19 Dec 2024 by Jonathan Raper

Over the last 3 years TransportAPI has published all of the Bus Open Data Service (BODS) datasets through our managed services. Some of the data has proved extremely useful such as automated vehicle location (AVL) and bus route geometry, and this shows the way to go for BODS in the future.

However, some of the BODS output has been over ambitious, and it has not reached its potential. The bus fares data is the principal example of this as the tooling has not been there for operators to publish comprehensive fares. Therefore, the fares data that has been published does not meet the requirements for the applications that do exist, and not all operators have published their data despite the legal obligation to do so.

Given the challenges with BODS fares data we have reluctantly reached the conclusion that we must discontinue publication of fares through our API until the data completeness improves and the coverage is complete. The TAPI Bus fares manage service will therefore be suspended at the end of this month.

However, we will retain the service for future use. We are still able to import standards-compliant Netex data from individual operators for exposure at the API, and if the BODS data becomes more comprehensive we may return to publishing the national data.