What’s Happened to my Bus/Train ? Finding Your Way Around on Public Transport

As a frequent local bus user, I was moved recently to put together a brief guide on how to get the best out of our bus and train networks for my website's travel page. Herewith a copy for the blog - hope it's useful....  

Things have come a long way on our public transport network since the days before the internet was widely available.

Working out how to get from A to B in the UK without major trauma during those somewhat simpler times relied on having a good sense of direction, a detailed knowledge of bus/train timetables, and being reasonably mobile. 

Timetable information was usually only available from tourist information offices, bus and train stations, etc., only in paper form - and quite often out of date. There were no digital bus signage boards for guidance, and not all bus stops had any timetable info. displayed. Only the main train stations had full display boards. 

Basically, you had to plan your journey carefully in advance, make your way to the appropriate station or bus stop…and hope the service you wanted would turn up.

Nowadays we have GPS tracking on almost every public service vehicle, live digital signage at many urban bus stops and full display boards at all rail and bus stations. We also have good internet availability of bus and train timetables and journey planners from most of the providers via their websites. Most of us have smartphones with network data connections which give us 'on the hoof' access to the internet. There are admittedly still quite few ‘holes’ in bus service provision in rural areas, which government have acknowledged need to be filled if our network is to thrive....and attract people away from their polluting cars.

Nevertheless, the plethora of choice of how to get from A to B can become a little confusing for the novice PT user, particularly if they aren’t quite sure how long a journey is likely to take, what the best route is and which modes of transport they’ll need to use. Those used to relying on a warm driving seat and their car’s Satnav to tell them where to go may get quite a shock if they dare to venture out of their cars – even nowadays.

This brief article is designed to provide some basic info. on how best to plan your route on public transport and then track your chosen services to see when they are likely to arrive…and how far they’ve got along their route if they don't.

Bus Services

Local routes

As already discussed, most of the major bus providers have their own websites with journey planners. Many also provide ‘real time’ info on their services. What you don’t get from any of them is an overall picture of all the services available for a chosen route, or indeed a reliable tracker to check where all the available services are located at a given time. Naturally enough, each provider will favour their own services, so the picture you get will be biased towards them and won’t always be complete.

For planning journeys with all the options considered, I’d recommend the Traveline site. This has no provider bias and provides a relatively simple interface for casual journey planning. It is designed to recommend the easiest route to your destination at a given time, but also has a good range of ‘filtering’ options you can select e.g. ‘bus only’ for local travel where trains might be inappropriate. It also gives you a series of possible routes and times to choose from, which you can hone to your requirements. Once you’ve selected a journey, you get a detailed plan of the stages involved with service numbers and any intermediate waits / walks between different stops if needed. You can also get live departure boards for bus services from a particular stop, which can be very useful when you're en route. Traveline will also give you detailed  info on national coach services, if relevant to your journey, but won’t give you the same amount of detail for any train services on the suggested route, though – see below for the best options for planning and monitoring a train journey.

Although the live times provided for each stop by Traveline are useful, they won’t always help if your bus is late – normally you just get info about services to come, and once the due time for a service has passed, it just disappears without trace from the schedule. The same applies to physical ‘at stop’ digital signage. 

What really is a help to the worried bus user when their chosen service fails to turn up at the appointed time is a live map of all the services in their area, showing where they are and how far behind schedule they’ve fallen. They then have a much better idea of whether to re-plan their journey using another service that's actually shown as running, or just wait for the original service to arrive if it's a few minutes late.

The only country-wide app I’ve come across which actually does this for bus and coach services is bustimes.org.

This excellent web-based tool, in addition to offering a comprehensive timetabling package, provides a country-wide live map of all current services providing GPS tracking info. Although it was designed for pcs and doesn’t offer an Android or Ios app version, it runs happily on most smartphones and tablets via Chrome or Firefox browsers, and provides a wealth of info about individual services, bus types, previous and future routes, etc. Definitely a must for every serious bus traveller….provided of course they have access to a smartphone and wifi access or an active network connection.

 One word of warning – not all bus services that are actually running will appear on the bustimes.org  map at any given time. This can be for a variety of reasons, and is usually because that particular vehicle isn’t sending GPS info to the central server. It’s therefore unwise to believe a service isn’t running if it isn’t displayed; I’d advise assuming it is running normally, but having a backup plan in case it isn’t. The site does occasionally go down completely, but is generally reliable and available on demand.

Longer journeys

Local buses are generally impracticable when it comes to most inter-city journeys of more than about 30 miles. There is a national coach service network, although coverage is somewhat limited with many places either not served at all, or provided with very restricted pickup points. As a result it lacks the popularity of local services. Although generally cheaper than rail services for most journeys, coach services are not currently subject to any form of price cap, so market forces are likely to keep prices rising in the face of rapidly increasing costs, especially the large increase in wage bills due to the excessive Employer National Insurance hike we saw following the disastrous October budget. 

National Express are the principal provider, and their website does include a coach service tracker which includes past, current and future services between any 2 points with an update on the current position of the service where appropriate. They also offer concessionary coach-cards for students and the over 60s (both £15) which give a 1/3 discount when booking. Although it is possible to buy tickets on the day, advance booking is essential if you want to guarantee a seat on a particular service.

Fares

On the subject of bus and coach fares, the government has decided to extend the fare cap on local bus journeys for a further year, but this time at a higher figure of £3.00. This extension is a good move; it recognises that the vast majority of local PT journeys are by bus rather than rail, and that buses probably represent the best hope of getting people out of their cars. Unfortunately there is no cap on coach fares or indeed rail fares, which are regularly raised by above-inflation percentages each year. 

Since our 'mild but moist' UK climate precludes relying on the use of two-wheeled vehicles for most journeys, coach services have restricted availability, and the location of train stations / price of train travel usually rules rail out as a practicable way of getting around for most, local buses are likely to remain the most popular alternative to cars.

The main problem at present is our ageing bus fleet, much of which dates back to the noughties or earlier and now showing its age. It is unlikely to be upgraded now that franchises are being steadily phased out by the Labour government. Expect more breakdowns and service failures in the months ahead….

Train Services

Despite the sky-high cost of train journeys in UK (by far the most expensive in Europe, and likely to remain so!), and their legendary unreliability due to strikes (still ongoing despite super-inflationary pay rises last year), ageing infrastructure, etc., some people do regularly find themselves obliged to use the rail network.

Moreover, the rail fare structure is still a joke, defying comprehension to all but the most savvy experts in its complexity. There is some talk of simplifying it as the remaining franchises are withdrawn and pass into public ownership,  but I wouldn't hold your breath !. Although there has been some reduction in overcrowding through the introduction of more services and provision of more rolling stock, it is arguable whether the rail consumer really gets his/her money's worth. The billions already wasted on the flagship HS2 'white elephant' could well have been spent on improving most aspects of the existing network - a high price to pay for getting from London to Birmingham half an hour quicker, particularly since you'll probably need to take out a 2nd mortgage to use it! Sadly, HS2 will continue to divert much needed cash from the rest of the network, and few of us will ever benefit from it personally.

As discussed, if you do venture onto the rail network, signage at most train stations is much improved, and generally reliable. Quite a few of the main stations have had re-vamps in recent years. Journey planning is relatively  straightforward via the National Rail Enquiries (NRE) website, and planners are also available from most of the individual train companies. The NRE planner also includes live departure and arrival boards for each station on the network, but like bus planners, these don’t always provide much help if your service is delayed or cancelled. 

A live rail system map is available on the Tracksy website. This works by requesting a station of your choice and then displaying a diagrammatic view of the services running nearby. Clicking on the icon for a particular train service will generate a detailed itinerary showing the progress of the service from its start point and giving projected future timings on its route. It does rely on knowing your route in advance and the stations along it, and you can’t pan in and out as you can with bustimes.org,  but it is still quite useful in working out where an ‘errant’ service might have got to when it fails to turn up on time and has conveniently disappeared from the display board. Unfortunately, as for bustimes.org, there is no smartphone app, so access must be via a web browser.

I hope this brief guide to getting around on public transport is useful…as always comments and suggestions for improvement welcome.

First published 12.1.25