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Bus fares through open data

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johncrossley

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I presume bus fares are now available through open data, given that it was announced years ago. How do I access the information?
 
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Dai Corner

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I presume bus fares are now available through open data, given that it was announced years ago. How do I access the information?

Traveline South West day the following

Fares and Ticket Information​

Point to point single & return fares, day and week tickets details for all or part of your bus journey are now offered as part of trip plan results. Links to National Rail and main express coach service sites are also given for details of fares for these modes.

National PTI makes all reasonable efforts to ensure that fares and ticket information is accurate at date of publication. Fares and ticket prices shown were correct at time of data upload and are for a selected ticket range only. Other ticket types and fares may be available from operator websites, sales outlets or on board. National PTI cannot be held liable should another fare option prove to be more appropriate and no guarantee is given that tickets shown are the most suitable for your purpose.

Click on the orange
fares.png
fares icon in the journey plan result. Single and return fares are displayed wherever we have details, the “More Tickets” button shows details of day and week tickets throughout our area.
Or if you want the raw data to download then it's linked from the DfT website
 

johncrossley

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It doesn't work. (The image below is a screenshot of the Traveline website, showing fare information)

1629120897968.png
 
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Dai Corner

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Click on 'More Tickets', which will show you the applicable zonal fares.

Selecting a shorter journey such as Chipping Sodbury to Yate will display the available Stagecoach Single and Return Fares.
 

johncrossley

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Click on 'More Tickets', which will show you the applicable zonal fares.

I can find that information out from the website anyway! One of the main points of this exercise was to be able to access single and return fare information that most companies had preferred to keep secret until now.

Is the problem that First haven't provided the data, or is Traveline SW not processing it correctly?
 

borage

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After some trial and error I got Traveline South West to tell me a Salisbury Reds fare between Salisbury and Devizes (see attached picture). It's not strictly open data as far as I know. (The image below is a screenshot of the Traveline South West website, showing fare information)

Screenshot 2021-08-16 at 15.06.38.png

This top secret page on bustimes.org (/fares) gives an idea of the current state of the open data. It's quite a mess and not really ready yet.
 
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johncrossley

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It's all available here:
https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/fares/download/

Or you can find what individual companies publish here:
https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/fares/

This is hardly in a user friendly format. Searching for Bristol or First Bus in the drop down yields nothing. I'm not seriously going to unzip all those zip files in the hope of finding the relevant file. Based on the bustimes.org list mentioned above, it appears that First haven't uploaded the data like they were supposed to.
 
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Stan Drews

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This is hardly in a user friendly format. Searching for Bristol or First Bus in the drop down yields nothing. I'm not seriously going to unzip all those zip files in the hope of finding the relevant file. Based on the bustimes.org list mentioned above, it appears that First haven't uploaded the data like they were supposed to.
I understand that Bus Open Data isn’t really aimed at individual consumers, but rather that it is available for third party users to interpret, using appropriate software, and publish in a way that they choose - either as part of a commercial proposition, or the likes of local authorities, transport partnerships etc.
 

Dai Corner

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Are we talking about First West of England in particular?

Looking at their Fare Guide leaflet they don't seem to use the fare stage concept any more. It's either a zonal ticket or a '3 stop hop' for short single journeys. There are no fare tables for them to upload.
 

johncrossley

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Are we talking about First West of England in particular?

Looking at their Fare Guide leaflet they don't seem to use the fare stage concept any more. It's either a zonal ticket or a '3 stop hop' for short single journeys. There are no fare tables for them to upload.

For longer journeys outside of the main cities their fares still vary by distance.
 

Dai Corner

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For longer journeys outside of the main cities their fares still vary by distance.
For longer journeys the West of England zone fare will probably apply. For shorter journeys outside the urban areas I guess we'll have to ask the company for now.
 

carlberry

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This is hardly in a user friendly format. Searching for Bristol or First Bus in the drop down yields nothing. I'm not seriously going to unzip all those zip files in the hope of finding the relevant file. Based on the bustimes.org list mentioned above, it appears that First haven't uploaded the data like they were supposed to.
It wasn't supposed to be in a user friendly format, just a computer readable format that can then be used by other applications.

I suspect the requirement to upload the data has been pushed back because of covid/brexit/government indifference to bus passengers.
 

johncrossley

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It wasn't supposed to be in a user friendly format, just a computer readable format that can then be used by other applications.

I suspect the requirement to upload the data has been pushed back because of covid/brexit/government indifference to bus passengers.

They've had literally decades to provide this information to the public, even before delivery became mandatory. Other operators have managed to do it.
 

nesw

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It’s been slow progress with the fares data for various reasons and it’ll probably be the year before all operators are uploading data. There were various issues with the Ticketer platform that many operators use however, I believe that this has been resolved. There's compatibility issues with other platforms converting the data to the Network Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) format and other than entering data manually, it's going go be a while before the suppliers update the software.

Some of the larger operators have uploaded fares data including Reading & TrentBarton. A number of Firstbus companies have started to upload data via Ticketer (Essex, Norfolk & Suffolk, York) and I know that Josh, Mr. Bustimes has been trying to get the data into a user friendly format. Stagecoach are also slowly making their data available.

I believe that the uploads of fares will steadily pick up over the next six months.
 
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