Ticketer products - Bus Open Data Service (BODS)

If you are operating services in England, you would have heard of the Bus Open Data Service introduced by the Department for Transport, but you may not know what it is and how you will meet the requirements.

If you already have Ticketer Electronic Ticket Machines, then the good news is that the Ticketer System already has the capability to manage the data required to meet your Bus Open Data Service (BODS) obligations. There’s no need for you to set up a team to focus on collating data or recruit an external consultant to advise. We’ve put in all the hard work, so you don’t have to.

But more than simply having access to the necessary data, Ticketer has taken the additional steps to host everything for our operators, so providing the required information to the BODS system has never been easier. This data is constantly kept up to date, synchronised to the changes you make to the system in your normal day-to-day operation of your ticketing environment, with no further input or effort from yourselves.

We have been in constant communication with the DfT throughout the process and we will continue to do so. As the requirements change, we will continue to update our system to reflect those changes, so as operators you are always covered.

If you’re not yet a Ticketer customer, we have an option available for you as well, and would be happy to help. So please do get in touch.

Our stance on BODS is simple: we support it, we deliver it, we update it!

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“Ticketer have provided an excellent set of tools for updating and maintaining our duties and schedules, so that our driving colleagues don’t have to worry about selecting the correct journeys on the ticket machine. Meanwhile, the full service hosting the Ticketer provides ensures we have a no-fuss solution for providing our live and scheduled data through the Department for Transport’s Bus Open Data Service.”

Graham Pether, Project Manager Go-Ahead Group PLC

“Ticketer have made the Open Data process much easier to setup and maintain. By providing an automated method for updating BODS from our configuration, instead of manually updating the files has made this much simpler and saved resources when changes are a busy period for the employees involved. We also have utilised Ticketer in providing real time information to BODS. This has been made simple; from us requesting a connection with Ticketer, to all information being provided, so the connection can be created. Since implementing these for testing purposes, we are happy with how this is working, and this shows how Ticketer can take on a development, and work to deliver a working solution.”

Stuart Groom, Product Owner, On-Bus Technology Arriva

“It’s horrendous trying to do it yourself. DfT do have online tools to help you convert the fare data into the right format, but you have to do each route individually and also have to do each ticket type separately plus confirm certain things such as fare stages and stops each fare applies to. Obviously, it depends how many routes and ticket types the operator in question has, as to whether the Ticketer BODS Fares option works out cost neutral or favourable against the man hours that would need to be employed. The Ticketer BODS Fares option is incredibly seamless.”

Paul Dickson, Customer Services Manager, Ensign Bus

BODS LOCATION INFORMATION

All Ticketer ETMs are equipped with GPS, so are location aware. They communicate in real-time with the Ticketer back office sending location data continuously.
This data can be exposed through the SIRI Vehicle Monitoring (VM) protocol as required by BODS. Most operators already deliver a SIRI feed from their Ticketer ETMs to local authorities, websites or mobile apps, and this is simply just another feed which can be quickly established to meet your Open Data requirements.

BODS TIMETABLE REQUIREMENTS

If you are using Ticketer’s Schedule Adherence solution, your timetables are already managed within the Ticketer System.
To allow operators to meet the BODS Timetable requirements, Ticketer will host the TransXchange files compliant to the DfT’s specification. You simply copy your own specific web address, provided in the Ticketer portal, and paste it into the BODS portal.
And if you don’t already use our SA feature (or if you’re not yet a Ticketer customer), we have recently introduced a “SA Lite” option to allow you to add your timetables to the system in order to meet your BODS requirements.

BODS fare information

As the majority of an operator’s tickets and fares already need to be managed within a ticketing system, it should be no surprise that the Ticketer System already holds much of the information that needs to be made available to meet your open data requirements.
As with timetables, the Ticketer System can export the necessary data in the required NetEX standard defined by the DfT, again hosting the necessary files and automatically keeping that data synchronised with fare updates that are made to the Ticketer System, thereby ensuring that you are always meeting your open data requirements.

If you would like more information regarding BODs or if you would like us to help you publish your data, please contact our customer support team who will be happy to help support@ticketer.co.uk

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