Geographic coordinates and unique identifiers for all Stops and stations

The request was refused by Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company.

Dear Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company,

I would like to request that you publish or make publically available a list of all public transport stops and stations (bus and rail) serviced by your company. This list should contain at least:

1) the English name of each stop and station, eg. Belfast, High Street
2) the latitude and longtitude of each stop and station
3) a globally unique identifier for each stop and station

By "globally unique identifier", I mean a number or code which, in the absence of any other information, unambiguously identifies each stop and station within the set of all stops and stations. In other words, in the case that there may be two bus stops, say, with identical English names, there ought to be a number or code or "slug" which differentiates the two (and which isn't simply the latitude/longtitude). Even in the case where all stops and stations have unique and unambiguous English names, a globally unique identifier is still required, so that independent electronic consumers of the information may communicate with, as it were, a common protocol.

I am aware of a limited amount of information previously made available and downloadable at opendatani.info which, while welcome, is incomplete and crucially does not include a unique identifier.

A full list, in electronic format, of all Translink stops and stations and their geographic coordinates together with unique non-English identifiers ought to be publically available and would be a public good.

I look forward to your reply,

Yours faithfully,

Gerard Flanagan

FOI, Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company

Dear Mr Flanagan

Thank you for your request for information, received by our Feedback
e-mail facility on 23 September 2011 and forwarded to me for attention.
This will be dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 and a fuller response will issue within 20 working days, as
provided for in the Act.

Yours sincerely,

Janice Davidson
FOI Co-ordinator
For and on behalf of Translink

Janice Davidson
PA to Chief Operating Officer

show quoted sections

FOI, Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company

Dear Mr. Flanagan,

Further to my earlier brief acknowledgement I am now in a position to respond more fully in relation to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The bus stop and station data held by the NITHC operating companies is not readily available in the format outlined in your FOI request. Furthermore, the time and cost to manipulate the data to that specified would be prohibitive.

However I can advise you that Translink is currently undertaking a comprehensive data refresh exercise across the organisation. When this exercise is complete (in association with our sponsor government department, Department for Regional Development) the intention is to make this data available during 2012 under the NI Opendata initiative.

Data will be available through a designated public portal which has yet to be determined.

I trust the foregoing deals with the various queries which you raised.  If you are not satisfied with this response you may request a review by writing to the Translink Commercial & Services Director, who has overall responsibility for Freedom of Information and Data Protection issues within the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company/Translink organisation. Correspondence should be addressed to: Translink, Chamber of Commerce House, 22 Great Victoria Street, Belfast BT2 7LX.

If we are then unable to resolve any complaint that you may have, you may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner who will make an independent judgement. The address of the Information Commissioner is: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AT. The address of the Information Commissioner's Office for Northern Ireland is: 51 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8FE.

Yours sincerely,

Janice Davidson
FOI Co-ordinator
For and on behalf of Translink

show quoted sections