A Stagecoach service makes its way through the Lake District Getty Images / Christopher Furlong / Staff

The UK's bus network is a complicated mess. If you try to catch the first 1A running from High Wycombe Bus Station (stopping at Gate C) to the Pond Park area of Chesham, in Buckinghamshire, on a Monday morning the chances are you'll end-up squinting at a badly formatted PDF of the timetable, before finding out your journey will begin at 05:26. The situation isn't unique.

"Probably the majority of websites have PDFs to download for different services," says Dave Hulbert, the engineering director at Base, which helps develop transport technology. These PDFs contain route maps and the minute-by-minute times buses are due at stops. They're also completely indecipherable. "A lot of the general public almost have zero understanding or comprehension of timetables," Hulbert adds.


Thankfully, finding the right bus, working out how much it will cost and where it actually goes along its route is going to get a lot easier. The information may even be delivered in real-time. The government, through the Bus Services Act 2017, is forcing bus companies across the country to publish more (and better) open data about their services. The result? A better and more modern bus system for passengers.

Despite their fusty reputation – the average age of a English bus is 7.6 years – people love using buses. Around 60 per cent of all journeys on public transport are made using buses. From April 2016 to March 2017, there were 34,900 buses trundling around – the number has stayed fairly consistent since 2005. (Of these, 29 per cent are in London). The most recent annual Bus Passenger Survey – which is based on the views of 48,000 people – puts passenger satisfaction at 88 per cent overall.

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But bus use is steadily declining. During 2016-17 local bus passenger journeys fell by around 70 million (1.5 per cent) to 4.4 billion. The number of journeys has been falling since 2008/2009 – with local news reports bemoaning unpopular or unprofitable bus routes being cancelled. In recent years increased train use, the growth of online shopping, traffic congestion in major cities and continually high car ownership, has impacted the decrease in bus use. At the same time, between March 2005 and March 2017 local bus fares in England rose by 66 per cent on average.

The government hopes that by making bus services publish open data by law, passenger numbers will increase. There is a staggered proposal, which is being consulted on until September. The government plan states that route and timetable information has to be made openly available by 2019; by 2020 simple ticket information and real-time bus data has to be published, and by 2022 more detailed ticket and fare data needs to be made available.


"Our research has shown that satisfaction with bus travel is low for some passengers as they do not have the access to the information they need to plan their journey, something which is more prevalent in rural areas," explains Simon Dixon, the global transportation leader at Deloitte. He says open data will give rural bus users more information about when buses are coming and cut the amount of time spent waiting for buses while also giving people better information in ticketing. The Department for Transport says that at present there is no requirement for bus operators to publish fare information and there's been a "commercial reticence for some operators to publish this data".

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Across Britain, bus services are run differently. In London, Transport for London (TfL) regulates the private companies that run the services. Away from London – which accounts 50 per cent of all journeys on buses – things are less clear. "Outside London, anyone can run a bus wherever they like, and can introduce new services (or withdraw them) with only a few weeks notice," says Liam Henderson, who runs the passenger experience group Transporting Cities. "There are two main problems with this: firstly, you get duplication on key trunks into city centres, where they all run to compete for the busy flows; there’s little integration of ticketing because they are competing with other operators or say Arriva buses isn’t allowed to coordinate fares or timetables with Arriva trains, or trams, as that would be legally anti-competitive."

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Not all bus companies are equal. There are national bus operators, such as Stagecoach and First, which run bus services across multiple areas. Other bus services only run in some Local Transport Authority (LTA) areas: Diamond Bus in West Midlands, for example. Following the degreulation of the bus industry in 1986 – before which most of the network was publicly owned by the National Bus Company – most bus services fell into private ownership.


Deregulation led to the complex bus system that exists now. In some areas real-time data is already published and websites contain much better timetables than PDF uploads. "By opening up more of the data there's going to be more people in the position to help operators and feedback on the quality of the data," Hulbert says. "So we're expecting people to create new tools."

"TfL is the main example," explains Jack Hardinges, a policy advisor at the Open Data Institute. Since 2010, TfL has published timetable data for the London Underground, Overground and bus services it oversees. As a consequence, transport websites and apps such as CityMapper have grown in popularity, using public information to show exactly when public transport is arriving and how much it costs. Recently, CityMapper has been trying to make sense of dockless bikes dumped across London. With more bus data, Google Maps could improve its recommendations for routes on public transport.

"The idea of it coming into place is fairly well established and it is more about the how at the moment," Hardinges adds. "I don't think it is a complete standing start". There are already some national datasets about how buses work: one dataset shows where all bus stops are, the non-profit group Traveline publishes info on timetables, and another shows percentages of bus services in each area that are running on time.

According to the Bus Passenger Survey, the biggest concern of passengers is about buses arriving on time. In 2016-17, 82.7 per cent of non-frequent services in England were judged to be running on time – a measurement of one minute early to five minutes and 59 seconds past the planned arrival time. And up to 60 per cent of some bus services running at local authority levels aren't on time.


Despite these stats being collected individual companies don't publish stats on the punctuality of their services – so it's impossible to see which ones are frequently early, late or canceled. "Punctuality data is currently gathered by bus operators but is not currently open," the government's consultation says. "The Bus Services Act contains provisions to require bus operators to open up data on punctuality and performance of their bus services."

One area where bus data is already being put to use is Reading. The @reading_buses Twitter account, which has amassed almost 12,00 followers, uses an automated bot that tweets each time a bus is delayed. "lion X4 from Bracknell Bus Station To Reading @ 14:27 cancelled due to hygiene issue," is a typical tweet. Reading Buses is also experimenting with collecting data o each time a tree branch hits the top floor of a double deck bus to determine when roadside trees need to be trimmed. "That accountability can lead to better services in the long term," Hulbert says.

Updated August 17, 2018 09:55 BST: This article has been amended to clarify the Bus Services Act applies to England. Buses are a devolved issue.