We've rolled out a batch of improvements across BusOva this week, covering fleet history, the live tracker, and the tools we use behind the scenes to keep the database growing.

Manufacturers now remember their history

Bus builders change names, merge and get taken over - Alexander became TransBus, which became Alexander Dennis. Until now those appeared as separate, unconnected entries, splitting a single manufacturer's fleet across several pages.

Manufacturers can now be linked to the company they became. Where that applies you'll see a note on each page: "Now known as..." on the historic company, and "Previously known as..." on the current one, with an optional line explaining what happened.

Better still, the vehicle lists are now combined. Open the current company and you'll see its own buses plus every vehicle built under its former names, all in one place. A new filter above the table lets you narrow the list to any single company - or leave it on All to see the complete history. Chains of several renames are followed automatically, and the manufacturer index no longer lists the old names separately, so there's one entry per company with a complete vehicle count.

"Buses near me" on the live tracker

Alongside the existing Stops near me button, the tracker now has Buses near me. One tap opens the live map centred on your location with a marker showing where you are, so you can see what's moving around you without hunting for your area on the map first.

Clearer downloads page

The BusOva Viewer download link is now a proper button with the version number called out, making it obvious which release you're getting.

Fairer data quality scores

Every operator, manufacturer and vehicle page carries a data completeness badge. Those scores previously counted the free-text Notes field, which most records will never need - meaning a fully documented entry could never reach 100%. Notes no longer counts toward the score, so the badges now reflect the information that actually matters.

A better vehicle importer

Our bulk importer reads live vehicle data and adds buses we don't yet hold. It now recognises registrations that operators publish alongside a fleet number (for example 0779_-_BD65_EWL), which previously went unread - unlocking several hundred extra vehicles per run. It also keeps working from recent data when a live refresh is slow, rather than giving up, and a new diagnostics panel reports whether the data feed is connected and how much data has arrived.

Duplicate protection is unchanged: registrations already in the database are filtered out before import and re-checked again on save, so nothing is added twice.

Under the bonnet

  • Stylesheets are now versioned automatically, so design updates appear immediately instead of being held back by caching.
  • The stop list on route pages no longer sits in its own scrollbar.
  • Assorted layout and dark-mode fixes across the tracker.

As always, if you spot missing or incorrect data you can suggest a correction directly from any vehicle, operator or manufacturer page.