BusTimes.Org

[Andy Pacer]

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.

Agreed. I've found that registering some of my lolliop shaped routes as a circular has helped journey planners and ticket machines etc.

 

[embers25]

Does anyone know why Bustimes.org has stopped showing Stagecoach South? You can still see them by going into map view and finding a bus on your route but timetables are gone.

 

[Andy3142]

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 studied another trip yesterday and it turns out the bus I originally posted about was simply late. If a bus is 2 minutes late at a stop, in bustimes it vanishes from the list of expected buses. (Unlear if exactly 2 minutes or roughly that.)

Puzzles remain. My original bus must have been 7 - 10 minutes late, but was not flagged as late by bustimes. How is it decided a bus is late and why is that not always shown?

Also in the the Firstbus app (Bristol is Firstbus) and in Citymapper the bus that is 2 minutes late continues to be shown as expected at the stop, eg listed as "Due." So one puzzle is why the apps do it differently.

 

[Typhoon]

Does anyone know why Bustimes.org has stopped showing Stagecoach South? You can still see them by going into map view and finding a bus on your route but timetables are gone.

I can see them - all four route 3s for instance. Is that still the case? I remember, at one time 'Stagecoach South' was listed twice. Maybe they are tidying up?

 

[Bill Badger]

Seem to be a few gremlins on the system at the moment! All timetables for Go Cornwall have been set as from 14th April, so nothing showing for any timetables before then!

 

[Marcus Fryer]

Seem to be a few gremlins on the system at the moment! All timetables for Go Cornwall have been set as from 14th April, so nothing showing for any timetables before then!

Same for Plymouth Citybus (effectively the same company as Go Cornwall, of course).

 

[borage]

Does anyone know why Bustimes.org has stopped showing Stagecoach South? You can still see them by going into map view and finding a bus on your route but timetables are gone.

They're back again now – bug on the bustimes.org side

Seem to be a few gremlins on the system at the moment! All timetables for Go Cornwall have been set as from 14th April, so nothing showing for any timetables before then!

Same for Plymouth Citybus (effectively the same company as Go Cornwall, of course).

Yes, Go South West's timetable data on BODS (the Bus Open Data Service) has data for the 14 April onwards but they've accidentally removed the current data. I've reported it to them now so hopefully they'll fix it.

I studied another trip yesterday and it turns out the bus I originally posted about was simply late. If a bus is 2 minutes late at a stop, in bustimes it vanishes from the list of expected buses. (Unlear if exactly 2 minutes or roughly that.)

It can vanish if it's more than 0 seconds late, but the list of departures is "cached" for 60–90 seconds so it may not disappear until it's 90 seconds late

 

[markymark2000]

Agreed. I've found that registering some of my lolliop shaped routes as a circular has helped journey planners and ticket machines etc.

Lollipop routes are difficult as the 'destination' shown to passengers on sites showing bus stop departures will be wrong half of the time as the destination will show either the outbound or inbound terminus.

The best way that I have found for lollipop routes (albeit I think it may be harder for operators to do without systems flagging up as losing mileage) is to have the outbound set up to the start of the circular as normal and then show as set down only until the last stop on the circular, then have the inbound stop as normal from the first stop on the circular to wherever the starting point is.
Kind of Outbound A-B-C (B-C set down only) then B-C-A on the inbound.

 

[Andy Pacer]

Lollipop routes are difficult as the 'destination' shown to passengers on sites showing bus stop departures will be wrong half of the time as the destination will show either the outbound or inbound terminus.

The best way that I have found for lollipop routes (albeit I think it may be harder for operators to do without systems flagging up as losing mileage) is to have the outbound set up to the start of the circular as normal and then show as set down only until the last stop on the circular, then have the inbound stop as normal from the first stop on the circular to wherever the starting point is.
Kind of Outbound A-B-C (B-C set down only) then B-C-A on the inbound.

Having the stops on two seperate journeys is a problem with that approach, but in an ideal world it makes sense.

 

[Roger1973]

The best way that I have found for lollipop routes (albeit I think it may be harder for operators to do without systems flagging up as losing mileage) is to have the outbound set up to the start of the circular as normal and then show as set down only until the last stop on the circular, then have the inbound stop as normal from the first stop on the circular to wherever the starting point is.
Kind of Outbound A-B-C (B-C set down only) then B-C-A on the inbound.

Having the stops on two seperate journeys is a problem with that approach, but in an ideal world it makes sense.

Yes, I have seen some operators who produce paper (or at least online PDF) public timetables where the two directions would be presented as A to C and B to A.

And if you set B to C as 'set down only' on the outward journey, it shouldn't show up on stop level departure lists, or real time displays, as a duplicate journey.

Some timetable / schedules software will allow you to set up 'publicity stops' so that the registered journey (and therefore mileage for anything that needs a mileage calculation) is only A to B, but it will show in publicity as A to C via B.

Although this requires a bit more time, thought and effort on the operator's part to do it.

And I'm not sure how easy it is to feed that in to BODS for anything that takes the data from there - DfT thought process that operators feed data in to BODS and everyone else can just take data from there and everything will be fine doesn't take the sort of thing where some local knowledge is needed in to account.

 

[Bowie]

Apologies if this has been posted before but whats with buses suddenly tracking randomly at 3am. For example my operator Stagecoach Highlands does this where every single bus at Inverness depot suddenly tracks at 3 in the morning like clockwork

 

[ACBest]

Apologies if this has been posted before but whats with buses suddenly tracking randomly at 3am. For example my operator Stagecoach Highlands does this where every single bus at Inverness depot suddenly tracks at 3 in the morning like clockwork

That’s the set time that all the machines come online for updates I think. Ticketer machines all come alive overnight at about 0300 for what they call ‘overnight maintenance’ (firmware updates, and ensuring all data is up to date etc), and although it’s been a few years since I last used VIX machines, I’m certain they had a very similar function at a very similar time.

 

[Andy Pacer]

That’s the set time that all the machines come online for updates I think. Ticketer machines all come alive overnight at about 0300 for what they call ‘overnight maintenance’ (firmware updates, and ensuring all data is up to date etc), and although it’s been a few years since I last used VIX machines, I’m certain they had a very similar function at a very similar time.

Definitely seems to be "a thing" with Stagecoach and their machines. Ticketer machines don't seem to 'track' as part of it.

 

[ACBest]

Definitely seems to be "a thing" with Stagecoach and their machines. Ticketer machines don't seem to 'track' as part of it.

Their machines seem to transmit the position of the vehicle to the SIRI-VM feed at all times, whether the machine is logged on or not, and whether the vehicle is on a service or not - whereas Ticketer only transmits vehicle position data to the SIRI-VM feed when the ticket machine meets two criteria: a) that it is logged in to a journey; AND b) the service on which that journey is operating has an external service code entered on the Ticketer portal. (Note that a handful of companies put dead runs through on a service called DEAD or such, rather than using the dead run function, which causes them to appear on Bustimes.)

(For anyone who doesn’t know, I should explain that the SIRI-VM feed is the data feed through which vehicle position data is made available to various sources, including bus open data portal.)

 

[markymark2000]

Ticketer only transmits vehicle position data to the SIRI-VM feed when the ticket machine meets two criteria: a) that it is logged in to a journey; AND b) the service on which that journey is operating has an external service code entered on the Ticketer portal.

3 criteria. The 3rd being the service needs to be added to the correct Siri-VM feed. A lot of operators fall at that hurdle where everything is set up properly but they don't go to the feed and add the service. Some operators have this set up to 'all services' (which is why some closed door contracts and rail replacement track), some operators manually select which routes send data to the Siri VM feed (which is how often new services don't track as the operator has forgotten to add the service to the feed).

 

[Edvid]

Ticketer machines all come alive overnight at about 0300 for what they call ‘overnight maintenance’ (firmware updates, and ensuring all data is up to date etc)

That might explain why (for instance) one-day Intalink Explorer tickets with QR codes are set to expire at 0300 the following day.

 

[Deerfold]

That might explain why (for instance) one-day Intalink Explorer tickets with QR codes are set to expire at 0300 the following day.

Perhaps but Transdev's tickets expire at 0400 (perhaps because their latest service finished at 0401 and their earliest starts at 0426.