Archived: New release into beta – Roads and service status

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A fresh batch of features has been now been dropped into beta.tfl.gov.uk.

This is a significant development which includes service status updates on all modes of transport, new service boards for roads, river, trams and Emirates Airline along with additional content.

We now have a great interactive mapping tool for roads which works nicely on mobile, tablet and desktop and shows exactly which areas are affected, rather than just points.

You can use this to check what’s happening now but also to see the likely impact of any planned events and closures in the future, over a weekend for example.

A couple examples of the roads tool as viewed on a mobile are shown below:

Roads live status   Roads live service map 

For most transport modes, because of our new single API, we’ve been able to get the latency (in other words, the time between an incident being logged and seen on the public site), down from around 5 minutes to less than 30 seconds.

Next Up:  ’Nearby’ and much more

We have also completed development of the next major release – which is our penultimate one before full go-live.  This is currently in testing and targeted for launch before the end of the year into beta.

It contains all the remaining travel tools: Live departure boards for all modes of transport, interactive geographic maps, and a new tool called ‘Nearby’ which shows all the transport assets around you – as well as the next departures – through a great mapping interface.

Some examples below show how this looks on a mobile:

Nearby screenshot   Bus routes page

Feedback on beta

In the four months since the beta launch the service has been busy, receiving around 7.6 million page views in 2.4 million visits from 1.6 million unique visitors.

Beta website usage

Thanks for showing your interest and please do try the new features. We hope you like them. Your feedback is really useful to us, so feel free to leave a comment below, or on the beta feedback form on the beta site.

3 Comments

    1. Thanks for your blog comments, Stefan. Your thoughts and feedback on the site(s) are important to us.
      With regards to the bus information, we’re starting to join all the bus info up and aim to make it considerably better when Drop 3 is released (December).

      We also take your note on dealing with examples of the wording (quoted) – that’s something which is embedded within control centre processes, but we’re on the right road to fixing.

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