Three years after setting off, Bus Open Data Service wants consultants to help it on its journey

The UK's Department for Transport is promising a £24 million ($30 million) contract to a tech biz that can help set up a wide range of data services to provide information on local bus services. The DfT said it expected that the provision of high quality, accurate and open data would "help passengers plan journeys, find best …

[ChrisElvidge]

Better services

Wouldn't it be more sensible to use the £24m just to provide better bus services?

[katrinab]

Re: Better services

A bus service isn't much use if you don't know about it or when it runs, or are not confident that, if you take it some place, you will be able to get back home.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: Better services

Well it would be if you could find a few noughts to tag on the end.

[Snowy]

What bus passes this bus stop.

What would be nice if bus stops said what buses route the buss stop is on. Then I could then look up the time table for the bus.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

Google Maps (and presumably there's an accessible API behind it) already has the option to show bus stops by displaying the Public Transport layer, and clicking on a bus stop icon shows you which buses use that stop.

[katrinab]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

There isn't an accessible API behind Google Maps, but in theory, you should be able to access the same GTFS feed that they do.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

There isn't an accessible API behind Google Maps

Ah....I thought you might be able to do something via the Places API, although I'll admit it's a fair old time since I looked at that last and my memory of it is a bit hazy.

[katrinab]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

Probably there is something in their very over-stuffed graveyard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

When I ask for a bus from where I live to the nearest biggish town, it shows me a walking plus train route. :( i.e. not only are there no buses where I live, there aren't even any between the nearest train station and the one in the town.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What bus passes this bus stop.

Everywhere i've lived (and that doesn't include London, in my case), the bus stops have always had the route numbers on them. And often a timetable pinned up on the post too. If you're lucky these days, there's a real-time display too (although usually the local app is more reliable and shows the same info). Plus if the stop is on Google Maps, that often lists them too. But I am, like you, often baffled when I go to other parts of the country and see bus stops with absolutely no info on them whatsoever. It's such an obvious thing to do. You have my sympathy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The search for ... a bus has been in-train

> for more than three years.

Perhaps in-bus would have been more useful?

(Drum sting)

[H in The Hague]

Why is this so challenging?

They've had something like this in NL for ages: https://9292.nl/en

That's a travel planner, so must be built on some sort of open data service. Works nationwide: local busses, regional busses, trains, trams, metros (which, annoyingly, they refer to as 'subways').

Or am I misunderstanding something?