TransXchange uses XML. Click here for more information and access to training.
Companies with TransXchange2 systems available and in use now are:
(please notify any other companies)Link to the DfT summary of protocols.
The registration process requires that bus operators send a copy of the registration whether New, Variation or Cancellation, to the transport authority or authorities that the bus route is to pass through.
Local transport authorities and other bus operators can find out about which routes have been registered by using VOSA's Bus Registration Search or the on-line Notices and Proceedings of the Traffic Commissioner.
Bus services should be registered with a minimum of 56 days notice. Registrations may be granted at "short notice", using Form PSV350A. The support of the local authority is usually required quoting one of the following reasons:
DfT and VOSA have commenced trials which export TransXchange records from the electronic scheduling systems of some major bus operators to the Traffic Commissioner and almost simultaneously will send an email to the relevant transport authorities. Each Local authories is requested to set up an email address in the form ebsr@(local authority).gov.uk
It was originally proposed that there would be a Self Service system available on the web that bus operators and local authorities would have been able to use to generate TransXchange records suitable for registration. Transport authorities may have been able to supply TransXchange records to their contractors to help them to submit electronically. There is currently a consultation about the best way forward to give smaller operators access to the electronic registration system. DfT document and invitation (PDF file 1.09Mb)
TransXchange records will not include a map but a map to accompany the registration will be produced by VOSA from the bus stops served. It will be desirable that all bus stops are listed but there will be no compulsion and times will only be required to be provided at the timing points.
The email that the transport authority receives will indicate that there is a bus registration that they can download. When they download it they will be able to import it into their electronic timetable data system, provided it has been upgraded to do this.
The current registration process allows registrations of three types. If it is a NEW registration then the journeys included in it will have a start date. The data can be added to the current database. If it is a CANCELLATION or VARIATION the transport authority will need to find the equivalent journeys in the current database and apply end dates to them. Software and consistent referencing of the registrations may help the process of matching the new journeys to the old and may help limit the redating to only those journeys which have changed, rather than redate all of them. It is a recognised weakness of the registration system that a cancellation or variation does not explicitly state which journeys are terminating.
There is still some uncertainty about how much improvement to the data will still need to be done by Transport Authorities if a registration has been submitted electronically. If it does not have times at every stop then the intermediate stop times will need to be interpollated. If there is a bus stop missing it is not clear whether the Traffic Commissioner will reject the registration or, if not, how the Transport Authority will go about getting the registration corrected. If too much corrective work is needed then the Transport Authority may find that it is more efficient to hand edit the changes into the previous electronic record rather than throw it away and replace it with the new electronic registration. These are some of the issues that are being discussed and need to be addressed in an implementation plan.
The experience of Cambridgeshire in receiving electronic bus registrations.
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The traveline Concordat that each region has signed requires Bank Holiday services to be on the regional database two weeks before the Bank Holiday. Some Traveline regions try to get their data in place earlier in December because enquiries for Christmas services start from the beginning of December.
In England and Wales the bus registration regulations only require operators to give 21 days notice of the changes. This is not sufficient notice for traveline to process the data and so meeting the Concordat requirements is dependent upon having good cooperation with bus operators and local authority contracting departments to encourage them to decide well in advance on what levels of service they are going to operate. Operators may be trying to wait to see when shops are going to open and what sports events will be taking place. However if they delay their services may not be properly publicised.
In Scotland the bus registration regulations require that full notice (56 days) is given of Christmas and New Year changes and these are often included in the main registration of the service.
Many regions alter their data in advance of receiving final confirmation from operators. This enables the journey planner to give a better indication of the levels of service that will operate and is refined if and when more precise information is received.
Obviously Christmas Day and New Year's Day fall on different days of the week each year and this means that the exact pattern of alterations varies and this influences the way that the data will be enterred into the timetable data systems.
In 2006 Christmas Day and New Year's Day fall on a Monday which is one of the more straightforward patterns to deal with. This is one way to view it:
Different systems operate in different ways. The TransXchange data structure enables journeys to be individually dated and share journey pattern data that describes the route. This can reduce the size of the data that otherwise can grow very considerably over the Christmas/New Year period.
Some systems provide a table so that the revised pattern of service can be listed for each route and each day.
The position of data in each region prior to the Christmas and New Year period is given on Transport Direct.
For registration purposes Vosa have identifid three types of flexible service. These should be coded into journey planners as follows:
It is possible to create a series of non stop journeys, one from each place on the route to the destination. The time allowed for each journey should assume that there are the maximum number of bookings on the service and each journey should be marked to show that you must telephone to book the service.
In this way travel from each of the locations can be found in the journey planner and connections made onto a bus or train at the interchange.
Because of the extra time allowed inward journeys may seem to leave before the outward journeys have arrived at each point. When passengers phone up, the person alighting will be given an earlier time than given on the journey planner and the passenger boarding a later time. In both cases the time at the point of booking will be derived from the schedule being planned for the vehicle that day.
In the longer term, there are broadly three approaches that could be taken to the integration of flexible transport into a journey planner:
Diverts on request to the driver
This type of service is common in rural areas but not really allowed for in the regulations which say that flexible transport must be booked before joining the vehicle. However where this is a historic arrangement in an old bus registration or allowed by the discretion of the Traffic Commissioner, then this can be modelled by putting an additional version of the journey in the data that terminates in the diversion. Alternatively set down only restrictions can be used. It is important to ensure that the passenger knows to ask the driver to divert.
It became increasingly apparent that the coach network could not be adequately described by this dataset alone. Megabus and Easybus were not included, Scottish Citylink has now been withdrawn from the National Express data, and the number of longer distance bus services included in the data needed to be increased. DfT therefore agreed to set up the National Coach Services Database and this is now available to be used in traveline regions and is already used in Transport Direct. Transport Direct describe this in section 8 of their 2005 guidance document. It is maintained for DfT by WS Atkins.
The traveline data supplier companies have been given details of how to access the data and it can be used in place of the National Express data feed. This will provide more coach information for other parts of the UK and benefit journeys planned from your region to other parts of the UK.
It is hoped that your region will contribute data to the database that will be of use to other regions planning journeys into your area. If you do so, when you import NCSD, you will probably want to suppress the data for bus or coach services in your own region that are already in your database. Identifiers in the data enable this to be done.
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© traveline 2008, Last updated: 4 March 2008