5 May 2020 by Jonathan Raper
At a time of huge change in public transport due to CoronaVirus it is especially important to have the most up-to-date information on your journey. However, until now non-rail disruption information has been published separately by each operator and/or local authority and there was no one place to go for updates on the services you use.
As part of Phase 2 of Transport for the North’s (TfN) Integrated and Smart Travel (IST) programme, TransportAPI working with Trapeze Group has begun publishing disruption messaging from Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) across the north of England in one integrated SIRI-SX feed. SIRI-SX is a structured way to publish disruption messages that allows the specific operators, routes and stops affected to be published as data that apps and websites can harvest and display.
Developers can now register for access to the TfN Open Data Hub (ODH) where they can begin using the disruption messaging data through an application programming interface (API).
The initial data release to registered developers is for access to the disruption messaging polling interface, and the response will be delivered as a set of SIRI-SX ‘situations’ describing all current disruptions uploaded by LTAs. The SIRI-SX data is available through a HTTP POST transport layer with authorisation in the HTTP headers defined by HTTP basic authentication as documented on the ODH.
Once you have registered on the site and had your access confirmed you will be able to use a tool like Postman to explore the data before doing any programmatic integration. To issue a POST request you will need to enter data on
- Hostname (api.transportforthenorth.com/siri/sx)
- Content-Type (Application/xml)
- Authorisation details (register and then see documentation)
- Request details (register and then see documentation)
Once you have issued a valid request you will get a response in XML with details of the all the Situations that are currently available.
XML data is not designed to be read by humans, however, if you search the results for using the search button, you will be able to skip through the disruptions and scan their Summary by eye. For systematic use SIRI-SX data will need to be integrated into an application that can store or display the results, for example in an app or on a website.
This is the first stage of a release programme of disruption messaging data and TransportAPI is proud to be partnering with Transport for the North to help make it easier for public transport passengers to find disruption information relevant to their journey. A full overview of the information available on the TfN Open Data Hub is available on their website.