A-Level Geography Project – Local Bus Travel Stats

Hi Folks,

I have been appointed to help my lad with his geography project over the summer. He is looking for local travel data We have been able to find train journey for the local station. But less joy w bus travel – so wondering if any of you know where to find any decent bus travel stats broken down by local council? .gov just seem to have data by county council. CC don’t seem to have any, and any GIS info that might be local needs an expensive subscription to even see if it’s useful.

Any pointers gratefully received.

Depends a bit on the area and who controls the buses – council or private operators. The council should have info on it although how well they manage that is anyone’s guess.

Private operators normally have a decent tranche of data although they’re often not willing to share it.

What’s the area and how many bus routes is he looking at? Also what sort of data is he after – patronage, journey times, frequency, reliability?

Ideally need to get a good description of what he’s after before he goes contacting authorities, it makes it a lot easier for them to find what he needs and a lot more difficult to decline the request based on the reasoning that “I want some data about your buses…” is far too wide ranging.

https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk

Be careful. Using data that someone else has collected will be considered a secondary source. They will likely want to see evidence that he has collected his data himself as a primary source. Why did he collect that data? How did he collect it? How did he process it/ assess it’s statistical significance?

I am 49 and got burned by this doing my GCSE Geography on hedgerow removal. The exam board wouldn’t award an A as all the data was secondary – I’d used old maps showing field boundaries.

The local museum took the project and displayed it as an exhibit. I still only got a B.

Where in the country are you OP? I might be able to help or at least point you in the right direction. Most CC’s or MCA’s will hold data at a certain level and it might even be worth putting in a FOI request so long as they do hold it.

I’m surprised that teacher allowed a project without giving or having contacts to get relevant and usable information.

@clover is your resident expert on things like this…

When you say GIS data needs an expensive subscription is that to get the data, or GIS software? If the latter, QGIS is free open source software that’s very good (Scottish Government use it).

What findusomally says upthread. BODS (the Bus Open Data Service) is populated with bus location data from GPS units on the buses, along with timetable and fares data from the provider companies. It’s a government data project with open APIs and good documentation, but is going to be pretty technical to use with a handful of pretty heavy data formats: TXC for timetables; SIRI-VM for bus locations, and NeTEx for fares data. It’s a standout project in terms of public data. If you can navigate the APIs everything that is available is available there. Documentation is here: https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/guidance/requirements/

Thanks folks. I am in Mid-Sussex, and trying to get info on journeys from and to Hurstpierpoint and end/start destinations. Train info is easy, bus info is difficult.

The resources up thread look interesting (BODS particularly), and we’ll have a closer look, but there doesn’t seem to be the same level of detail or ease of acces as trains in other places.

GIS overlay data for this kind of info seems to require a sub to datamapper (think that was the service)

Primary research comes from in-person interviews, and online surveys – secondary research to provide corroboration. Teachers providing some level of input, but also encouraging them to use their own ideas – but finding some of that supporting data isn’t always straightforward. All his cohort are doing something slightly different in different towns/villages so difficult for the teacher to provide a comprehensive list.

Firstly you need to find out if the bus service(s) in question are operated wholly commercially, partially subsidised by the Local Authority or wholly subsidised. If wholly subsidised then the LA will have a contract with the bus operator to deliver the service which usually requires them to submit passenger data as part of the payment process.

If that is the case then as per earlier suggestion, stick and FOI in and see what level of data they can share. It might only be at whole route level but most operators record boardings at stop level (or worst case fare stage).