How StopBoard Tracks Buses in Real Time

Most bus stops across North West England don't have a real-time display board. StopBoard exists to fix that using your phone's browser instead of a physical sign, but the underlying problem is the same one those boards solve: turning raw vehicle GPS data into an accurate "your bus arrives in X minutes."

Where the data comes from

StopBoard is built on top of the Bus Open Data Service (BODS), the UK Department for Transport's open feed of timetable and real-time GPS data from bus operators. Vehicle positions are refreshed roughly every 10 seconds, covering operators including Arriva, Stagecoach, and Merseytravel services across the region.

From GPS point to arrival estimate

A raw GPS ping on its own isn't an ETA. To turn a vehicle's location into a countdown for a specific stop, StopBoard matches the vehicle's position against the route's known shape, works out how far along that shape the vehicle currently is, and compares that against the distance remaining to your stop. That distance, combined with recent speed, produces the live estimate you see on the stop page.

When a bus isn't currently being tracked live - because of a GPS gap, an operator outage, or a service that's finished for the day - StopBoard falls back to the scheduled timetable time instead, clearly marked as "Scheduled" rather than "Live."

Why estimates can shift

Traffic, driver changes, and temporary GPS signal loss can all affect accuracy, which is why an ETA might tick up or down slightly as a bus gets closer. In general, the closer a live-tracked bus is to your stop, the more accurate the estimate becomes.

No account or app download is needed - just open your stop's page in a browser and the live board does the rest.