Arriva Bus Live Mapping not Showing up on Bustimes.org

Just a brief update on live bus service monitoring online,  in case anyone else is struggling to see where their bus has got to - you're not alone.

I'm located in the Midlands and have not been able to see any Arriva buses on Bustimes.org's live map local services since Sunday 18th May. All other service providers seem to be showing up normally.

Looking further afield, some other regions do seem to have tracking on some of their Arriva services, so it does not appear to be a universal outage. Some further investigations yesterday and a chat with a helpful Arriva driver revealed that a) local drivers themselves use Bustimes.org in preference to Arriva's app, b) They had also noticed the dropout and, perhaps more revealing, they had enquired of their bosses what the reason was and been told 'they didn't know'. We can theferore only speculate.

Arriva have been messing about with their timetables this month, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've done something with their electronic reporting standards into the bargain. Either that, or they've become yet another casualty of our friendly neigbourhood hacking community. The fact that they haven't yet bothered to inform either their local management or indeed their drivers speaks volumes.....

Their attention to detail on monitoring has left a lot to be desired in te past....their app, which is now the sole means they provide for obtaining live bus service info,  has always had a lot of complaints, not the least of which is that it only works for Android 9 and above - not much hope for us 'dinosaurs' with legacy tablets and phones still working perfectly well on earlier OS version, then. Arriva also stopped live reporting on their website some time ago - a grave mistake in my opinion, given that one of the key requirements for happy customers is to know when their next service is coming.....and particularly when it isn't.

See this link for more details on likely future developments in UK bus and train services.

Keep up Arriva - bus service provision is now firmly in the spotlight and you'll lose market share if you don't improve your online provision....

Update 22.5.25: Looks like things are getting back to normal - an apology appeared on the Bustimes.org site yesterday, with Arriva Midlands buses starting to reappear on the map. The usual 'Tracking x buses' at the top of the initial single service display has also returned. No explanation given for the outage either on Bustimes.org or Arriva's site, so we may never know what caused the problem. My money's still on a possible hack on Arriva's site, although a glitch in Arriva's tracking data provision is probably more likely. What is encouraging is the insight this episode has given into how many people rely on the Bustimes.org offering, (including Arriva drivers themselves !) which is of course a crowdfunded venture. Its success and popularity suggests we may not lose the service for a while yet. Arriva may even take the hint and restore tracking on their own website - you never know....I'll continue regular monitoring and report any further outages.....

First Published 20.5.25

Updated 29.5.25

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