I can’t help but notice there is currently a running theme that Transmach and National PTI seen to be providing consistently incorrect data to BODS on behalf of their operators, and when feedback is being provided, it’s often not acted upon.
Transmach had huge issues whereby they were refusing to add school dates to services until I raised it on the BODS discord, then they went through a phase of fixing that and fixed a few other issues while they were at it (though while they have added school dates, the dates aren’t school specific, they are just completely random dates which vaguely match UK wide school dates). But over the past month or so, the response from Transmach has been awful, near non existent, with them only fixing tiny things and ignoring everything else.
National PTI has been really bad too with a good number of issues with Beeline, Coachstyle, Faresaver and Fromebus which have been ongoing for 2 years, and STILL not being fixed. I know that National PTI are aware of these as I worked with someone to create a full spreadsheet and this got sent into them in December 2023. For 2 years, data has been inaccurate and no amount of feedback is resolving issues.
Can someone tell me why DFT and BODS keep permitting organisations to act as agents for operators, when the agents are knowingly, and consistently uploading incorrect data. Doesn’t exactly give great confidence in BODS when operators don’t keep data updated, and the agents seem to care just as little for data quality.
National PTI has come straight back to us to ask you to contact them on any data issues at busopendata@nationalpti.co.uk.
They note that their data is of the highest standard and were not aware that they have had any contact from you, so hopefully this email address will help
As I have responded elsewhere, National PTI are agents for around 60 operators, act on feedback and the quality of our data is supported by BODS Data Quality reports etc. I don’t like gettiing called out on a Forum for some records that may have slipped through. If there are any problems with data, happy to receive feedback via BODS channel or at busopendata@nationalpti.co.uk . The BODS anonymous feedback can be misleading - for example today we have been asked to coreect data via an anonymous text, for an operator we don’t even supply data for.
I’ve responded to the rest in chat, but some things to pick up on, away from the specific data issues.
BODS data quality reports don’t pick up on many of the inaccuracies being reported though such as missing stops or incorrect information at those stops. It’s something I’ve raised with BODS in the past but things such as missing stops, or missing pick up/drop off restrictions on stops are near on impossible for them to reliably catch and flag such things.
The only compromise was to make consumer feedback more visible but that doesn’t seem to have worked very well as of yet, given it’s still rather hidden and any feedback disappears when a dataset is refreshed, even if the issues aren’t resolved.
Perhaps a similar bug that I have been getting. I keep getting emails saying datasets are published but for operators that I’ve not been an agent for in 2-3 years.
It’s worth bringing these further examples to the forefront given it affects Boxing Day services. Northstar in the North East has got a network of services operating just on Boxing Day, and testerday, Transmach uploaded details for these. But in typical Transmach incompetence style, they have set up all of the services to run Monday-Friday indefinately, and have listed Boxing Day as a ‘DaysOfNonOperation’. It’s literally the only day that these services run, and Transmach have listed it as days of not operation.
If Transmach can’t even handle properly adding dates of operation for a service which only runs on a single day of the week, it’s no surprise that their data for normal service is dismal.
Any another Transmach failure to add to the list. A2B route 9, they have just uploaded the new timetable (I mean, the change only starts in 3 days so already ignoring the 42 day lookahead), but they have almost all of the stops on the wrong side of the road. Yet again, another Transmach file that they have made a hash of.
Also a heads up for anyone unfortunate enough to use Transmach data. You may have noticed that with Transmach, ‘Block’ on trips, is always the same as the trip number. ‘Block’ is not the vehicle duty as it should be. Block 1 covers the first trip on every single route at an operator. Block 2 covers the second trip on every single route at an operator. Block 3 covers the third trip (and so on).
Baffling that this so called professional outfit can promote that they sort BODS compliance when they have a fundamental lack of understanding (or blatant incompetence) when dealing with transxchange files.
