Queensland Bus Tracker

[James00]

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on a little project to capture fleet data from the Translink Real-time feed. This started as an idea back in 2015 and was started and abandoned many times. I've been capturing data for Bus QLD Ipswich since 2015 into excel files - but I've always been looking for a more automated and portable way of doing this - enter, Queensland Bus Tracker.

This site gathers the data from the Translink Real-Time feeds for SEQ Urban buses (and also Cairns, Wide Bay and G:Link) - shows current In Service status, location and historical trips for each bus - including last date and time that the bus was last seen in the feed. Currently the last 30 trips are recorded for each vehicle.

From the main page, buses are grouped into individual links by their operating company. Search functions/filters allow finding specific fleet numbers or route numbers per company, as well as an option to show only currently "In Service" vehicles. Tips for search - You can use % as a wildcard - e.g. 1% will show all vehicles starting with 1. Another way to search is for eg 9___ (that is, 3 underscores) will return all of the Brisbane Metro 9000 series vehicle ids when searching Transport for Brisbane.

Things to note:
The data is only as good as the data provided by the vehicles and the real time feed - it records whatever the vehicle is reporting at the time - which can result in some oddities from time to time. (like a spring hill loop BZL showing as completing a 199 in under 10 minutes)

There have been multiple real-time outages this week which has resulted in gaps in the recorded history - unfortunately, that is out of my control.

"Unplanned" trips are trips in the feed that have been added last minute or haven't correctly selected the right trip - this results in the destination (trip_headsign) showing as Unplanned. (due to the outages this week, a number of trips will be shown in the history as unplanned).

Company Fleet Lists - fleet numbers for each company are only displaying vehicles that have, since the 16th January, reported a trip in the real-time feed. The first time a vehicle appears in the feed it will automatically be added to the list and remain there - so for now, while data is still been gathered, some buses will be missing from the lists.

The Body/Chassis combos have been sourced from the fleet lists here and the enthusiasts wiki - which I will update as more vehicles report into the feed - so occasionally you will see fleet numbers listed with no details.

On the 25th January I had to reset the stored history due to a glitch - this means you will see some vehicles that have not been in service since then will show in the list but will have no history. The location map was added on the 26th of January - vehicles that have not been in service since before this date won't have a map location either.

I am still developing and adding things as I go - so I still consider this in Testing Phase, but for now I think it is in a good enough state to be able to release publicly. Thank you to daveeyh for the initial testing and feedback.

If you have comments, feedback or any issues etc. please post here and I will try to respond. I made this website for my own interest - it's not going to be of interest to some (anytrip is already a useful tool) - but hopefully it is of use to some people.

TL;DR https://www.qldbustracker.com/

[Lachlan-Conley-102]

That is amazing, this will come in handy definitely!

[Merc1107]

Very interesting tool. Clearly a lot of work has gone into its creation, and I'm sure it will be quite useful for a variety of purposes!

[James00]

Thanks for the feedback.

I have now added a map view by company - and as a trial, have increase the data fetching to update every 2 minutes instead of the 5.

[Jaytech]

This website is absolutely amazing, and has been something I have dreamt of doing but have never been able to program properly.

An absolutely huge thank you to you.

I have some feedback though, if it is possible to do so, I would recommend adding a column which shows the scheduled service time, so for example, 1:00pm 620 to Noosa Heads at 13:03:48. Thats if it isn't limited with the GTFS data.

[James00]

Hey, do you mean showing the scheduled time in the history?

There are many things that are possible - I'm learning as I go so I'm happy to investigate adding things.

[Jaytech]

Hey, do you mean showing the scheduled time in the history?

There are many things that are possible - I'm learning as I go so I'm happy to investigate adding things.

Correct

Example:

No. - Destination - Time - Service Sched Time
615 - Maroochydore - 02-02-2025 21:37:50 - 22:08
600 - Caloundra - 02-02-2025 21:21:34 - 20:40
620 - Maroochydore - 02-02-2025 20:31:36 - 19:35

As it currently is, its showing as the last seen time on the service, this would make it easier to know which service it is on
I'll think of some more ideas, but its a great start so far!!!

[James00]

No problem, I will look into it.

[mondegola]

Absolutely amazing stuff. Will definitely come in handy for some of my duties.

Thank you so, so much.

[James00]

Hey, do you mean showing the scheduled time in the history?

There are many things that are possible - I'm learning as I go so I'm happy to investigate adding things.

Correct

Example:

No. - Destination - Time - Service Sched Time
615 - Maroochydore - 02-02-2025 21:37:50 - 22:08
600 - Caloundra - 02-02-2025 21:21:34 - 20:40
620 - Maroochydore - 02-02-2025 20:31:36 - 19:35

As it currently is, its showing as the last seen time on the service, this would make it easier to know which service it is on
I'll think of some more ideas, but its a great start so far!!!

I opted against a new column as such for the moment, I'm still playing around with the layout but the proof of concept is now live - it will show the scheduled departure followed by the "destination".

Oh and one more thing - it's actually a really good idea that I hadn't thought of - so thanks for the suggestion. I had been tracking some operators who have smaller fleets to see patterns in allocations, so this will be helpful.

[Jaytech]

I opted against a new column as such for the moment, I'm still playing around with the layout but the proof of concept is now live - it will show the scheduled departure followed by the "destination".

Oh and one more thing - it's actually a really good idea that I hadn't thought of - so thanks for the suggestion. I had been tracking some operators who have smaller fleets to see patterns in allocations, so this will be helpful.

Just had a gander, what a difference that makes!! Absolutely love it!

My next ideas, I were thinking a possibility for a comment section for an individual bus, example, Surfside 212 has its own comment section.
Although this might have some technical limitations, unless you are good with PHP (which I am not, hence why I drive buses instead )

As well as, a photo of said bus in the vehicle details section.

Also, potentially a "buy me a coffee" button on the main page

I personally am happy with the site as is, but would definitely be interested in supplying coffee for future development

[James00]

The photo of each bus I think would be too time consuming. There are currently 2400 buses loaded in the website and for consistency sake it would be too hard to make sure they all have one/keeping it up to date. It's not a no, but a "not right now". I've had thoughts similar to this but in a different direction - initially would take some setting up but would be more efficient in terms of server resources.

For the comments would that be "me" adding comments or a user could add comments?

[Jaytech]

They are just some ideas for later on. I were thinking something similar to how perthbus.info has their photos, in a way.

I mean users adding their own comments, just a field where someone can add their name and their comment. If there is a way, probably run a system where if theres spam it gets flagged.

But also at the end of the day it would most likely just be easier to keep it simple by showing the previous runs and thats it.

[Lt. Commander Data]

This is an excellent tracker - it’s nice to see talented people making enthusiast tools for the rest of us noobs.

A similar one which recently cropped up in Adelaide is https://adelaidebustracker.com/. It’s slightly different in how it works, but the idea of both is similar. That site uses stylised drawn pictures for each type of vehicle (although you may have to check a few types as it is still a work in progress).

[James00]

That site uses stylised drawn pictures for each type of vehicle (although you may have to check a few types as it is still a work in progress).

That's pretty neat - it is kind of what I was thinking.

I think the adelaide one is a little more in-depth than mine and I had no idea it existed, so it's good to see.

[Lachlan-Conley-102]

Noticed how every single TFB bus model and a few other operators has its own drawing of the bus model now, looks amazing!

[James00]

Thanks Lachlan, it's a work in progress and will eventually roll out for all operators.