Traveline is a public transport route planner service provided by a partnership between local authorities and transport operators in the UK to provide impartial and comprehensive information about public transport which has operated since 2000.[1] It prepares comprehensive public transport data for the UK and provides a number of regional public transport journey planners.[2]

Traveline
Founded2000

History

edit

Following on from a successful prototype one-number travel service developed by Lancashire County Council in 1999, the national Traveline organisation was established in 2000.[3]

A prototype national door-to-door journey for Great Britain (i.e. UK without Northern Ireland) - using the Lancashire Traveline model for regional journey planners - was available for evaluation by 'stakeholders and key opinion formers' by November 2003, and the service was officially launched by Secretary of State for Transport Alistair Darling on 31 December 2004.[4]

In March 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the NaPTAN dataset would be released as Open Data.[5]

Operation

edit

The Traveline regions assemble the public transport information within their areas and make it available through a number of local public transport journey planners. As of May 2014, all regions provide information for use within the Google Maps journey planner, and as of December 2016 all regions were added to the Apple Maps journey planner.[6]

Regional Journey planner Notes
East Anglia Formerly MDV (site now closed)
East Midlands MDV Formerly MDV (site now closed)
London MDV Transport for London also operates its own MDV system[7]
North East & Cumbria JourneyPlan
North West Trapeze[8]
Scotland Trapeze[9]
South East Formerly MDV (site now closed)
South West MDV[8] Formerly MDV (site now closed)
Wales Trapeze[10]
West Midlands MDV Formerly MDV (site now closed)
Yorkshire Trapeze[8]

Details of all bus stops in the country are assembled into the National Public Transport Access Nodes database (NaPTAN) which is updated daily. The organisation also maintains the associated National Public Transport Gazetteer of all place names, both formal and informal, that may be used to indicate the destination for a requested journey. These datasets are provided to both Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. They have also been released as Open Data via data.gov.uk.

Public transport schedules were provided for use with the Transport Direct Portal on a weekly basis for use within the 'national journey planner for Great Britain' until this portal was closed in September 2014.[2]

Once a year all the schedules for the county by all modes (including the information collected and maintained by Traveline) is assembled into the National Public Transport Data Repository which is prepared every October is used for the creation of Core Accessibility Indicators for every part of the UK.[11] This data is also used within products such as MySociety's Mapumental.

Some bus operators provide information via the Electronic Bus Service Registration system using the TransXChange when passing information between operators, the Vehicle & Operator Services Agency and Traveline.[12]

Organisational structure

edit

For operational and data preparation purposes the UK is divided in the following regions/nations:[13] The boundaries are not identical to the Regions of England.

Name Members Notes
Cymru/Wales
East Anglia Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk
East Midlands Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, North East Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Peterborough, Rutland
London Transport for London
North East & Cumbria Cumbria, Darlington, Durham, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Northumberland, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees, Tyne and Wear
Northern Ireland
North West Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Greater Manchester, Halton, Lancashire, Merseyside, Warrington
Scotland
South East (excluding London) Bedford, Bracknell Forest, Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire, Central Bedfordshire, East Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Luton, Medway, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Reading, Slough, Southend-on-Sea, Surrey, Thurrock, West Berkshire, West Sussex, Windsor & Maidenhead and Wokingham
South West Bath and North East Somerset, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, North Somerset, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Somerset, Southampton, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, Torbay and Wiltshire
West Midlands Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford and Wrekin, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire
Yorkshire East Riding of Yorkshire, Kingston upon Hull, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and York

Advisory body

edit

The advisory body of the national organisation consists of the following organisations:-[1]

References

edit
  1. ^ a b "What is traveline?". Traveline. Archived from the original on 21 July 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2010.
  2. ^ a b "Traveline Data". PTI. Retrieved 8 February 2010.
  3. ^ "History". Traveline. Archived from the original on 15 September 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2010.
  4. ^ "History and strategy". Retrieved 7 January 2010.
  5. ^ "Speech on Building Britain's Digital Future". National Archives. Archived from the original on 11 May 2010. Retrieved 29 June 2010.
  6. ^ Rossignol, J. (19 December 2016). "Apple Maps Expands Transit Directions Across the United Kingdom". MacRumors. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  7. ^ "Planning and corporate panel" (PDF). Transport for London.
  8. ^ a b c "Which Website were you after ?". Trapeze. Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
  9. ^ "Case Study: Traveline Scotland". Trapeze. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
  10. ^ "Case Study: PTI Cymru & Modus". Trapeze. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
  11. ^ "National Public Transport Data Repository". PTI. Archived from the original on 8 July 2007. Retrieved 8 February 2010.
  12. ^ "01-02-08 New bus registration system to improve real-time information for passengers". Department for Transport. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
  13. ^ "Public Transport Information". Traveline. Archived from the original on 9 February 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2010.
edit