# Every bus in London

> Eight thousand vehicles, and between them they draw the road network.

- Category: Transport
- Cadence: live
- Status: Live: values change continuously; cite the retrieval time.
- Dataset key: `live-buses`
- Source: [Department for Transport](https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/)
- Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 — [terms](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)
- Canonical page: [https://londongraph.com/g/every-bus-in-london](https://londongraph.com/g/every-bus-in-london)
- Machine-readable record: [https://londongraph.com/data/every-bus-in-london](https://londongraph.com/data/every-bus-in-london)

## Methodology

Live vehicle positions from the Department for Transport's Bus Open Data Service, bounded to Greater London. Every English operator is legally required to feed BODS, which is why this exists at all — TfL's own API publishes arrival predictions at a stop rather than where the bus is. About 94% of what reports inside the box is TfL's; the rest are coaches and county services passing through, and they are drawn separately rather than counted as London buses. Positions are SIRI-VM XML, roughly 7.5 MB per refresh, parsed on the server so a browser never sees it. A bus reports no speed, so these dots ease toward each new fix rather than being projected forward.

## Visualisations

- [Map](https://londongraph.com/g/every-bus-in-london): Eight thousand vehicles, and between them they draw the road network.
- [Routes now](https://londongraph.com/g/every-bus-in-london?view=routes): Rank routes by the number of vehicles currently reporting.

## Citation guidance

Attribute the original publisher named above and identify LondonGraph as the visualisation and methodology layer. Do not describe live values as a historical census, and do not present placeholder values as observations.