Dublin Bus / Go Ahead / Bus Eireann services now track on Bustimes.org

devnull · 15-03-2023 10:03pm #1

You can now see a real time map of Dublin Bus Go-Ahead Ireland, Bus Eireann and Expressway services on bustimes.org and track all services operated by these companies.

This will allow you to see positions of the fleet of these operators in real time for the network and also see where a specific vehicle is on a map if you are interested in that kind of thing and also what livery it is wearing and the trips that it operated that day.

It's only just gone live so most vehicles are only tracking by tracking ID and haven't had the relevant vehicle information added to the record yet, I'd expect that to follow in the coming days since this information has to be entered manually.

Dublin Bus

Overall Map
Route by Route
Tracking by individual vehicles (not every vehicle has had it's fleet number matched to tracking ID yet.)

Go Ahead Ireland Dublin City.

Overall Map
Route by Route
Tracking by individual vehicles (not every vehicle has had it's fleet number matched to tracking ID yet.)

Bus Eireann / Expressway

Overall Map
Route by Route
Tracking by individual vehicles (not every vehicle has had it's fleet number matched to tracking ID yet.)

Go Ahead Commuter Services

Overall Map
Route by Route
Tracking by individual vehicles (not every vehicle has had it's fleet number matched to tracking ID yet.)

DaCor · 15-03-2023 10:14pm

That's so cool, love it.

Looks like a 90 sec refresh rate but I only guessed that after watching and waiting for the real-time changes to kick in.

Actually after playing around with it, it has all BE routes for the whole country. Which is frikkin sweet!

https://bustimes.org/operators/bus-eireann

Edit: bah you edited to add BE and now I look silly 🤦‍♂️

devnull · 15-03-2023 10:22pm

There's a separate one for Nitelink as well but obviously won't be able to tell if it runs under that one or the main DB one until the weekend.

bk · 15-03-2023 10:27pm

This is super cool!

It is this sort of thing that I was hoping we would get with the launch of new API's. The new NTA app is dreadful, but open source data and API's willl allow other apps do better.

devnull · 15-03-2023 10:37pm

BE, Go Ahead and Dublin Bus all suddenly stopped tracking.

Someone appears to have just pulled the plug....

d51984 · 15-03-2023 10:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120364025#Comment_120364025

It does this at certain times of the night, then buses will come back, most will have fleet numbers and then they will go again. Its hit and miss at the moment, not all buses are tracked and even the ones that are tracked can have a delay up to 10 minutes.

Im told there is a big big update on this and hopefully see changes towards end of week which will make it more stable and most buses having their correct fleet numbers. (In Dublin anyway)

devnull · 15-03-2023 10:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120364096#Comment_120364096

Vehicles will only appear on bustimes.org once they have operated in service at least once when the tracking is active, there's currently 897 showing up against Dublin Bus that have tracked so far yes the fleet is more than that but since the feed kicked in it probably is about right once you take into account the morning peak vehicles that finished duties before the tracker started and anything that is off service due to maintenance etc.

For the fleet info to show up someone's got to do a lot of manual data entry for each of the tracking IDs which is going to be quite a task, I can see that someone has been doing vehicles bit by bit tonight but as you say it's going to not be something that can happen straight away.

Personally everything I looked at on bustimes.org tonight was in line with TFI Live, but having not physically caught a bus myself, I don't know if that was also on the drag in terms of times. I assume they are using the same (new) feed.

We'll see what happens over next few days.

p_haugh · 15-03-2023 11:21pm

Amazing how quick this was to be made active! The new API only went live on Monday.

devnull · 15-03-2023 11:30pm

Seems to be tracking again now.

Probably wasn't an awful lot of work to make active. Bustimes.org has been aggregating feeds from hundreds of operators from around the UK for years now and the TFI new API is outputting data in a format that is used by UK operators, so it's probably just a case of bustimes.org taking the new API feed and the data is then being pushed out to the website.

The feed is not going to have the vehicle details in other than the Tracking ID though, so there's going to be a lot of data entry required over the coming days to replace the vehicle ID with the fleet number it corresponds to and then add the vehicle info, but the enthusiast community will certainly be delighted when that is done.

p_haugh · 16-03-2023 12:02am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120364283#Comment_120364283

I may have already somewhat contributed to that effort 😁

I've just spotted that bustimes.org has APIs available for all this data too, including the user added information for vehicles.

p_haugh · 16-03-2023 12:05am

For Dublin bus it's a lot eaiser due to the Dublin Bus APIs providing the vehicle reference atttribute, aka the fleet code. Go-ahead and Bus Eireann will take longer as it will probably rely on sightings, unless someone contributing happens to have some inside knowledge

p_haugh · 16-03-2023 10:35am

Seems the plug was pulled again this morning, only Aircoach and Dublin express tracking currently

bk · 16-03-2023 10:57am

Seems to be back working.

I love that folks are adding which vehicles have USB power, can see that being very handy for folks [1]

[1] I know, if it has the model number, you can figure it out anyway, but general people wouldn't know that.

It might also be useful to add which vehicles have toilets, on the likes of the Aircoach intercity vehicles.

p_haugh · 16-03-2023 11:40am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120365144#Comment_120365144

Yeah I was able to load it fine on my laptop and phone, so must've been an issue on my end.

d51984 · 16-03-2023 11:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120365314#Comment_120365314

Regarding the USB charging, general rule is any SG from a 172 reg and up will have USB seat charging and any Dublin bus model after this too.

p_haugh · 16-03-2023 11:51am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120365348#Comment_120365348

Yep, although I mistakenly forgot that for a few of the updates I did! Only did 3 SGs pre-172 though thankfully 😂

devnull · 18-03-2023 9:55am

The Bus Eireann vehicles are increasingly tracking without route numbers the last 24 hours, gradually more and more vehicles seem to be showing with blank route numbers all day, first it was a few vehicles but over the last little while more and more seem to be having this problem.

https://bustimes.org/operators/bus-eireann/vehicles

Is there a glitch with the BE system that is not reporting the route numbers correctly on the feed? Go Ahead and Dublin Bus don't have this issue.

p_haugh · 18-03-2023 10:35am

Yeah I've noticed that as well. Hopefully it gets fixed soon!

I also noticed last night that the Nitelink services don't appear on the API, which is a shame. On bustimes they're counted as a separate operator to Dublin Bus itself, with no "vehicle" section. I have noticed that they don't appear on the Dublin bus API either so it's likely a case that Dublin Bus don't pass on any realtime data for these services.

devnull · 18-03-2023 7:33pm

Bus Eireann problem has seemingly spread to almost the whole fleet now.

Their own RTPI is also broken on their website seemingly.

devnull · 19-03-2023 6:13pm

Whole Bus Eireann fleet now tracking without route numbers.

p_haugh · 19-03-2023 7:10pm

I had a look at some API calls there and from my relatively brief look, there doesn't seem to be any missing data for the bus Eireann services. Trip IDs, Route IDs and Vehicle IDs all seemed to be displaying.... Might be an issue on bustime.org's end?

p_haugh · 20-03-2023 2:38pm

Update - seems to look like the issue with the Bus Eireann route numbers not appearing is beginning to resolving itself. Most services are showing a number now.

p_haugh · 21-03-2023 9:50am

Today it's the Go-Ahead commuter services that are tracking without route numbers.... Go-Ahead city are still tracking fine. Wonder what the underlying cause is.

Screenshot_2023-03-21-08-40-55-28_3aea4af51f236e4932235fdada7d1643.jpg

p_haugh · 21-03-2023 1:02pm

Also, it looks like the majority of the Dublin Bus fleet has been recorded. The only remaining unknown tracking IDs have mostly not been tracked since the 15th/16th March.

lil5 · 23-05-2023 2:52pm

I do like the bustimes.org, but this is my new favourite ;)

From the 'About'-blurb - The movements are mostly based on static schedule data. Wherever real-time data is available it is also included in the visualization.

https://travic.app/?z=16&x=-696708.0&y=7047568.1&l=osm_standard&ol=