The Scottish Bus Open Data Consultation

Route and timetable data for bus services in Scotland is already published openly through the Traveline National Data Set. However, that dataset is based on the requirements of bus registration and is not always detailed enough to use in journey planners. For example, bus operators are required to provide a proposed timetable indicating proposed times at principle points on the route to register a service, while journey planning requires every bus stop on the route to be included.

We propose to require operators to provide, in a digital format, a timetable with information provided at bus stop level, and route data provided as a list of points that allow the route to be drawn with sufficient detail to follow the associated road geometry (as opposed to presuming a route between bus stops).

Data submitted to Traveline Scotland is currently provided in a variety of formats (although most commonly TransXChange 2.1). As data is received in a number of formats it requires further processing by Traveline Scotland to enable them to provide the data in a consistent format. Additionally, legacy formats are still in use which do not include as many data fields as modern formats. This limits the quality of the data that can be provided, for example legacy formats often do not include accessibility information. In order to align with standards in England and Wales, it is likely that we would require the data in the TransXChange format.

We propose that operators would fulfil their statutory requirement to provide open data by submitting their timetable data to the open data hub (Traveline Scotland) in the TransXChange format.