Which local authorities do and don't put up proper bus timetables at bus stops?

[S&CLER]

Last Sunday, passing a bus stop opposite the Waggon and Horses pub at Walsden, West Yorks, and hoping to find the time of the next bus, I was disappointed to find that the poster in the bus shelter only had a phone number to ring for information (no use to me, since I don't have a mobile phone) and no proper departure times. Here in Merseyside I'm used to finding such information displayed, though at times during the pandemic it has not always been up to date. Which local authorities and bus companies do and don't provide such details at bus stops?

 

[Geordie driver]

I have found Tyne and Wears Nexus do a generally good job, although during the current crisis old times have been left up. I often stop for a read, doesn't impress my missus.

They have even recently refurbished a stop near me, including renewing the notice that no services pass that stop. It has been this way for about a decade now.

On a side note, I stopped a kid trying to smash up a bus stop near me a couple of days ago, he won't do that again in a hurry.

 

[scotrail158713]

In East Lothian the coverage is generally pretty good - even at a lot of the more rural stops. In the last 12 months though Lothian Buses and East Coast Buses have replaced times at stops with a notice to check online as times frequently change. I hope this won’t become a permanent change.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

no use to me, since I don't have a mobile phone

The councils of Bath and Bristol and South Glos do put up roadside publicity. However, don't know if North Somerset are quite as good.

Somerset is left to operators though I think some district councils (like Mendip) do provide limited roadside info in towns. Wiltshire is mainly operator led IIRC

 

[75A]

In this part of the world, the stops have scrolling digital displays. As to the service, well 2 different operators have buses following each other from Coventry to Leicester and back, all day. You couldn't make it up!

 

[Bletchleyite]

MK does.

 

[Andyh82]

Last Sunday, passing a bus stop opposite the Waggon and Horses pub at Walsden, West Yorks, and hoping to find the time of the next bus, I was disappointed to find that the poster in the bus shelter only had a phone number to ring for information (no use to me, since I don't have a mobile phone) and no proper departure times. Here in Merseyside I'm used to finding such information displayed, though at times during the pandemic it has not always been up to date. Which local authorities and bus companies do and don't provide such details at bus stops?

That’s due to Covid, normally WY Metro would provide a timetable at every stop, but they’ve currently been replaced with a generic poster. A large amount of stops have a real time display as well.

 

[Deerfold]

Last Sunday, passing a bus stop opposite the Waggon and Horses pub at Walsden, West Yorks, and hoping to find the time of the next bus, I was disappointed to find that the poster in the bus shelter only had a phone number to ring for information (no use to me, since I don't have a mobile phone) and no proper departure times. Here in Merseyside I'm used to finding such information displayed, though at times during the pandemic it has not always been up to date. Which local authorities and bus companies do and don't provide such details at bus stops?

In West Yorkshire in normal times, all stops with a case usually have times for all services (though they've stopped giving travel times or routings). They stopped updating them during the first lockdown and then went and removed all times that were up just as many services returned to normal times following the first lockdown.

I'm not sure what proportion of stops have a realtime display - on my routes it's the stops at each end of all the routes, the 2nd stop in one direction on all of them and the other direction for 1 and 1 other stop.

 

[Ostrich]

Dorset County Council went to great lengths to erect decent display units containing an up-to-date timetable on bus stops used by my local town service. Around a year after they'd completed this upgrade, the town service was withdrawn .....

 

[Flange Squeal]

Surrey County Council do a good job. Many stops have flags with stop name, direction of travel and route numbers. Some lower frequency routes have more basic flags consisting of the bus stop symbol and Traveline info.

Timetables will either be full ones similar to their website, or on busier routes they've begun listing the departures each hour.

When out of use, they get appropriate information.

Across the border in north east Hampshire, bus stops become the responsibility of the operator. It's not unusual to see stops no longer served still displaying a route number (and sometimes even timetables), and in some cases companies that ceased trading 20 years ago!

 

[Megafuss]

A small number of Northumberland County Council (now NEXUS) displays in some rural have been replaced by a vinyl with a giant QR code. The one I tried to use was in an area I couldn't even pick up a 3g signal

 

[cnjb8]

Nottingham is good, we have a variety of colours on our buses here (thanks to Trent and NCT) and in my opinion the bus stops are very clear and simple to use. In fact they are rolling out new information displays.
Nottinghamshire is a bit more basic but perfectly usable. They seem really dedicated on upgrading stops with electric destination screens at the moment.
Derbyshire is very basic, most rural stops are not well provided for. Some of the urban stops are a bit better but not by much. To be fair, Derbyshire has loads more bus stops to tend to then Nottingham and Nottinghamshire

 

[Dai Corner]

Newport City Council don't even maintain the electronic displays at the city centre bus stations. They've been showing the wrong times since at least the beginning of the Covid changes over a year ago. Rather than display a generic message or turn them off they've partially covered them with notices.

 

[py_megapixel]

Here's a random selection of counties I've travelled by bus in

• Gwynedd have, in my experience, decent provision of static information at bus stops. They have countdown signs in town centres too but they often don't work properly
  
  
• North Yorkshire are acceptable, but not amazing - not many countdown signs but the flags and posters generally seem to contain plenty of information.
  
  
• Transport for Greater Manchester have very good poster designs but putting them up seems sloppy as they're often wrong. No countdown signs either (though some stops seem to have housings where they're meant to go)
  
  
• Transport for London is, unsurprisingly, the best. Virtually every stop big enough to have a shelter has a countdown sign; timetables are clear and easy to understand
  
  
• Cheshire East and Derbyshire don't seem to do a very good job. Countdown signs are few and far-between, the flags don't generally display the routes, sometimes the flags are completely blank!
  
  
• Gloucestershire County (or possibly its various districts) seem to have decent provision but it's mostly left up to Stagecoach rather than provided by the council itself.
  
  
• North Somerset seemed to do quite a good job. Some bus stops in the centre of Weston have quite impressive countdown displays showing departures from the railway station as well, though some more rural stops don't have countdown signs.

 

[CBlue]

Cambridgeshire County Council also leaves the majority of the work to Stagecoach, who to be fair have done well keeping timetables up to date on my local route at least.

Some of the further flung parts of the county are less fortunate however - it wasn't that long ago a stop in Huntingdon was still happily displaying a long-withdrawn timetable from the early 90s!

 

[TUC]

West Yorkshire Metro seem to have given up trying to do a decent jobs as many timetable frames just have a QR code within them to scan. That does seem rather pointless since presumably one of the main groups who use bus stop timetables are those who can't get online.

 

[Scotrail314209]

Not so much a local authority, but SPT seem to do a good job in keeping timetables up to date. They only recently replaced some of them.

Dumfries and Galloway seem to do a good job too, but their information seems slightly outdated

 

[Llandudno]

Cheshire East deterring public transport use!

Last week I arranged to meet some pals at Macclesfield Rail Station to walk the Middlewood Way to Marple. Various train delays led to meeting 90 minutes late. To make up time we decided to catch the bus to Bollington to save time.

There is a prominent bus shelter opposite Macclesfield station promoting Arriva buses to Bollington every 30 minutes on the timetable display. It then occurred to me that the timings may have changed due to Covid so I walked up to the Tourist Information Centre, remarkably they do not have any information on bus timetables and advised me to go to the library.

The Covid dragon on reception advised me they don’t have bus timetables, I indicated that the TIC staff told me that the library did, she checked with a colleague and then pointed to the timetable carousel ten feet away from where she was sitting!

The timetable was indeed completely different from the one at the Rail Station, but the library copy didn’t have a route map, I was then advised to go back to the TIC as they hap maps!

I didn’t trust the information I was given so walked to the bus station instead, which is just as well as the Bollington buses no longer operate via the rail station.

I suppose I could have consulted the Arriva website, but that as we all know is totally incomprehensible!

Ended up a good day out, a couple of beers enroute and even the Northern train home from Marple turned up and on time!

 

[Gloster]

On the Isle of Wight most stops seem to have timetables, although it is possible that some out in the sticks don’t. However, I think that that is the work of Southern Vectis, not the council, there being only the one operator.

 

[AM9]

The Intalink partnership provides pretty widespread info about services at all the bus stops that I've seen in Hertfordshire. In towns, some of the bus shelters have screens that show buses due there. Not all services provide real time GPS tracking as the routes of smaller operators tend to show their fixed timetable events, even if the actual bus is running late.

 

[Statto]

GMPTE do a good job not only timetables at stops but route numbers up on most flags too, Merseytravel have timetables at most stops

 

[markymark2000]

Merseytravel is one of the best for bus stop displays. Must cost them a fortune though.

They have the normal timetables but when an update is known about, they put out an update timetable "this timetable is valid until [date] and then next to or below that it will say the upcoming timetable.

Very well laid out as well using the same departures each hour sort of display. Routes shown separately too. Not just a jumbled mess of 300 departures from stops which is what Cheshire West do.

Here is an example of a Cheshire West timetable in Chester City. They have a timetable but they are awful to read. Too many routes including a duplicate route number adding confusion.

 

[brick60000]

Transport for West Midlands do a pretty good job. Nicely presented, too.

 

[Martin1988]

When I went to the Cheshire East area last October I noticed that most of the timetables were the ones that were in place prior to the start of the pandemic in March 2020 however there was an accompanying notice saying that "due to the current pandemic" the times may not be accurate. Can't remember if it told you to consult the website or not.

 

[WY Bus Spotter]

WYmetro used to do a great job at keeping timetables up to date. This is particularly evident if you ever ride the 592 into Burnley. Once you cross into Lancashire you are lucky to find a proper bus stop, let alone one with a timetable.

Recently they've been replacing timetables with a generic printed message and quite a few bus stops now have real time displays (even the ones without shelters). This is ok if you want to know how long the next bus is, but if you want to know when the last bus on an evening is or in a couple of hours you're buggered (if you don't have a phone/ internet/ are not tech savvy).

Nexus in the North East generally do a good job, apart from in bus stations when for quite a while all real time displays just showed something about wearing a face covering, as if people 1 year in don't already know, and the existing signs (which are literally everywhere you look) aren't enough. I want to see when the next bus is you halfwits, not another bloody message about face muzzles.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

Last time I visited Aberystwyth, about two years ago, one of the stands at the bus station was showing the X50 as stopping there - with, if I recall correctly, a timetable which included the leg between Aberaeron and Aberystwyth. As far as I understood, the X50 only ran as far as Aberaeron (from Cardigan) at the time, so not all the way to Aberystwyth...

Needless to say, it was very confusing and, once my bus (T5) had arrived, I did have to ask the driver to confirm what time the bus back would actually be!


On the other hand, I've found that Surrey County Council do a good job (as already mentioned upthread). Timetables generally very good, just a shame about the endless spelling mistakes on bus stop names - looks like they need to employ a proofreader!

Here's one of quite a few examples I noticed in Guildford - "Burdon" should actually be Burden!



Another one in Guildford, coincidentally just a few stops away on the same route, is Peterborough Road, which is incorrectly written as "Peterbrorough Road".

 

[HST43257]

York is fully done with timetable in most, if not all, cases. got rid of the “text phone number _______“ a fair few years ago now.

 

[GusB]

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[Andyh82]

York is fully done with timetable in most, if not all, cases. got rid of the “text phone number _______“ a fair few years ago now.

I remember about 10 years ago before they launched the “itravelYork” scheme, it was the operators in York who used to provide the timetables. The bus stop cases in the city centre resembled a parish noticeboard with all the different design timetables stuck all over overlapping each other. It’s much better now the council do them in a combined consistent style.

 

[ACBest]

Lincolnshire County Council provide excellent departure lists at the vast majority of bus stops across the county, as well as most having smart flags and posts too. (Although said lists have been replaced by ‘contact operator’ notices because of COVID for now.)

Nottinghamshire County Council also have very smart bus stop infrastructure, with large timetable cases at every stop, on at least one side of the road, and they provide their own timetables at stops which are served by tendered services. Operators of commercial services provide their own timetables for the cases, but it’s no hardship as they’ve been given the equipment to do it. They’ll also providing service numbers on the flags.

Rutland County Council do everything in-house, from printing the timetables and maintaining stops, to placing timetables at each bus stop.

Leicestershire County Council, on the other hand, have absolutely abysmal passenger information provision at bus stops. It’s seemingly the responsibility of the operator to provide not only the timetable, but the timetable case too! This results in a large number of stops having no information at all. Additionally, bus stop flags don’t seem to be a uniform style, and in some cases have faded to just a blank plate - and that’s assuming there’s even a bus stop flag at all, with a high number of unmarked stops.