Active bus stops

[John HG1]

A question for you technophiles out there. My local council, North Yorkshire, uses an online map to show the locations of bus stops: https://experience.arcgis.com/exper...ta_s=id:dataSource_1-19ae4c498e8-layer-4:3465
Most are in blue but some are in black. Clicking on a stop will show detail such as Naptan code, name and location. All the ones I have looked at show a status of "active" but many of them have long-since failed to be served by anything. What does "active" mean in this context? Can they be set to "inactive" and what would that mean?
Thanks for any enlightenment.

 

[RT4038]

A question for you technophiles out there. My local council, North Yorkshire, uses an online map to show the locations of bus stops: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/079a38d2237447da820f8a5973c2fb67#data_s=id:dataSource_1-19ae4c498e8-layer-4:3465
Most are in blue but some are in black. Clicking on a stop will show detail such as Naptan code, name and location. All the ones I have looked at show a status of "active" but many of them have long-since failed to be served by anything. What does "active" mean in this context? Can they be set to "inactive" and what would that mean?
Thanks for any enlightenment.

I believe that 'active' means available for use by bus operators to register a local bus service stopping there, rather than necessarily actually in use by a registered local bus service. 'inactive' is usually used for temporarily unavailable (say long term road/adjacent property works), or more likely "no longer in use but if deleted will corrupt historical files".....

 

[Dwarfer1979]

I believe that 'active' means available for use by bus operators to register a local bus service stopping there, rather than necessarily actually in use by a registered local bus service. 'inactive' is usually used for temporarily unavailable (say long term road/adjacent property works), or more likely "no longer in use but if deleted will corrupt historical files".....

That would probably be right, active means that they are listed in the bus stop database (NAPTAN) that bus operators use for mapping routes to produce data for things like BODs etc. As you say it doesn't necessarily mean the bus stop is served.

Inactive would probably be stops that are in the councils files/database but don't export to the national public systems, probably due to being on roads that haven't been served in some time, so won't show on most lists. Not in North Yorkshire but we had a new service being introduced that was serving a number of roads that hadn't had a bus stop in many years so we had to request the council create new stops for us to map against but they could turn round the request much quicker than normal as there were a number of inactive stops in their database for this section that they could simply activate to speed the process. Whilst occasionally you will find the old bus stop flag is still in situ in most cases there won't be any infrastructure actually on the roadside to indicate where these inactive stops are.

 

[John HG1]

Thanks for your explanations, which are what I thought it probably meant. It's unfortunate that the map is accessed from a link that says "Access our online mapping system to find your nearest bus stop". It would be nice for the customer/potential customer if it only showed bus stops being served. Even better would be to be able to link from that stop to the timetable. But then I'm just one of those awkward sods who wants helpful and accurate information.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

There are plenty of bus stops around in Manchester which aren't served by anything.
When the Bee Network came around these stops that hadn't seen service in over a decade got yellowed along with all the others.

 

[RT4038]

Thanks for your explanations, which are what I thought it probably meant. It's unfortunate that the map is accessed from a link that says "Access our online mapping system to find your nearest bus stop". It would be nice for the customer/potential customer if it only showed bus stops being served. Even better would be to be able to link from that stop to the timetable. But then I'm just one of those awkward sods who wants helpful and accurate information.

The bus stops shown on googlemaps, and in the mapping of bustimes.org, only show those stops which have services scheduled against them. It also links to a departure board.

'find your nearest bus stop' may not always be that helpful, if the nearest bus stop only has a scheduled school bus for instance.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Mar 2026 ==

There are plenty of bus stops around in Manchester which aren't served by anything.
When the Bee Network came around these stops that hadn't seen service in over a decade got yellowed along with all the others.

If you knew how much hassle (from local residents) it is to put in a new bus stop, you would realise why many Authorities are very reluctant to give up any bus stop that may have a possible use in the future, no matter how tenuous.

 

[John HG1]

I understand and sympathise with the complexity of this. As RT4038 points out, the effect is that the best source of data is from a third party. If only North Yorkshire had the courage or sense to show that link.

 

[RT4038]

I understand and sympathise with the complexity of this. As RT4038 points out, the effect is that the best source of data is from a third party. If only North Yorkshire had the courage or sense to show that link.

Local Authorities are usually quite loathe to have links to third party sites, lest anyone thinks (a) they are responsible for the accuracy of the contents; and (b) they are favouring one or more commercial websites over others (advertising material etc).