Guidance

Find and use bus open data

Find and use timetable, location and fares data for local bus services in England.

• From: Department for Transport
• Published: 28 January 2020
• Last updated: 25 November 2020 — See all updates

The Bus Open Data Service (BODS) provides timetable, vehicle location and fares data for every local bus service in England. This data is freely available for anyone to use.

Using bus open data

Bus open data is now available for use, and we encourage consumers to access this for commercial and non-commercial purposes. We expect that the primary use will be to make applications which help passengers plan journeys. However, this data may be used for academic research and inform government policy in other areas.

You can find and use bus data in the following ways:

• browse bus open data

You can browse individual data sets or data feeds

• download bus open data data sets

You can download timetables data or bus location data cached on the service.

• use the interactive API service

You can also access the bus open data through an API (application programming interface).

Data formats

Timetable data

Route and timetable information is available in TransXChange format. This is an XML standard used for exchanging bus schedules and related data.

Location data

Bus location data provides real-time vehicle position data in SIRI-VM format. The Standard Interface for Real-Time Information (SIRI) was set by a group of European countries and provides the exchange of real-time information between different computer systems in a format which is also compatible across the EU.

Fares data

Fares and ticketing data will be available in the UK NeTEx profile. The UK NeTEx profile allows for accurate representations of operators’ fares offerings to the market, which can then be accessed and used in journey planning applications.

Support

If you have a question that isn’t answered on this website, you can contact us at [email protected].

Additionally, through the Find Bus Open Data Service, data consumers can now give feedback to publishing operators directly on their individual data sets and data feeds. You can do this in the browse section when you choose an individual dataset.

Published 28 January 2020
Last updated 25 November 2020 + show all updates

1. 25 November 2020

   The guidance has been updated to reflect changes to the Bus Open Data Service.

2. 28 January 2020

   First published.