There are issues with linenames being abbreviated and not the expected public facing name as the PTI profile suggests should be used:
“5.5.3 Line name, line colour and marketing name. The LineName element is mandatory and shall contain the public-facing name of the service, in full. For example, Trent Barton’s “indigo” service shall have a LineName of “indigo”, and not any shortened version of it (e.g. “IGO”).”
The trentbarton data is doing exactly what the PTI profile guidance says not to do. Other examples include RA instead of Red Arrow, CMT instead of Comet, HQ instead of The Harlequin, IF instead of Ilkeston Flyer.
Submitted to trentbarton via BODS operator feedback pages over a year ago to no response so sent to BODS helpdesk on May 21st.
BODS team replied on 23rd.
They told us about supplier tools having a character limit and how there is “an upcoming feature involving the marketing name field, which will soon allow operators to provide longer public-facing names. This new field will help resolve the discrepancy you’ve observed and ensure that the line names are in line with the PTI profile guidance.”
We’re aware there are character limitations in some supplier tools but it is still their responsibility to resolve this in order comply with the PTI profile. If there are known exceptions where the profile can not be followed it’d be helpful if BODS shared a list with consumers so they can implement workarounds.
Consumers look to the LineName to know what to present to passengers on journey plan results and timetable searches and we’d expect this to match the name the passenger finds when boarding as the shortened versions aren’t necessarily helpful.
We also understand MarketingName exists but this doesn’t seem to be well used currently and if it does become more well used we’d expect the guidance would need to be expanded to ensure this is being used in a consistent way.
We wouldn’t want to be having to set our processes to look at LineName for some lines and MarketingName for others but expect consistency throughout the dataset. Perhaps we need adjust our current processes to create a rule to use LineName as standard but if MarketingName is present, display that alongside?
To update, I enquired about timescales regarding this change. BODS have replied - “Currently, 60-70% of suppliers are targeting Q3 for the implementation of the new marketing name fields under the operator profile, though exact dates are still pending. We are closely monitoring the situation and will keep you updated with more precise timelines as they become available.”