Open data: driving more buses on time?

06 January 2016

Good use of data to drive debate about improving bus services. Bristol City Council has put quite a lot of data in the public domain.

While this data does not provide all the answers it probably does help drive public understanding, although average figures won’t mean much to many passengers. However, it is heartening that it appears data has been published by route and stop, thus avoiding the bland statistics in annual reports which only describe performance across the network. At route and stop level, data can inform detailed service planning and help identify and address the causes of late (and indeed early) running.

Interesting just how punctual many buses actually are – maybe a slightly better news story lies underneath this! Buses are generally late because of congestion – obvious really but it does put the spotlight on the need for effective local authority and bus industry partnerships to drive growth on bus services.

We have done a lot of work in this area but this needs to be taken forward at a local level if we are going to see bus really going for growth.

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