Project Summary
This project will develop an interactive bus performance reporting and analysis tool built on DfT Open Bus Data. This will support the bus sector as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic by: providing cost-effective/automated bus service performance monitoring and reporting (as required by the National Bus Strategy), providing industry-leading insights identifying quick-wins to improve service as we emerge from COVID-19 and delivering new insights to support bus service improvement planning.
Project Achievements
Activities 1. Undertook a literature review of best practice in bus performance reporting. 2. Outlined potential outputs and streamlined these to most relevant and with quality data. 3. Recorded bus performance information for selected LTAs. 4. Engaged with LTAs and presented to industry conferences to understand needs and wants. 5. Streamlined and standardised data analysis for significantly faster processing speeds. 6. Developed web-based analysis and outputs to better represent the catchments and performance of bus services.
Conclusions
Considerable progress was made to bridge a known technology gap in the transport industry. Feedback also made us aware of other products adjacent to this space, improving our awareness of what is available and therefore where the outstanding gaps remain. The software module developed as part of this solution is now live on our web-based software cadence, for Kent and Oxfordshire. We continue to record data for these two regions, increasingly increasing the value of insights from the tool.
Next Steps
• Promoting our product to local authorities to adopt. • Identifying further funding streams to deliver further enhancements to the product, including identification of potential bus priority schemes, standardised BSIP evidence base reports, analysis of revenue and mapping fleet emissions. • Continuing to collate bus data to enhance our monthly and annual reporting outputs. • Applying this tool to our ongoing consultancy offering to Local Authority clients. To support these next steps, we will seek to engage in future finding opportunities as well as through engaging with potential clients and/or collaborators.
