OSINT in Public Transport: Sources and Use Cases

As the arteries and veins of major cities, public transport systems represent the main way that most people get around. At the same time, such cities are, of course, home to a range of petty and serious crime. As such, the teeming trains, buses, metros, and platforms that people use in getting from A to B, are often crucial parts of the puzzle when trying to reconstruct events.

What’s more, when sizable engineering projects meet a relentless footfall from people of all ages and the general wear and tear of mechanical usage, public safety becomes a large concern. If accidents occur, it’s important to be able to identify the cause, so that responsibility can be correctly apportioned, and similar events avoided in the future. 

Essential Public Transport Open Sources

By utilizing the various urban transport open sources, investigators and analysts can gain a huge advantage in a wide array of investigative work. Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s available: 

• UITP — A provider of public transport Ridership Data from all over the world.
• Rapid Transit Database — A compilation of all rapid transit corridors worldwide, based on data collected from government sources and news outlets.
• Data.World — A vast collection of open data sets concerning public transport.
• American Public Transportation Association — A database of public transport vehicles. 
• Travel Time — The world’s largest public transport database.
• Open City A provider of data about public transport in India.
• EuroStat — A website indicating freight volume and passenger count in a given vehicle and journey, plus the nature of vehicles, vessels, and transport infrastructure in question. They also provide information on transport safety, modal split (the modes of transport making up a total journey) and intermodal freight transport.
• Technoton — A bus monitoring system that tracks vehicle condition and routes as well as driver behaviour.
• Turbo360 — A comprehensive bus service monitoring tool with unique capabilities.
• Vehicle OSINT Collection — An exhaustive list of websites, add-ons, repositories, and other tools useful for finding information on a target vehicle.

Benefits and Possibilities

With the selection of open sources listed above, OSINT practitioners can open their work up to a variety of possibilities. These include:

Technical Maintenance Tracking. Look into the maintenance history of transport vehicles and infrastructure, and determine whether essential work was properly carried out and by whom.

Transport Monitoring. Keep track of buses, trains, trams, metro trains, etc. the world over, including routes taken, stop times, and more. 

Vehicle Data Retrieval. Get crucial information pertaining to a given vehicle, including ownership, history, specifications, capacity, and more.

Problem Identification / Incident Investigation. Flag up points of transport routes that are either dangerous or related to a given incident, and enrich the area of search around them.

Use Cases

Public transport data is highly effective across various use cases, such as:

• Criminal investigations
• Public safety
• Emergency response
• Anti human, arms, and drug trafficking
• Cybercrime investigations
• Financial security
• Military intelligence
• Due diligence
• Staff checks
• Corporate risk assessment
• Brand security
• Event and travel security / VIP protection
• Corporate investigations
• Background checks
• Investigative journalism

Want to learn more? 

If you’d be interested in some first-hand advice and demonstrations around how public transport open sources can be a game-changer in your investigative work, get in touch! We’ve also created original materials on OSINT in aviation, shipping, and rail that we’d be happy to share with you on request.

Simply email us at osint@socilallinks.io and we’ll get back to you to arrange a personalized session where you can get all the information you need and see how everything works in person.