Expect London Transport Apps To Get Better. Fast.

Transport For London has today announced that it is releasing travel information about the city’s buses, underground trains and river services for developers to use for free.

One of the problems for developers building transport apps has until now been that much of the timetable information is wrapped up in expensive licenses. This means the cost of developing the app is often more than the publisher can bear. In London, from today that changes.

The first batch of data isn’t particularly exciting, relating mainly to locations of stations, River Thames piers, licensed private hire operators and Oyster Ticket Stops. Details of planned Tube works are also included.

However, bus timetables and tube journey information is due to be added by the end of the month, however, which should see all sorts of interesting new apps arriving for London travelers in the near future.

Chris MacLeod, TfL’s Director of Group Marketing, said: “We want to harness the innovative ideas in the developer community to provide improved information which will benefit all transport users.” Sadly, as Transport for London doesn’t count as a local authority it won’t improve the tally on that rather sorry looking Open Data Leaderboard.

If you’re planning on developing something interesting with the newly available information, let us know.

[Image credit: Adam UXB Smith]