Departure boards show stop-centric information about upcoming journeys. This information comes from the current TXC dataset or your SIRI-SM feed, if applicable.
Departure boards do not show:
- More than 30 departures
- Departures in the past
- The last visit for a journey (i.e. a bus that will only arrive and won’t depart from the stop)
What does a departure look like?
Departure time
Departure times are displayed as 24-hour times. or relative minutes (rounded down to the nearest minute), or “Due”.
Time until expected/aimed departure | What is shown on websites & apps |
| Less than one minute | “Due” |
| Less than one hour | Relative minutes, eg “5 mins” |
| One hour or more | 24 hour clock “15:25" |
Scheduled departures can be provided by the Dataset source or the SIRI-SM source (see “Departure data sources” below.)
A scheduled departure will have an aimed arrival time, and an aimed departure time.
Real-time departure data can be provided by the SIRI-SM source.
A real-time departure will have an aimed arrival time and an aimed departure time, as well as an "expected" arrival time and an "expected" departure time. The expected times are the real-time updates from the aimed times, and these are displayed in green.
The departure time that is chosen to show to the user will be the expected departure time (if known), or the aimed departure time if not.
Departure data sources
Departure data can come from multiple sources:
- Scheduled visits via TransXChange datasets uploaded to Passenger Cloud
- Scheduled or Real-time visits via a SIRI-SM supplier. This is usually based on TXC imported at the provider, combined with real-time vehicle location data, to create predictions.
These two data sources can be seen in Passenger Cloud:
- The left column shows the current TXC dataset in Passenger’s system.
- The middle column shows the SIRI-SM dataset source.
- These sources are then combined to produce the resulting departure board (right column).
If both sources are in use, the resulting departure boards will be a combination of both sources. Data from both sources are matched by line, operator and time (to the minute).
When they match, they are combined to show as one departure. The destination from the SIRI-SM feed is used if available.
No SIRI-SM data
Departures over an hour away
SIRI-SM usually only provides data up to an hour in advance. For later departures, under the default configuration, the dataset source is used to populate the departure board.
No data at all
Under the default configuration (which will use both sources) if no SIRI-SM data is available, the dataset source will be used instead.
When data sources don’t match
In cases where there is departure data that does not match by time, both will show as departures in the resulting departure board. This usually occurs because one of the sources – either Passenger or the SIRI-SM provider – have different TransXChange files.
When lines or operators don’t match
By default, SIRI-SM departures are matched by operator and by line name. This is known as strict matching. If either of these does not match, the departure will not be shown on the departure board.
Strict matching disabled
When strict matching is disabled, if we can’t match on both an operator and line name, then we will only match on the operator. If this still doesn’t match, it won’t be shown on a departure board.
