ service
explains how you can use access and use this data.
We’ll expect application developers and researchers to access the
data once it’s been published on BODS. It’ll be important to
maintain the data you’ve published to ensure that journey
planning applications are accurate and improve passenger
experience.
Consumers will also be able to give feedback to you about the
quality of your data to help improve and maintain it.
Contacts
To get in touch, email us at busopendata@dft.gov.uk.
