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I do apologise if this question has already been asked, but is there a reason TfL buses haven't been tracking on bustimes.org for the past month, and will they return to tracking at any point in the future?
TFL has a feed for bus stop arrivals and that is what LVF/London Bus Maps seem to use. The feed gives details of the route, destination, vehicle reg, when the bus will arrive at the next stop. Think like the normal countdown lists on the bus stops, but with details on the bus reg (maybe some other bits but this seems to be the jist.
LVF doesn't seem to have a map, it just shows the same information that is in the above feed.
London Bus Map. Same again, it knows the route, destination and reg, and knows when the bus will arrive at the next bus stop. The dots on the map merely move as to where it thinks a bus may be. If you zoom in enough, the red dots mostly travel in a straight line between stops to give the impression of live tracking, but in reality its just 'the bus needs to travel [distance between stops] in [time until arrival at bus stop], the bus needs to move along this straight line at a certain rate). For example, 300 metres, it's due there in 30 seconds, the bus needs to move on the map around 10 metres closer to the next stop, every second.
Bustimes kind of still has the tracking, if you click into a stop, it has the same information as LVF and London Bus Map. The departures list here shows the route, destination of the bus, expected time, and the bus reg. What is completely different though about bustimes, is that they also used a TFL feed which gave the specific coordinate location of the bus. Bustimes only shows buses on the map if there if there are coordinates for where the bus is (to avoid issues like ghost buses which people detest on Arriva and First apps for example). That is why the buses are no longer on the map, they aren't getting the coordinates for the buses.
Issues with data feeds [POST UPDATED: 11 Sept 2024] Hi all, We are currently experiencing an incident where a number of our feeds are not updating in the Unified API. These are: Live tube predictions (also not updating in the /trackernet/ endpoints) TransXChange weekly updates Bus Working...
techforum.tfl.gov.uk
Hi all,
We are currently experiencing an incident where a number of our feeds are not updating in the Unified API.
These are:
Live tube predictions (also not updating in the /trackernet/ endpoints)
TransXChange weekly updates
Bus Working Timetable updates
Live traffic status
JamCams
Live Bikepoint data
Live station crowding
Live bus location data (from BODS) is unavailable
This is being investigated by our colleagues who look after our networks.
We’ll provide updates here as and when we have them.
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
