The Scottish Bus Open Data Consultation

Fares and ticket information is essential to the public in journey planning, as well as for making informed choices and comparing travel options between providers and modes. Fares information can be used to inform journey planners allowing passengers to make decisions in advance on the cost of their journey. Information on tickets helps to make passengers aware of what potential tickets are on offer that could be used for their journey, and the scope of these tickets.

We recognise that some information about fares and tickets is straightforward, while some information will be more complex to provide, for example, where the price changes depending on factors such as when you get on the bus, or how many stops you pass. We therefore propose to classify fare and ticket information as either ‘simple’ or ‘complex’ and apply separate timescales for the initial submission of this information. A definition of simple and complex fares data is given below

For all tickets, the information we would require is as follows:

• for single and return tickets, the service(s) the ticket is valid on
• for zonal tickets, the service numbers, routes and bus stops included in the range of the ticket
• The ways that fares can be paid (cash, contactless, etc) by ticket type
• how the ticket will appear (paper, smartcard, digital, tap on/off, etc)
• The fares available and if they are different depending on how they are paid for or the ticket format
• which tickets can be bought in advance (and whether that can be done online, or in person) and which can only be purchased on a vehicle