Live tram times

Hi Luke,

If it helps. I enquired directly to Passenger Group around the API that existed and recently got a response. They confirmed it was a project through Nottingham City Council with a fixed term contract. After the contract came to an end (which was clearly not renewed) the API was decommissioned. As the Robin Hood Network app in question also doesn't exist anymore, this would likely be why the contract was not continued.

It appears it was something the Nottingham City Council initiated through the Robin Hood Network. I do not know how much involvement/awareness NET had about it, given the Robin Hood Network app is not something related to Tramlink/NET directly.

Thanks,

James

Thanks James. I'll certainly look into what you've mentioned above. I'll see if anyone else in the business has any idea about the live tram data which was previously available on the Robin Hood app.

Luke

Hi Luke,

I certainly agree. While I don't know the specifics, there were live tram times available around 2018/2019, this was however through the Robin Hood Network app. This app no longer exists. The API that provided the data was through Passenger Technology Group (https://passenger.tech/). I don't know the details as this was all discovered through reverse engineering, but I do know that Nottingham City Transport uses Passenger for their real-time data. I can only assume there was some form of project under Robin Hood Network that ultimately was discontinued for whatever reason. Whether or not this was something NET/Tramlink was involved with or widely known within the company I do not know. You'd potentially have to ask within the company for more information if it was before your employment, but this certainly e

It does however highlight that access to live tram data has seemingly appeared to have gone backwards, given this facility did exist in some form several years ago, but today neither the NET website or NETGO! app offer anything like this. As mentioned there's other data sources like NextBuses/Traveline. However Nottingham is not currently marked with real-time data through Traveline data, so it is all scheduled.

The GOV.UK Bus Open Data (BODS) service is the primary source for real-time for buses and I believe two key companies ITO World and Trapeze are responsible for the live data across Nottingham and Derby, but not entirely sure how NET falls into it, given the service is not bus but metro/tram and there does not appear to be the same open data access requirements until metro services, compared to bus.

Thanks,

James

Hi James.

Thanks for getting in touch.

Yes, I couldn't agree more, live tram times would be fantastic.

Certainly whilst I've been working for the company, we haven't had live tram times on any app. I was hoping that the introduction of the tram app 'NET GO' would include this, but this wasn't the case and the app is still primarily used as a ticketing app.

We would like to include live tram times in the app in the future though, but this would take time to develop and implement.

For now, the best option for customers is to follow the tram timetable and review the public information displays for the most accurate times.

Luke Taylor

Customer Experience Manager

A few years ago the Robin Hood Network app had implemented live tram times which came from robinhood.arcticapi.com. This was a few years ago. This API disappeared several years back and the Robin Hood Network app also was removed. I do remember this API sometimes not returning real-time and falling back to timetable data. I can only assume this project was abandoned, given neither the Robin Hood Network app or this API exists today.

There are other open data services like Traveline/NextBuses, but this does not have real-time data for Nottingham on any operator, they are all generated off timetable data submitted. It would be great as a whole if the city had open data/an API available for real-time data across all major transport operators to be fair.

Hi Brook

Thanks for the suggestion.

This is something I would love to see launched on the app.

It has certainly already been mentioned to the app developers and we're constantly looking into the prospects of making this a reality.

In an ideal world, customers should be able to view a network map and see all of the live trams moving between stops. We have a version of this in our control room, but this is very hard for the everyday tram user to understand and transferring this live data to an app is not possible so we're having to look at other options.

I can't promise you we'll have this anytime soon, but believe me it's definitely something we'd like to have for our customers.

Luke Taylor

Customer Experience Manager