Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It can only know what's registered - it sometimes splits nonsense "this is a connection, honest" stuff as well unless someone has gone in and manually merged it.
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BusTimes.Org
- Thread starter cambsy
- Start date
It can only know what's registered - it sometimes splits nonsense "this is a connection, honest" stuff as well unless someone has gone in and manually merged it.
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Dai Corner
Established Member
- Joined
- 20 Jul 2015
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It deals with the 30 Cardiff-Newport operated by Cardiff Bus and Newport Bus correctly. The timetable shows the operator for each journey and the map shows both operators' vehicles.
markymark2000
On Moderation
It depends where the data comes from really. If it's multiple operators, and the source is Traveline it can sometimes show both operators because Traveline will merge the data for example. If however it's the source for the operators is open data, the data is normally merged manually but this depends on if the data all matches.
On the QBP* routes, it generally wouldn't work anyway because the QBP routes tend to have operator specific variations. Such as, the 14s could be merged but you'd have gaps in the timetable where a 14A, B, C or X operates. The 82 corridor well Arriva go to Speke, Stagecoach go to South Parkway. 86 corridor, Stagecoach do South Parkway and Hope Uni, Arriva go Garston (not via South Parkway) and Airport (via Parkway). 10A, strictly speaking the 10 forms part of the agreement too and as does the 10B between Page Moss and Liverpool. The 53 is the only corridor where both operators run the same thing and the timetable can be properly combined. The down sides of combining routes though is that some people may need specifically an Arriva bus or Stagecoach bus to buy their ticket and by merging high frequency routes, you end up giving people too much information and people can't find the specific information that they want. Infact, look at Morebus for the M1, tick the M2. It's chaotic and merging most of the Liverpool QBPs would make an even worse version of that if you were to merge them all properly.
Data for the 30 comes from the Traveline dataset. TravelineCymru I think release this data as a whole. Where the source for data is open data, this will be merged manually.
* Quality Bus Partnership
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Dai Corner
Established Member
- Joined
- 20 Jul 2015
- Messages
- 6,353
Apologies if this is old news,but I've just noticed that bustimes.org is now showing real time data for nearly all services in Wales, from the large groups and municipals down to the smallest operators. I wonder if this is a Welsh Government initiative as BODS is/was only a requirement in England.
markymark2000
On Moderation
It's not normal Bus Open Data. Data for Wales operators comes from the 'Welsh Bus Data Service'. I can't find any public links to the service sadly but I know that's where the data comes from and bustimes owner confirmed it. Wales had done the one thing that the UK Govt should have done, they have said if operators want 'Bus Emergency Scheme' funding (Wales version of Covid bus funding), they must provide tracking details. Helps that the Welsh Govt owns most of the ticket machines though.
(BES is Bus Emergency Scheme)
Maps can be a problem on sites such as this. The mapping on Bustimes.org is reasonably good, but it doesn't show railway stations. It's better than Google Maps in clearly showing the lines but the latter does display the National Rail symbol for a station if you zoom in enough. Some of us like to make the most of a unified public transport system, even if we do most of the unifying ourselves! (With the aid of these independent sites).
I managed to confidently organise a linear walk in stages from Basingstoke to Bristol a few years back using a similar site (UK Bus Checker). That would have been a monumental task relying on timetable information alone.
I notice that Bustimes perpetuates the slightly mad Traveline notion that Hampshire (and Southampton & Portsmouth) are in the South West. However the Isle of Wight is in the South East - resulting in the crazy situation where there are no direct connections from the island to anywhere else in its own region.
This used to matter. Back in the day, using Traveline to plan a journey from somewhere in Hampshire to somewhere in Reading mostly ended in failure.
Politically, Hampshire was always seen as SE, and it's most definitely in the railways' notion of London and the South East.
I managed to confidently organise a linear walk in stages from Basingstoke to Bristol a few years back using a similar site (UK Bus Checker). That would have been a monumental task relying on timetable information alone.
I notice that Bustimes perpetuates the slightly mad Traveline notion that Hampshire (and Southampton & Portsmouth) are in the South West. However the Isle of Wight is in the South East - resulting in the crazy situation where there are no direct connections from the island to anywhere else in its own region.
This used to matter. Back in the day, using Traveline to plan a journey from somewhere in Hampshire to somewhere in Reading mostly ended in failure.
Politically, Hampshire was always seen as SE, and it's most definitely in the railways' notion of London and the South East.
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Leedsbusman
Member
Random question - but does anyone know how to add a new livery on bustimes? There is an ‘other colours’ box but it wants HTML strings.
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
You use that other colours box and you give the hex codes. Follow the link below to the website and get the colours you need.
HTML Color Codes
Easily find HTML color codes for your website using our color picker, color chart and HTML color names with Hex color codes, RGB and HSL values.
htmlcolorcodes.com
Howardh
Established Member
- Joined
- 17 May 2011
- Messages
- 8,185
Not sure about the app, but on PC you can click on the "layers" icon and select "bright" and you get a much better map, with stations indicated. It's on the right hand side under the +/- icon.
Leedsbusman
Member
How do you add the name after it though?You use that other colours box and you give the hex codes. Follow the link below to the website and get the colours you need.
HTML Color Codes
Easily find HTML color codes for your website using our color picker, color chart and HTML color names with Hex color codes, RGB and HSL values.
Only admins can add a detailed full livery
As of recently, you can choose the "Bright" or "Outdoors" map styles, which do show the names of railway stations (from OpenStreetMap)
(screenshot shows the "Bright" style selected with Berney Arms railway station marked on the map
Thanks for that. It's much easier on the eye and does give station names. I'm always a bit slow in exploring all the features of these application
markymark2000
On Moderation
There is no app for bustimes.org
If you have the permissions, on the edit page, at the end of the livery it will say 'add proper livery'.
Not just admins. There are trusted users as well who can make more edits and do some more in depth things like amend and create liveries
markymark2000
On Moderation
That comes from the open data. Where companies provide the vehicle duty in their open data, as soon as a vehicle logs on one of the trips, it shows the rest of the duty as an advisory.
For example if vehicle duty ABC does the 10:06 outbound trip, if a bus logs on the 10:06 outbound trip, it will show duty ABC for the rest of the day to advise that is what the bus may do and enable things like estimated arrival times.
Which specific open data though? There seems to be a lot of bus open data floating around but just wondered which have the duty details. Thanks.
(Go South Coast is the specific division I'm interested in if that helps).
markymark2000
On Moderation
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to get. Are you trying to find all of the vehicle duties without having to wait for a bus to track on a trip first?
Bustimes gets all of its Bluestar timetable data via this dataset (this is also where the block/vehicle duty data comes from)
Data set details
Some operators publish the data, some don't, some don't have the data in their system in the first place.
Ah ok, thanks. Just the duties, just curious.
If a ghost bus is a bus that appears in a bus app but doesn't exist on the road, then we could call a bus that isn't in the app but does exist on the road an antighost bus. I just travelled one.
I'm standing at a stop for northbound bus 76 in Bristol. A 76 that is not shown as expected at that stop on bustimes.org turns up. I know it's not shown as expected because bustimes.org gives the actual licence plate number (let's say 1234 XYZ), so I can see that this license plate was not on the list of expected buses. I get on. The first thing I check is that bus 1234 XYZ is showing as a live bus on the bustimes.org route map, and yes it is. Even though it was not shown on the expected list, it is on the route map and there is its little icon pootling merrily up Gloucester Road with my GPS next to it.
Then, I look if it is shown as an expected bus at the next stop. No it's not. It's on the road, it's on the route map, but it's not on the expected list for the next stop. It's also not on the expected list at the second stop ahead, the third, or fourth or fifth. But it IS shown as expected at the sixth and seventh stops ahead. And when I check back at stops 2, 3, 4, 5, it is still not shown on those, so it's not like it's appeared on all stops everywhere all at once.
An explanation would be if it was terribly late and the system had given up on it and thought it had already passed stops 2 - 5 ahead. But bustimes.org reports how late/early each bus is, and this one is not shown as late.
So the bus is real but it is shown as an expected bus on some but not all stops on the route ahead of it. Am I right to be puzzled - am I missing something simple? What's going on?
I'm standing at a stop for northbound bus 76 in Bristol. A 76 that is not shown as expected at that stop on bustimes.org turns up. I know it's not shown as expected because bustimes.org gives the actual licence plate number (let's say 1234 XYZ), so I can see that this license plate was not on the list of expected buses. I get on. The first thing I check is that bus 1234 XYZ is showing as a live bus on the bustimes.org route map, and yes it is. Even though it was not shown on the expected list, it is on the route map and there is its little icon pootling merrily up Gloucester Road with my GPS next to it.
Then, I look if it is shown as an expected bus at the next stop. No it's not. It's on the road, it's on the route map, but it's not on the expected list for the next stop. It's also not on the expected list at the second stop ahead, the third, or fourth or fifth. But it IS shown as expected at the sixth and seventh stops ahead. And when I check back at stops 2, 3, 4, 5, it is still not shown on those, so it's not like it's appeared on all stops everywhere all at once.
An explanation would be if it was terribly late and the system had given up on it and thought it had already passed stops 2 - 5 ahead. But bustimes.org reports how late/early each bus is, and this one is not shown as late.
So the bus is real but it is shown as an expected bus on some but not all stops on the route ahead of it. Am I right to be puzzled - am I missing something simple? What's going on?
Trainman40083
Member
Could be a fault with the ticket machine, meaning the bus doesn't track, but is in service. But, given so many operators tell you to track their services, how would one know where it is, or even if it is coming?
Yes, something has gone wrong somewhere - but hard to say what.
If the bus is tracking on the map, that suggests the bus is still in communication with the system, but for whatever reason it's not tracking to the journey it was doing (some systems will track a bus even if it's out of service, some will only 'see' a bus when the ticket machine is logged in to a journey - which in turn can cause that bus to disappear off displays while there's a driver change-over happening.)
Could be a fault in the ticket machine, or in what the driver has entered. Is it half term in your part of the world? Sometimes things don't track right if driver enters the school day journey number instead of the school holiday one, or vice versa.
Although with you saying it later showed as expected at stops 6 and 7 - is the route one that follows a route where it passes - or passes very close to - a stop it serves later? (I don't know the Bristol network.) Routes like that can cause real time systems to get confused and think the bus has already passed that stop.
Alternatively, something could be wrong at the data level. Again, I don't know what software the operator here uses, but with some timetabling / schedules software, it's relatively easy to set up odd journeys at 'timing point' level only and forget to press the button that calculates the times at intermediate stops. Does that journey show correctly at the stop level timetable in Bus Times / Traveline? (although the real time kit could have an older version of the timetable.)
If the bus is tracking on the map, that suggests the bus is still in communication with the system, but for whatever reason it's not tracking to the journey it was doing (some systems will track a bus even if it's out of service, some will only 'see' a bus when the ticket machine is logged in to a journey - which in turn can cause that bus to disappear off displays while there's a driver change-over happening.)
Could be a fault in the ticket machine, or in what the driver has entered. Is it half term in your part of the world? Sometimes things don't track right if driver enters the school day journey number instead of the school holiday one, or vice versa.
Although with you saying it later showed as expected at stops 6 and 7 - is the route one that follows a route where it passes - or passes very close to - a stop it serves later? (I don't know the Bristol network.) Routes like that can cause real time systems to get confused and think the bus has already passed that stop.
Alternatively, something could be wrong at the data level. Again, I don't know what software the operator here uses, but with some timetabling / schedules software, it's relatively easy to set up odd journeys at 'timing point' level only and forget to press the button that calculates the times at intermediate stops. Does that journey show correctly at the stop level timetable in Bus Times / Traveline? (although the real time kit could have an older version of the timetable.)
Trainman40083
Member
Sometimes you even get a bus tracking on two routes at the same time (suggesting correct vehicle data may not have been entered. I suspect when this happens, it doesn't show correctly.
I've not seen that, but you can sometimes get a situation where a ticket machine has been moved from one bus to another, and didn't get re-set, then another machine gets fitted to the first bus and is re-set, so two buses are claiming to have the same identity. Quite how systems cope with that may vary.
The list of departures at a stop (this thing
) is currently a bit dumber than you might expect – in Bristol it just shows the timetabled time, and it doesn't at all take into account whether the bus is running late (or early). So if the bus in the post above was even a few seconds late, and the timetable said it should already have been at stops 2–5, that would explain it.
I have never bothered comparing the reported registration number to the real life one. As a passenger I am content to know where the next bus is and to make sure it hasn't been turned short for some reason.
I haven't encountered a "ghost" bus that simply isn't reporting at all during the current decade but it was an occasional issue for me in the 2010s. Far more common, especially on rural routes, is incorrectly set ticket machines. Most of the rural routes where I live run banjo or dumbell shaped routes with arbitrary termini in the route registration. Combined with most passengers using ENCTS machines may not be reset until a cash customer turns up. With only a handful of services a day all I really care about is that the marker on the map is at the right place at the right time.
I haven't encountered a "ghost" bus that simply isn't reporting at all during the current decade but it was an occasional issue for me in the 2010s. Far more common, especially on rural routes, is incorrectly set ticket machines. Most of the rural routes where I live run banjo or dumbell shaped routes with arbitrary termini in the route registration. Combined with most passengers using ENCTS machines may not be reset until a cash customer turns up. With only a handful of services a day all I really care about is that the marker on the map is at the right place at the right time.
Andy Pacer
Established Member
Systems will generally track both, but only one at a time (and flit between the two), so when reviewing tracking you'll find two trips tracking but both with gaps.
Loop terminus / circular routes are difficult to deal with in a way that ticket machines, journey planners, real time systems and so on, can all handle in a way that makes sense and is correct on the service registration.
For real time displays and ticket machines, the first stop on the journey from the banjo / frying pan shaped loop should be the first stop on the loop where people might want to get on the bus. For journey planners, the stops on the loop need to be set up so that passengers can travel to or from any stop on the loop without getting a journey offered with a spurious 'change bus' or 'get off here and walk' (bearing in mind most journey planners are set not to offer a 'change bus' option with less than 5 minutes between one journey arriving and another departing.)
Some timetabling / scheduling software can cope with having an overlap round the loop that doesn't cause chunks of the route to be registered (and have its mileage counted) twice, some journey planner software allows a 'guaranteed connection' to be set up at the 'terminus', but this often doesn't feed down to third party users of the information like Google Maps.
And in many cases, the solution also needs to allow for buses that genuinely do start or terminate somewhere on the loop having run out of service from somewhere else / depot or vice versa.
And the first stop on the loop (that is generally best for the 'start point' of the other direction) may be somewhere that the bus can't safely / conveniently stand and wait time, so operators may not want to make that the start of route timing point that the traffic commissioners will measure performance against.
Each solution requires time and effort which can be in short supply.