Looking for that bit of context to add some scale and some accuracy to a transport story you’re covering? Interhacktives has you covered! Organised by mode, these are the top sources of statistics, information and realtime updates you need if you’re covering a transport-related news event or feature:
Road
- Webtris is Highways England’s interactive map which allows you to drill down into traffic flow, speed and other reports on HE-managed roads
- Streetworks, as you can imagine, details almost all incidences of works occurring on public highways across the UK including who is carrying them out, how long for and the type of impact.
- Uber Movement provides stats and interactive maps on mobility data for the services it provides in the larger towns and cities in the UK.
Rail
- Realtime Trains provides live train running information for the entire GB rail network, including non-passenger trains. There is a simple and a detailed lookup and users can look back 7 days and on some parts of the network to find out which rolling stock is being used on a given service.
- OTT Maps shows most of the GB rail network in realtime in signalling form. To find a relevant train, you either need to know its headcode or which line it’s on.
- BRFares.com is a database of every possible fare you can buy on the National Rail network, excluding Eurostar
- RDG Data provide links to, and their own, mostly commercial data regarding the GB rail network.
Bus
- Live London Bus Map. Self-explanatory. Only TfL vehicles with their IBus turned on.
- Bustimes.org Mapping. Similar to above although data is slightly less reliable in certain areas as not all operators provide live tracking open data. Within Greater London, only non-TfL services are shown (such as Greenline 724 or National Express). You can click through onto the vehicles to see which journeys they operated previously in the day and their actual reported delay.
Shipping/Passenger Boat
- MarineTraffic is a live map which you can use to track vessels in major waterways around the globe. It also captures Lighthouse and some Port data.
- VesselFinder is similar to MarineTraffic but has more context around the vessels and can track the ancillary vehicles which support water traffic such as rescue ships and coastguard land and air fleet.
Air
- Flightradar24 is the daddy of aviation trackers. It has a pay option that allows you to look up historical data and find your own patterns and trends.
- ADS B Exchange is similar to Flightradar24 although it can also pick up certain military and non-passenger flights. It is less intuitive to use than Flightradar24 but the data available for free can often be richer.
- The CAA provides a wealth of data regarding all things UK airspace and airports.
Other/All
- Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports is a limited time opportunity to see transport trends around the world as Google reveals the data it has on when and where its users are travelling to compared with the pre-pandemic average.
- DfT Statistics is the UK government’s page for statistics related to the operations, usage and impact of the UK’s transport system.
- TfWM’s Data Insight team has opened up a lot of useful data regarding integrated transport in the West Midlands.
- London Datastore holds regularly published data on transport in the capital
- Eurostat (Transport). Same thing as above, other side of the Channel.
- OECD. Similar, high-level thing for around the world. It’s easy to compare several countries’ data with the dashboard function.
Social media can also be helpful too, so make sure to search across platforms for insider information and enthusiasts who often can help put this information into context. Most of these sites use and provide official open data but some are not affiliated with industry officials so make sure to always corroborate the data used when appropriate.