What problems are we trying to address?

Presently, there is no requirement to openly publish information about digital fares and real time information. The current legislation simply enables LTA’s to request information from bus operators, however the new BOD regulations will directly require bus operators in Scotland to provide open digital fares information and real-time information. This means that at present, passengers are not always able to compare the cost of journeys operated by different bus companies in order to get the best fare or be aware of the range of tickets available for to purchase. A lack of real-time information means that passengers cannot be certain when a bus will arrive, or whether a connection between services will be made.

This impacts confidence in using public transport and means that passengers often build in extra time into their journey to account for unforeseen delays.

Scotland currently lacks a national dataset holding real-time and fares information for all operators. While some bus operators provide this information voluntarily, it is not all provided to a national centralised hub and requires passengers to look at different websites to make their own comparisons. Our intention is for this information to be uniformly available, for all operators, as it is in England where Bus Open Data legislation has already been introduced.

As of 2024 approximately 60% of bus routes, including those by Scotland’s largest bus operators, have agreed to provide open real-time vehicle location information to Traveline Scotland, and 63% of routes provide open fares information. This data is provided by operators to Traveline Scotland on a voluntary basis, which is encouraging, but means that around 40% of routes have no real time information associated.

In order to develop new data hub system integration and enable a fuller real time data set, Transport Scotland has encouraged operators to provide this information by providing financial support for around 70 additional small to medium operators to provide real-time information to Traveline Scotland which will result in real time vehicle location being available from 2025 onwards. However a number of operators did not take up this support, and this still leaves a large number of areas without real time information about bus services. In addition in the current fiscal position, the continuation of this financial support is unknown.

Whilst there is a duty on local authorities under section 34 the 2001 Act to make information about bus stops available, the specific detail of bus information to be made available is determined by the local authority itself, leading to inconsistency between authorities.

There is already a national dataset of all public transport stops managed by the Department for Transport, which holds information about bus stops, railway stations, tram, metro and underground stops and airports and ferry terminals. This database, known as “NaPTAN,” (the National Public Transport Access Nodes database) is updated by Scottish local authorities on a voluntary basis, while in England it is mandatory. As such, the Scottish data set includes inconsistencies in the availability and quality of bus stop data across Scotland as each authority takes a different approach to providing updates. For this reason, we plan to make this mandatory in Scotland.

The amount of bus service information available to passengers in Scotland is continuing to advance. However, the sharing and publishing bus service information varies from local authority to local authority or is provided voluntarily by bus service operators who are not legally required to provide it. There is a risk that any change to the views on data provision by operators, changes in bus patronage or other unrelated pressures in the service could result in a reduction of information provided if not mandated for.