Open Data

3. Train and bus data - The Government will

work with the transport industry to make

available by April 2012 timetable and real-time

train and bus information to support the

development of innovative applications to

improve passenger journeys.

This measure will support the development of

a real-time transport information market,

helping passengers make better travel

decisions and businesses to better predict

logistics and travel needs. This measure will

release under the Open Government Licence

(OGL) comprehensive timetable and real-time

train and bus information as machinereadable and machine-processable data, as

well as locational information about the rail

network and its railway stations. Unless

otherwise stated, the commitments to release

this data will be for April 2012.

DfT will work with the Transport Industry to

make available the following rail data sets:

o Rail timetable information on a weekly

basis (December 2011)

o Real-time running data from Network Rail

o Location data about Great Britain Rail

network

o Location data about GB rail network

stations

DfT will also work with Traveline to release

the following data relating to buses:

o Traveline National Dataset on a weekly

basis (Great Britain buses); and

o Next Buses API of planned and real-time

information at 350,000 GB bus stops

(April 2012).

4. Rail fares data - The Government will

consult in early 2012, through the Fares and

Ticketing Review, on providing open access to rail

fares data, giving passengers and business better

information and enabling them to make the most

cost-effective travel choices.

DfT will work with the rail industry to ensure

that full data on rail fares is made available to

passengers and business. DfT will consult as

part of its Fares and Ticketing Review on how

the rail industry could provide this data in a

way that protects passengers against

potential misinterpretation of complex data

on fares levels and restrictions. In addition,

DfT will set out a way forward for Rail

Transparency including Open Data in the

forthcoming Rail Command Paper.

Releasing this data will boost the market for

fare finding and comparison services such as

online search engines or mobile apps. This

could also include comparisons between

different modes of transport. We would

expect this to result in savings for passengers

and business.

Traveline makes use of various sets of data - some of which are now available:

NaPTAN and NPTG - these two databases provide the geographical referencing for public transport in GB. The National Public Transport Access Points database of around 350,000 records has name and locational information for each type of public transport stop in the country, along with formal names and links to geographical areas through NPTG, the national gazetteer. For more information see Downloading NaPTAN
Service information - there is a database which is available for back-office use only which takes a week's snapshot of all public transport route (as in "stops recognised", not as a shape-file track) and timetable data for the whole country. It is used for transport planning studies and other back-office activities - and may not be used for public-facing information services (because the information is out of date by the time it is published, and gets more and more out of date every week). For more information seeNPTDR
There is current timetable and route data held in a variety of locations and this has not available to third parties other than under specific bi-lateral agreements. This data is being brought together into a continually maintained National Data Set of current schedules information - and it is being released for testing.
Traveline has released an API to the www.nextbuses.mobi service - which gives the next scheduled departures from any stop in the country with either its scheduled time or, where available, with its real-time predicted departure time - the requests for information have to use the AtcoCode or NaptanCode for the stop - so any application using the API needs to be able to resolve a user's requirement to one or other of these codes for the stop they are interested in. See the NextBuses stakeholder site for further information