To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 27 January 2022 to Question 110357 on Bus Services: Travel Information, when real time data from Newcastle was first available on the Bus Open Data Service; and what assessment he has made of the reasons for which there is no integrated real time data available in Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency.
Answered on
3 February 2022
Since 7 January 2021, it has been legally required that operators of local bus services across England openly publish their bus live location data to the Bus Open Data Service. Currently, 98% of vehicles are fitted with location data devices.
Third party application developers are able to access this open data online via the Find Bus Data Service for inclusion in journey planners and applications, helping passengers plan their journey on public transport on their mobile phone or computer.
In the North East, application developers such as Google Maps, Bus Times, Transit and Citymapper have been able to launch their journey planning products which include bus time arrivals utilising data from the Bus Open Data Service and integrates it into multimodal journey plans to enable passengers to plan their journeys on public transport.