The Scottish Bus Open Data Consultation

Real time information is needed for passengers to be updated on the live status of a bus service. This increases confidence of using public transport. Real time information is proposed to include information on vehicle locations, bus stop arrival and departure times, live timetables, and on-bus information including capacity and wheelchair space utilisation.

SIRI is the most common data standard currently used for Real Time Passenger Information systems in the UK. There are various types of SIRI data which deliver different real time information.

A mixture of Regional Transport Partnerships, local authorities and operators currently coordinate the real time information for bus operators in their areas and feed this to Traveline Scotland. While coverage is increasing, real time information is not currently available for every bus service in Scotland. Additionally, quality issues can also arise when scheduled data used in the Traveline Scotland journey planner is different to the schedule data being reported by real-time systems. This can occur when changes to bus services take place at short notice.

There are two options for real time data to be provided in, based on current processes for those operators providing real time data. These are:

SIRI: SIRI data (specifically SIRI-SM, SIRI-VM, SIRI-ET and SIRI-SX could be used to provide real-time arrivals, departures and timetables, vehicle positions, accessibility of the bus and emissions data and real time service alerts.

GTFS: Alternatively, GTFS Realtime could be used which contains trip updates, vehicle positions, and service alerts.

Having reviewed the two options, we understand that SIRI collects higher resolution data than GTFS, and allows for data to be converted into GTFS for use data consumers. We believe that real time data should be provided in the SIRI data standard to collect more raw data and to align with English and Welsh standards