A Public Transport Authority is a local authority or government authority that runs public transport services in a region.

A PTA decides the schedules and manages the customer experience, including retailing the ticket to the passenger.

Where a UK network is Franchised, as it is in London (under Transport for London) and Manchester (under Transport for Greater Manchester), the PTA contracts routes to several PTOs (Public Transport Operators), who manage the delivery of the service itself.

A Public Transport Operator is a business that runs public transport services.

They operate commercially, charging the customer directly for a ticket to travel for their services. Or they run contracted services for a PTA (Public Transport Authority). In this case, the PTA usually decides the schedules and manages the customer experience, including retailing the ticket to the passenger.

Where a UK network is Franchised, as it is in London (under Transport for London) and Manchester (under Transport for Greater Manchester), the PTA contracts routes to several PTOs.

The National Coach Services Database (NCSD) consists of schedule (timetable) data for several mainland UK coach services not contained in the Traveline National Dataset (TNDS). It may therefore be regarded as supplementary to Traveline data, as opposed to being a dataset describing a geographically complete national coach network.

Transport for Wales (TfW) is developing a Welsh Bus Data Service (WBDS) to provide better quality information on bus services nationwide.

The WBDS covers operational and financial data on buses in Wales to support passengers, public sector decision-makers, third-party services, and researchers.

TfW will use the service’s information to deliver bus projects and provide data to third-party apps, local authorities for contract management, and the Welsh Government for policy making.

The service should save local authorities from having to procure separate real-time information engines and associated Content Management Systems and give them the flexibility to procure the right display for the right location.

The project has an equivalent in England called Bus Open Data Service (BODS).

CEN is the European Committee for Standardization. It is an association that brings together the National Standardization Bodies of 34 European countries.

CEN provides a platform for developing European Standards and other technical documents concerning various kinds of products, materials, services and processes.

CEN supports standardization activities in relation to a wide range of fields and sectors including transport.

Agile is an approach to software development that focuses on delivering a solution in iterative stages – starting with the delivery of the current most useful single change, then evaluating its impact before deciding what the next most useful single change is to make. This ensures the users of the solution get the most useful changes as quickly as possible and allows a development team to switch focus on other changes as they get feedback throughout the project.

Some bus operators will split journeys into two sections, usually in half. This can be because:

• A journey is long enough that the driver needs a break (potentially even contravening EU driving hour regulations)
• Part of the journey is called a different service.

In this scenario, passengers would remain on the same bus. The driver might change. However, operators have to represent this in their schedule data, so they might show two half journeys even though it’s the same vehicle.

This means that when doing a journey plan, customers might be advised to get off the bus and get back on it. This isn’t generally what operators want to display to their customers because, in real life, this isn’t necessary.

In some cases, the customer’s ticket may not cover the second part of the journey.

The Bus Fare Cap Grant (BFCG) scheme in England was introduced to enable bus operators (outside of London) to cap the price of a single journey by bus at £2, without running services unprofitably.

The scheme was introduced in January 2022 and has been extended several times. It was launched by the Department for Transport as part of the Help for Households initiative from the Government.

The Bus Fare Cap Grant (BFCG) scheme will run until November 2024. From November 2023 the single journey fare cap will rise to £2.50 in England.

SIRI-SX is a data format that allows the exchange of structured messages relating to public transport services and networks.

It is commonly associated with disruption information and is used to communicate changes to customers.

Tap & Cap is one of several names given to the type of Contactless Model 2 payment method. It allows you to simply “tap” your contactless payment card (or device) onto a reader at the start of your journey. What you are charged for the journey is calculated later and then automatically from your account.

It does not require you to “tap” out again on a reader when you complete your journey.

Often this charge will be capped at a maximum amount if enough journeys are taken within a specific period of time, e.g. 24 hours.

This is different to Contactless Model 1 where the products you are buying are totalled up by the cashier, or a self-service machine, and you pay the total on the screen with your contactless payment card. If you want to buy a specific ticket on a bus or tram in the UK, you will use Contactless Model 1.