Transport for London has added data from the night tube – which ran for the first time on Friday – to its Application Program Interface to allow travel apps to use it.

The night tube started running on the Victoria and Central lines last weekend – Photo credit: Flickr, Martijn van Exel

TfL has committed to making all real-time travel information freely and openly available to help developers create accurate products for customers using its services.

The API, available at tfl.gov.uk/developers, now contains the planned journey timetables for night tube services on the Central and Victoria lines, and will be updated with information for the other lines when they start running.

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The information will also be available on in-station digital customer information boards and on TfL’s own journey planner.

Phil Young, head of online at TfL, said: “London is a 24-hour city and millions of Londoners use apps powered by our open data to check the Tube, find a bus or see how the roads are running.

“By making information about the night tube services easy for customers and developers to access, we hope to make it easier for everyone to enjoy all that London has to offer and support the thousands of Londoners who have to travel to or from work during the night.”

TfL said that there were more than 500 apps using the data available on the API, with more than 8,500 developers registered to use it. This is up from 8,200 in April this year.

The API contains live travel information on buses, river bus services, trams and roads, as well as accessibility and car park information for all stations.

TfL has also partnered with Twitter to provide customers with direct disruptions alerts to their mobiles via a Twitter alert, which 7,000 people have registered for since it launched in June. 

The night tube information will also be available through this service, TfL said.