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Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

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Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#31

Post by amiga386 »

taffronaut wrote: post #20

This answers a question that I often have in the UK - "Do I have a non-zero chance of being able to get (near to) to somewhere by bus?". There's no clear way to answer that since UK buses were deregulated in 1986 [1]. For me, this isn't a tool to plan an immediate journey. Yes, UK buses are sparse and unreliable in rural areas. Often it's quicker to walk 1-2 miles than to wait for a bus. The service might not even ru…

To answer that question, you could also look up bus stops in an app (for example OsmAnd, but there are others) powered by OpenStreetMap data, which I know has all bus stops in the UK, known in government as National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN), which is pretty much comprehensive, and not tied to any one provider.

Here's a website mapping them, you can see the sparseness in some areas of the country: https://www.flosm.org/en/poimap.html?lat=54.2784000&lon=-1.7...

The app could then be integrated with other data sources to tell you what bus companies call at that stop, and what their timetables are. At minimum, you should be able to see the unique ATCO code for the bus stop and can google it to find another site that'll give you thata data.

Example from that map: 3200YNA96776 -> https://bustimes.org/stops/3200YNA96776 -> 821 DalesBus, Keighley - Scar House only on Sundays and bank holidays. Nice use of the government's Bus Open Data Service. Also nice to see the government keeping track of how non-compliant First Bus are: https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/operators/16/

Also, this is probably fair comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_Open_Data_Service

> Writing in Buses magazine, Centrebus Group owner Julian Peddle called the service "a horrendously bureaucratic and over-engineered system designed by well-meaning but clueless officials in London. It’s running late, does not work properly, and has involved the industry and local authorities in vast amounts of needless work. It’s supposedly been running since January 2021, but has not improved things in the wilds of Shropshire, and never will, because government bureaucrats don’t understand the problem, so have no chance of solving it."

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#32

Post by mattlondon »

Feedback: on mobile when I zoom out, the origin point changes. So I center on where I am at a high zoom level, I see some coloured lines going off screen so I zoom out to see where those lines go, and then they disappear because the origin changes!

It would be nice to have a fixed origin - e.g. click/tap to set it and not have it auto update on zoom changes

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#33

Post by xnorswap »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #19
xnorswap wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of London, Manchester, Nottingham and a few selected other places, busses in England tend to be fairly dire, especially as you get out to smaller towns and villages. Even if the routes are there, it's not uncommon for the actual busses to bare little resemblance to the published timetable. In some places you'll get fancy live information screens which happily announce the arrival of a bus that doesn't exist,…

That sounds absolutely terrible. I've been to the Balkans, Central Asia, and rural Mexico for extended periods and they're all better than that (even if they might lack fancy digital screens, which is rapidly changing also). Wtf, UK?

> Wtf, UK?

We can't even blame this one on the relative lack of infrastructure investment, because busses have never been any better as far as I can tell.

In fact, the only reason the bus fare is as "cheap" as £3 is because of a price cap, which is optional for the bus companies to follow, and has the effect of meaning that they no longer offer return tickets, so you get to choose between the price capped £3 single ticket or a "day saver" £7.

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#34

Post by modernerd »

RobinL wrote: post #26

Author here. Wasn't expecting this to blow up! This is a quick prototype, made for my 7yo who loves buses. A few tips: - Click the freeze icon to be able to zoom and pan without it changing the location of the lens - Double click to position the lens Thanks for feedback about the data. The bus stop and route data comes from the Department for Transport’s Bus Open Data Service (BODS), using the national GTFS feed. It…

Thanks for this! Really fascinating to see how coverage differs.

I expected the UX to work more like:

- Freeze is on by default (or there is no concept of 'freeze'). I can just move around without my screen turning to a lightning strike of random routes.

- Click once to position the search lens.

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#35

Post by circuit10 »

taffronaut wrote: post #20

This answers a question that I often have in the UK - "Do I have a non-zero chance of being able to get (near to) to somewhere by bus?". There's no clear way to answer that since UK buses were deregulated in 1986 [1]. For me, this isn't a tool to plan an immediate journey. Yes, UK buses are sparse and unreliable in rural areas. Often it's quicker to walk 1-2 miles than to wait for a bus. The service might not even ru…

My approach is generally just to put the destination into Google Maps and select public transport, it works on the same data source as this and has live tracking

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#36

Post by tyxcho »

RobinL wrote: post #26

Author here. Wasn't expecting this to blow up! This is a quick prototype, made for my 7yo who loves buses. A few tips: - Click the freeze icon to be able to zoom and pan without it changing the location of the lens - Double click to position the lens Thanks for feedback about the data. The bus stop and route data comes from the Department for Transport’s Bus Open Data Service (BODS), using the national GTFS feed. It…

it's showing a lot of rail/etc. replacement bus routes, which I wouldn't consider typical as they (hopefully) only run very rarely - such as the "DLR" replacement bus route, and "RB1" replacement bus route for the thames clipper in london

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#37

Post by bazzargh »

RobinL wrote: post #26

Author here. Wasn't expecting this to blow up! This is a quick prototype, made for my 7yo who loves buses. A few tips: - Click the freeze icon to be able to zoom and pan without it changing the location of the lens - Double click to position the lens Thanks for feedback about the data. The bus stop and route data comes from the Department for Transport’s Bus Open Data Service (BODS), using the national GTFS feed. It…

It'd be nice to be able to permalink to the view for a specific location

While that'd be useful for things like telling someone else what buses they can get, planning a trip, etc, what I actually tried to do was to link to the Killermont Street bus station in Glasgow; Aztec Camera had a sentimental song about late night departures from there - leaving your friends and heading south to look for work - that runs:

    As the ships and the steel
    Slip away to the cry of "Compete"
    There's a message for us
    We can get there by bus
    From Killermont Street
And indeed you can...buses all over the place. But I can't link to it :)

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#39

Post by soleveloper »

It reminds me a site where you'd pick a point on map and see where you'd get to in 15/30/etc minutes, including walking iirc.

Then you could even pick *two* points in map and see their intersection in time period, which was great for finding places to meet friends.

Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

#40

Post by nephihaha »

I tried a couple of locations in Scotland, and couldn't get one of them work at all. It says there is no bus service in Sleat in the Isle of Skye, even though there is one linking the ferry terminal with other parts of the island, and there is even an FE college there.
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