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TfL, WTH is my bus? London, UK, looks up from its mobile
No word on what caused the feed to go silent
Updated It's peak morning commute time in the capital of the United Kingdom and the live bus arrival service on Transport for London's website, SMS and apps powered by TfL’s API feed has been unavailable since 3am.
Apps using TfL's API – which provides realtime bus and river bus arrival information across all TfL bus stops and piers – were saying there were no "buses coming in the next 30 minutes", while the website's journey planner was alternating between returning 502 errors and displaying an endless loading page at the time of publication.
The most widely used of the affected apps is likely Google Maps, which is displaying scheduled bus times rather than live times when journeys are plotted.
TfL Digital's WordPress blog has so far made no mention of the snafu .
Unable to plan out whether they'd have enough time to toke on an e-cigarette or wolf down a bacon roll before the bus comes, Londoners took to Twitter to moan.
So pissed @tfl pic.twitter.com/P0P8fGMign
— Mahmuda (@mudakhx) July 6, 2017
Is anyone else finding it really hard to load @TfL Web pages? I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHEN MY BUS WILL COME 😣😥
— Rosh (@RoshalPatel) July 6, 2017
The TfL Bus Twitter account was reassuring users that, indeed, even without data reflecting this on the internet, buses were still running.
Buses are running. Currently predictions not available due to a technical fault. We are working on it. Apologies for the inconvenience
— TfL Bus Alerts (@TfLBusAlerts) July 6, 2017
We've asked TfL for comment and we'll update if we hear more. ®
Updated at 0906 to add: TfL said its engineers had resolved the problem but did not clarify what the issue was. Simon Reed, TfL’s Head of Technology and Data for Surface Transport, said: “I apologise to customers for the disruption to live bus arrival information services this morning. Our engineers worked hard to restore services and were able to do so by 8:30am. We are now working with our suppliers to identify the fault.”