BODS

The Bus services around the Christmas and New Year period will often operate differently to normal weeks. 

The data for use in services such as the Department for Transport Bus Open Data Service , Traveline, journey planners, real time systems and mobile phone apps all need to be updated to reflect the changed operation. 

This advice deals with how to prepare data for the BODS and other systems to ensure that it is correct for the Christmas and New Year 2025-26 holiday period. 

There is a requirement to indicate non-passenger stops (driver rests, driver change over, depots, and waiting time stops) so that these can be included in TransXChange (TXC) files in National Coach Service Database (NCSD), and Bus Open Data Service (BODS) without requiring a stop to be created in the NaPTAN database by an authority. These locations are not used by the public to access or exit public transport, they are required for operational management purposes by operators.  

A new (unofficial) online forum for users of the Bus Open Data Service (BODS) has been launched.
Open data consumers, bus operators, local authorities, customers, suppliers, and any other stakeholder than has an interest in or experience of the BODS service are invited to share their views, questions and experiences via the new open forum which you can find here https://boduf.discourse.group/ .
Please share this link as widely as possible.

Background
 

The use of NeTEx for fares & tickets is a relatively recent introduction to the industry. The UK NeTEx profile is highly flexible and allows for a multitude of potential ways to express the data. In order to simplify this and bring greater consistency to published fares data, BODS are implementing a BODS NeTEx profile for both simple and complex fares. 

Analyse Bus Open Data (ABOD) is an extension service to the Bus Open Data Service (BODS), that provides free-to-access reporting and analytics to operators and authorities nationally.

The service provides:

The current data profile for supplying data to BODS supports standard bus services. There are an increasing number of flexible bus services operating and providing sometimes the only public transport provision in an area.

The Government this morning published its Transport Data Strategy, setting out plans to improve how people find, use and get value from transport data to support greater innovation in the sector and deliver better services.

The press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/passengers-set-to-benefit-from-new-digital-transport-strategy