Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the document entitled Bus Services Act 2017: Bus Open Data Consultation Response: Moving Britain Ahead, published by his Department in January 2019, when he plans to publish the steps his Department will take in response to the responses received to that consultation.

The Government’s consultation response on bus open data explains that the Government will bring forward a statutory instrument later this year which will require bus operators in England to publish various forms of data.

The key requirements are for data on routes and timetables to be published from January 2020; real time information and simple fares by January 2021; and complex fares by January 2023. The difference between simple and complex fares is explained in section 4 of the consultation response.

To support this, the response also explains that the Government is developing a Bus Open Data Digital Service, which will allow app developers to access all of the information in a machine-readable format. We are currently developing the digital service and expect it to be available for use by all bus operators towards the end of the summer.