Request for more Open Data - Coach Station Departures

Open Data
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I would like to request TFL release Victoria Coach Station departures on open data. Currently the only way for any passenger to know which stand their coach will depart from is to go to the coach station and check the screens. I believe that the stands change each day and certainly change depending on delays and therefore nothing can be set in stone however it could be released on open data and updated regularly.

The benefits of releasing this data is that it would allow journey planners and coach operators to do live departure screens/pages (given that you do report known delays. Also they would be able to include stand allocations) and it would allow 3rd party ticket sellers to notify passengers of their departure stand via email or push notifications. This would significantly benefit passengers as they wouldn’t be forced to crowd around the few full departure screens and of course passengers with additional needs benefit from having more information at their fingertips and not having to reply on assistance or these few departure screens.

2

Welcome @petejackson745

You might find that what you need is an FOI request

I’m pretty sure that even though TfL “owns” the Victroria bus station it is operated by private company National Express.

Their data is in transportapi National Express – TransportAPI

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TFL own and run Victoria Coach Station under their subsidiary ‘Victoria Coach Station Limited’. National Express merely pay to use the facility.

Secondly, your link to National Express data is for the West Midlands bus side, not coaches.

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@petejackson745

I was just trying to assist! I can’t recall anyone ever listing the Coaches from National Express.

I suspect that as a private company it is under no obligation to put it’s data into the public domain, where as a government department TfL is.

London Victoria Coach Station | National Express doesn’t seem to suggest that there is actually any live data anyway.

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The Bus Open Data Service has live positions of National Express coaches (as used by the map on bustimes.org), and timetables are in the National Coach Services Database. Neither include the specifics of which stand at Victoria Coach Station though

1 Like
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that’s because you are in the wrong area of the NatEx website. If you go to the track your coach area, you can see that there is a full list of departures on their website. The 3 major operators all have live departures from the stops.

NatEx: https://coachtracker.nationalexpress.com/view/stop/57366
Megabus: https://coachtracker.uk.megabus.com/view/stop/73
Flixbus: https://www.flixbus.co.uk/track/station/dcc0f769-9603-11e6-9066-549f350fcb0c/departures

The issue is that the coach operators can’t release the details of the stand used online because the stands change depending on the daily situation and so the only live information is currently on the screens inside Victoria Coach Station. If this live stand information was released from Victoria Coach Station though, it would enable the coach companies to include such information. It’s the same as all train apps not releasing platform information and the only way for people to see which platform their train goes from is to turn up and check the station boards. Or perhaps at Beckton Bus Station the only way to find out which stand your bus goes from is by turning up at the station and checking. It’s just unthinkable now for this information to not be available for trains and buses, why should the coach station be any different? Coach passengers deserve to have the same level of information as bus, train and airplane passengers have.

7

Fine. Help yourself.