Things which cause bus boarding/alighting to be slower now than 40 years ago.

[WelshBluebird]

When I head into central Bristol, very few cash fares get proffered these days; it's mainly mtickets though TOTO is now growing. However, what does really impact is bus priority. Some of it is really effective whilst other bits can a) be poorly designed or b) the space IS there but it's either not taken (don't wish to upset businesses) OR c) bus lanes exist but parking restrictions are not enforced.

Given my comments were written mainly based on my experience in Bristol too, I wonder if Bristol is just spectacularly bad at it!

But yeah absolutely agree with all theee points. Plus what you mention about on street parking.

I swear about half the time it takes for me to get into town on the 70 is a mix of waiting at lights where you could have bus priority junctions leading straight into bus lanes (so no conflict with other road users), waiting in traffic when theres a perfectly good bus lane next to us but its only in use during rush hour (and is parking outside of that) or edging past parked cars on roads where you should be removing on street parking for large sections. You could literally half journey times there.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2026 ==

Bus priority often isn't easy, is often impossible because of narrow roads and can be expensive.

As above, there are plenty of parts of Bristol where it can be done easily and without a huge cost. Thankfully it does look like the council is paying attention here with in flight schemes to improve.

As I mentioned earlier, bus priority without fast dwell times is an insult to taxpayers. Obviously where multiple door is the default like it is in most countries you would replace the fleet as normal when buses are life expired. Where you currently have one door buses you don't have to replace the whole fleet overnight. Just buy two door buses next time, like Brighton and Belfast for example.

Fair, but where you've literally just got a huge number of brand new buses, again like in Bristol, it just isnt going to happen. By all means argue the decision for these new buses not be multiple door was a bad one, I'd agree. But its now a moot point so we need to look for other improvements.

Exactly. Not to go too far off topic but this ties in with the culture issue discussed in the other thread. Whenever someone questions why a bus operator has failed to grow patronage or improve a network, the immediate response is often "we need more bus priority". While bus priority is important the reality is that on many routes there simply is not the road space to deliver significant schemes, so it cannot be the answer to every problem.

As I said maybe this is specific to Bristol then but it really would be the answer to a lot of what is wrong with the buses her.

Dwell times arent really the problem as they are largely quick apart from when the odd person decides they want to pay with a £20 note and get change, or they want to rummage through their bag for coins. Most people use mtickets on the app (often a daily, weekly, monthly or annual pass) or TOTO - both of which are very quick.

The main dwell time problem I can think of is the approach into some stops is short so if a bus is already at the stop you have to wait for it to move away. Often an issue at stops along a major artery that get a frequent service (like Gloucester Road in Bristol) or city centre terminating stops.

On the original point, my own observations are that contactless payment and mobile tickets are noticeably quicker than cash. Personally, I would like to see cash gradually phased out on urban bus networks where every second at a stop matters. Faster boarding can deliver meaningful journey time improvements without relying solely on expensive infrastructure.

Defo agree on that point, though I do think there needs to be a way of still using cash. Even if thats a roundabout way via purchasing carnet style tickets from the main bus station or partnering with shops to do something similar.

 

[mattb7tl]

It isn't necessarily masses of road space that is needed in many instances though. The fact is that there is no point in saving literally a few seconds on boarding if you're then stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. Look at the places where bus patronage has been growing. Other than Cornwall and a few small outliers where a small change has a disproportionate impact (like Rutland), they are the places that have invested in extensive bus priority. Of course, bus priority is simply one area and is all part of a blend of modern vehicles, simplified ticketing, marketing etc.

When I head into central Bristol, very few cash fares get proffered these days; it's mainly mtickets though TOTO is now growing. However, what does really impact is bus priority. Some of it is really effective whilst other bits can a) be poorly designed or b) the space IS there but it's either not taken (don't wish to upset businesses) OR c) bus lanes exist but parking restrictions are not enforced.

Otherwise you end up in the position as in Manchester where they've done little to manage car use/bus priority in recent years and the solution has been to simply add more buses and cost into the PVR.


Phasing out cash will disadvantage the poorest in society.

I do not disagree that bus priority is effective where it can be delivered. The issue is that the priority measures you can realistically implement on many routes with constrained road space often do not produce transformational results. In my region, a large proportion of services simply cannot accommodate dedicated bus lanes or major highway changes, leaving little beyond traffic signal priority.

It is very easy to point to places that have reversed declining patronage and conclude, "they invested in bus priority". That works in areas where the physical space exists, but it does not answer the question for the many networks where it simply is not feasible.

A few years ago, when the franchising versus partnership debate was in full swing, I had a discussion with Ralph from McGills. His answer repeatedly came back to bus priority as the solution, but he never really addressed what happens on the majority of routes where significant bus priority cannot realistically be delivered. I often see this gap in these discussions. Some industry experts present bus priority as the answer, but do not have a alternative for the large proportion of a regions network where it is not feasible. The answer from this so called expert was "use it or lose it"

For routes that cannot support priority the most effective way of making buses more attractive is often reducing waiting time through higher frequencies. The problem under a purely commercial system is that operators generally use existing demand to justify increasing frequency rather than increasing frequency to generate new demand. That is one of the reasons why different operating model is needed with the goal to grow patronage and increase speeds not just on corridors where major bus priority schemes are feasible. This will reduce the average waiting time and hence make journey times quicker in practice.

 

[Cesarcollie]

I do not disagree that bus priority is effective where it can be delivered. The issue is that the priority measures you can realistically implement on many routes with constrained road space often do not produce transformational results. In my region, a large proportion of services simply cannot accommodate dedicated bus lanes or major highway changes, leaving little beyond traffic signal priority.

It is very easy to point to places that have reversed declining patronage and conclude, "they invested in bus priority". That works in areas where the physical space exists, but it does not answer the question for the many networks where it simply is not feasible.

A few years ago, when the franchising versus partnership debate was in full swing, I had a discussion with Ralph from McGills. His answer repeatedly came back to bus priority as the solution, but he never really addressed what happens on the majority of routes where significant bus priority cannot realistically be delivered. I often see this gap in these discussions. Some industry experts present bus priority as the answer, but do not have a alternative for the large proportion of a regions network where it is not feasible. The answer from this so called expert was "use it or lose it"

For routes that cannot support priority the most effective way of making buses more attractive is often reducing waiting time through higher frequencies. The problem under a purely commercial system is that operators generally use existing demand to justify increasing frequency rather than increasing frequency to generate new demand. That is one of the reasons why different operating model is needed with the goal to grow patronage and increase speeds not just on corridors where major bus priority schemes are feasible. This will reduce the average waiting time and hence make journey times quicker in practice.

But if people are going to be stuck in the same traffic jam in a bus, you won’t get them out of their cars! Quality is great, but what really matters to people is door to door journey time. The car wins from the home end in most cases. Depending on parking arrangements, it may win at the end of the journey too. So to achieve modal shift we have to make the bus journey more attractive by being faster, or able to access city centres where cars can’t. Or we have to make driving in/to cities expensive or difficult or both, so that public transport becomes the obvious choice. Everything else is tinkering around the edges.

 

[mayneway]

I love this comment about the uncreased Metro. I see this so often, usuaully by getting their uncreased copy they manage to crease up and damage the top 10 copies. Surely you can still read the words on the creased copy?

Normally the ones they reject fall on the floor at the next bend.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Jul 2026 ==

That isn't a TfGM thing, that is a banking thing - we have the same issue everywhere it is just some areas suffer more than others and, of course, if you are buying more expensive season tickets it is more common than someone buying single tickets but we do get people not having enough money to pay £3 fares. The issue is that to speed the payment process bus ticket machines don't process the payments on boarding (as shops do, checking that the money is available before approving the transaction) with the payments being grouped and downloaded to the banking system during the day when it has a good enough connection. If the payment request is refused, either due to insufficient funds or other reasons (occasionally it can flag as fraud though that is rare for on bus sales), the card is blocked. The banking system will retry to get that money occasionally over the next day or so and then less frequently after this. When a card that has been blocked is presented to the ticket machine again later this will activate another attempt to get payment, once it goes through the card is unblocked and then can be used again though that takes several minutes.

The only way to avoid these issues is not accepting card payments at all but then you back to cash only and the delays with change giving and the like instead.

Sorry but you’re wrong. I drove for two companies commercially before the bee network launched, the latter was Go north west, and the only time a bank card was declined was because there was no money in the account or the card had been cancelled.
One thing we did experience, especially in cheetham hill was rouge’s getting on and trying to buy day and weekly’s with pockets full of cloned and stolen cards.

TFGM have set cards to decline if they have declined in the past simply to prevent fraud. Pretty daft though when someone’s card is declined so they go onto the bee network app and happily buy a ticket.

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

This article from Passenger Transport https://www.passengertransport.co.uk/2026/07/how-the-germans-do-bus-franchising/#:~:text=Non-franchised, private bus operators are,a much tighter regulatory framework suggests otherwise with this quote...


That same model is also pursued in the Netherlands, and in France where we see RATPs share being reduced in the greater Paris conurbation.

Did you read everything in the link that you sent? It does talk about the commercial operations that I am talking about under "Private, non-franchised operators", where there's specifically not a franchising tender, and no revenue-risk taken on my the LTA, since there's no operating contract with them.

But I think we're getting off-topic. Looking from the outside, it seems to me this particular door thing is a cultural and not a material difference. Similar to how Germany has no speed limit on the Autobahn even though there's good reasons for it, the UK doesn't have a second door on buses, even though there's good reasons for it (and for both there's over-emphasised contra arguments).

 

[johncrossley]

Nobody here is arguing against bus priority. If it can be done then great. It doesn't affect the need for fast dwell times. Nor does fast dwell times mean you no longer need bus priority. Bus priority has to be done properly. Often, as implemented in the UK, it makes little difference or makes things even worse. Again, this is where we need to look at international best practice, copy it and not try and reinvent the wheel.

I'm wondering whether some people here are content with what I would still call long dwell times because it is an improvement on what there was before. The Swiss would probably think the dwell times on London buses are unacceptable. The Zurich canton has recently got rid of driver payment even though they already had short dwell times. They had open boarding, ticket machines in the city with only a few people buying tickets from the driver out of town where there aren't ticket machines. The workaround for the few who can't use mobile tickets and don't have a season ticket is not user friendly but that is how seriously they take dwell times. They must have had issues with delays due to the few people buying tickets. They already had enviably low dwell times but that wasn't good enough. They constantly strive for improvement.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It isn't necessarily masses of road space that is needed in many instances though. The fact is that there is no point in saving literally a few seconds on boarding if you're then stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. Look at the places where bus patronage has been growing.

And, indeed, look at the places where bus patronage is declining. London especially.

London has all the bells and whistles for reducing dwell time. Double doors, cashless systems, no tickets.

But patronage is declining, and rapidly, because overall traffic congestion means that the average speed of a London bus is now about 9mph overall. It is as low as 3mph-4mph in the peaks in the inner zones.

All this obsession about dwell times is fiddling with deckchairs.

 

[johncrossley]

And, indeed, look at the places where bus patronage is declining. London especially.

London has all the bells and whistles for reducing dwell time. Double doors, cashless systems, no tickets.

But patronage is declining, and rapidly, because overall traffic congestion means that the average speed of a London bus is now about 9mph overall. It is as low as 3mph-4mph in the peaks in the inner zones.

All this obsession about dwell times is fiddling with deckchairs.

Improving dwell times doesn't prevent the installation of bus priority and there would be no benefit of reintroducing longer dwell times in London. Traffic is of course not great but it isn't as if you end up in a traffic jam every time you get on a bus. Generally speaking, people aren't switching from buses to cars. They are switching from buses to bikes or rail, which is actually what we want. Last time I looked at the TfL annual report, car modal share was still way down from the 90s which probably can't be said in most of the rest of the country.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

And, indeed, look at the places where bus patronage is declining. London especially.

London has all the bells and whistles for reducing dwell time. Double doors, cashless systems, no tickets.

But patronage is declining, and rapidly, because overall traffic congestion means that the average speed of a London bus is now about 9mph overall. It is as low as 3mph-4mph in the peaks in the inner zones.

All this obsession about dwell times is fiddling with deckchairs.

Exactly. London has all of those features yet a decreasing amount of bus priority is one of the things killing London's buses.

What some posters seem to ignore is that in a commercial environment, were these savings material and worth the squeeze, operators would be doing it and pocketing the efficiencies. That they aren't is quite telling.

 

[81A]

Phasing out cash will disadvantage the poorest in society.

Yes, and anyway, in my experience it is only things like paying a £2 fare with a banknote and getting change that are slower with cash-otherwise it is card paper ticket sales that cause delays.

The ideal is probably either making tickets available at corner shops (by cash or card) as on the continent and not selling paper tickets on the bus (tap on tap off/app only). Or, as I mentioned earlier, making paper tickets exact change cash only (which is very quick) and having all others use app/tap on tap off.

 

[JKP]

Yes, and anyway, in my experience it is only things like paying a £2 fare with a banknote and getting change that are slower with cash-otherwise it is card paper ticket sales that cause delays.

The ideal is probably either making tickets available at corner shops (by cash or card) as on the continent and not selling paper tickets on the bus (tap on tap off/app only). Or, as I mentioned earlier, making paper tickets exact change cash only (which is very quick) and having all others use app/tap on tap off.

You are of course assuming that there is a corner shop and that it is a participating vendor. In rural areas there are very few village shops these days, killed off by supermarkets, online delivery, second home owners etc. Even in small towns there this not a shop in every area. It creates yet another barrier to public transport use.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The ideal is probably either making tickets available at corner shops (by cash or card) as on the continent and not selling paper tickets on the bus (tap on tap off/app only). Or, as I mentioned earlier, making paper tickets exact change cash only (which is very quick) and having all others use app/tap on tap off.

You are of course assuming that there is a corner shop and that it is a participating vendor. In rural areas there are very few village shops these days, killed off by supermarkets, online delivery, second home owners etc. Even in small towns there this not a shop in every area. It creates yet another barrier to public transport use.

And of course, said corner shop will want their margin as well. They don't do it for nothing.

The operators have been pushing off-bus sales and reducing cash where possible as it's in their interest to do so. It improves cashflow, reduces fraud (from passengers or staff), speeds up boarding, and removes the cost/risk of cash handling.

No point in shaving a few seconds from a transaction if you then have to pay 5% to a retailer.

 

[Tetchytyke]

What some posters seem to ignore is that in a commercial environment, were these savings material and worth the squeeze, operators would be doing it and pocketing the efficiencies. That they aren't is quite telling.

It also assumes that there is a massive network of local shops all desperate to offer ticketing services.

TfL's commission rate to Oyster Ticket Stop retailers is about 2% if I recall correctly. But even at that rate it is increasingly not profitable for retailers to continue to offer the service and they are handing the terminals back. It's only going to get worse as Oyster is now very outdated technology.

A bus operator could tap in to the PayPoint network instead, of course. I'm not sure what PayPoint pays to its retailers in commission (and it isn't easily findable on a search engine) but it isn't going to be zero. And PayPoint also don't do what they do for free. I'd be amazed if the overall cost to the operator was less than 5%.

An operator is only going to move to off-bus ticketing if the overall cost to them is lower than just accepting a cash payment on the bus. Clearly it isn't, otherwise that's what they would do.

 

[johncrossley]

You are of course assuming that there is a corner shop and that it is a participating vendor. In rural areas there are very few village shops these days, killed off by supermarkets, online delivery, second home owners etc. Even in small towns there this not a shop in every area. It creates yet another barrier to public transport use.

This would have been an issue 10 years ago but now they can use prepaid contactless bank cards, assuming they don't already have a bank card or could get one if they asked. People without a bank account aren't likely to switch to cars.

Lots of places outside the UK got rid of most driver ticket sales without an outright ban decades ago by simply offering a huge discount for off bus ticket sales. That way you can keep cash going for emergency cases. That's also how TfL managed to get most people off cash in a short amount of time.

There are now so many alternatives to driver payment that there is no longer a need to maintain ticket sales through retail shops.

 

[PeterC]

Yes, and anyway, in my experience it is only things like paying a £2 fare with a banknote and getting change that are slower with cash-otherwise it is card paper ticket sales that cause delays.

Despite tap on tap off it is common in my part of Bucks to see people buying paper tickets with a card. There can be benefits as Short journeys are cheaper with a return and Carousel's TOTO charges singles up to a zonal cap which assumes more than 2 single journeys per day.

Luckily we don't suffer too much from the ones who only realise that they need to get out a phone/card/cash once they have stepped up to the driver

 

[jumble]

Two minor points. I have a feeling that with the new electric buses both the initial acceleration away from a stop and the very last bit of stopping are somewhat sharper than with diesel ones. It might be that it won‘t continue to happen as drivers become more used to them, but it is still a regular occurrence. This means that passengers are more likely to stay seated and drivers more likely to wait for boarding passengers to sit down. It has got to the point that I can usually use the last bit of the bus’ stopping to help propel me to a standing position.

Another one point is that people seem increasingly likely to jump on the bus as soon as the doors open: they then either stand in the gangway forcing descending passengers to squirm their way past or take an awfully long time to turn around and get off again to leave the gangway clear. During and post-COVID people seemed to make an effort to check if someone was getting off, but now they have gone back to living in their own little bubble oblivious to others.

There is no feeling about electric busses
The BDE BME single deckers have a phenomenal rate of acceleration
I sometimes return home after a night in the pub and the late night drivers really push them

 

[BuhSnarf]

Interestingly in relation to the issues of speeding up boarding it looks like TfL are now trialling a "ding ding" on route 188 to remind people to grab hold of something when the bus is about to move. Assume this will allow drivers to pull away quicker rather than waiting for everyone to take a seat.

 

[Ballyheigue]

Traffic lights right next to bus stops slow buses down a lot, you wait for green and some pillock comes up to the bus thinking they have a right to board! They then stand right next to the doors so the driver can't move off in case he hits them (dam them health and safety laws) and argue the toss for a day until finally giving up! As a side note, there are way too many traffic lights in the centre of Leeds, this too slows buses right down to tedious levels.

 

[JonasB]

As to the door argument - I do agree that larger conurbations with more complex travel patterns should probably embrace two doors.

Where I live, two door buses are used for regional routes with less frequent stops. City buses usually have three sets of doors, bendy buses sometimes have four.

Also saying 'thank you' to the driver as you get off the front is a proud British institution and you can lose that over my dead body.

If that is important, you can install a speaker close the driver and connect it to a microphone close to the rear door. Problem solved.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Also saying 'thank you' to the driver as you get off the front is a proud British institution and you can lose that over my dead body.

A cheery wave in the rear view mirror is how I do it in London.

 

[NCT]

If that is important, you can install a speaker close the driver and connect it to a microphone close to the rear door. Problem solved.

Not the same is it.

A cheery wave in the rear view mirror is how I do it in London.

Not the same is it.

The correct etiquette is 'cheers duc ta ta for now'.

 

[johncrossley]

I just remembered that some local street running services in Nottingham operate using multiple door entry and exit, so Nottingham is "big enough" after all. Presumably thanking the driver is impractical on these services.

 

[NCT]

I just remembered that some local street running services in Nottingham operate using multiple door entry and exit, so Nottingham is "big enough" after all. Presumably thanking the driver is impractical on these services.

Which ones? Off the top of my head I can't think of any dual door buses operated by Nottingham City Transport or Trent Barton. Though it has been a while since I studied operator's fleet lists. You'd have go back to the Volvo Citybus days to have two-door buses I think.

 

[johncrossley]

Which ones? Off the top of my head I can't think of any dual door buses operated by Nottingham City Transport or Trent Barton. Though it has been a while since I studied operator's fleet lists. You'd have go back to the Volvo Citybus days to have two-door buses I think.

I'm referring to street running route 1 between Hucknall and Toton Lane and street running route 2 between Clifton South and Hucknall. If Nottingham wasn't "big enough" the city wouldn't be able to justify routes with multiple door entry and exit.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I'm referring to street running route 1 between Hucknall and Toton Lane and street running route 2 between Clifton South and Hucknall. If Nottingham wasn't "big enough" the city wouldn't be able to justify routes with multiple door entry and exit.

So trams…a totally different mode of transportation that has much higher capacity and utilisation at far fewer stops.

Don’t think publicly owned Nottingham City Transport has bought dual doored vehicles in some time.

 

[NCT]

I'm referring to street running route 1 between Hucknall and Toton Lane and street running route 2 between Clifton South and Hucknall. If Nottingham wasn't "big enough" the city wouldn't be able to justify routes with multiple door entry and exit.

Not relevant.

I've been using the 36 and the Indigo (I still call it the Rainbow 5) for over 20 years and dwell times have never been an issue. The issue has always been peak traffic along University Boulevard and Derby Road.

Trent Barton drivers in particular know how to put their foot down. Contrast that with London's pussyfooting driving culture and this is what actually makes the difference.

 

[johncrossley]

Not relevant.

It's relevant because it shows that Nottingham is big enough to have trams, and therefore big enough to justify multiple door buses as only the biggest urban areas tend to get trams. We are only classing trams as completely separate because of the way transport has evolved in Britain. In other countries, trams and buses would be considered to be part of the same urban public transport network with the same fare structure, and often with the same ticketing policy. It is possible to run trams forcing passengers to use certain doors so that tickets can be checked, just like a bus. Amsterdam has bizarrely operated with this policy, although that doesn't apply on its newer trams.

 

[route101]

I notice at a terminus or bus station, the bus will pull in to the stance with little or no time to load passengers and get away on time.

 

[NCT]

It's relevant because it shows that Nottingham is big enough to have trams, and therefore big enough to justify multiple door buses as only the biggest urban areas tend to get trams. We are only classing trams as completely separate because of the way transport has evolved in Britain. In other countries, trams and buses would be considered to be part of the same urban public transport network with the same fare structure, and often with the same ticketing policy. It is possible to run trams forcing passengers to use certain doors so that tickets can be checked, just like a bus. Amsterdam has bizarrely operated with this policy, although that doesn't apply on its newer trams.

TheGrandWazoo has eloquently explained why this is irrelevant.

NET suffers from ticketless travel. As the Vauxhall - Waterloo story reflects, unfortunately in Britain it's always prudent to err on the side of supervised boarding in Britain.

Just like the bus station discussion, once again you latch onto the penny while ignoring the pound.

 

[johncrossley]

TheGrandWazoo has eloquently explained why this is irrelevant.

NET suffers from ticketless travel. As the Vauxhall - Waterloo story reflects, unfortunately in Britain it's always prudent to err on the side of supervised boarding in Britain.

Just like the bus station discussion, once again you latch onto the penny while ignoring the pound.

NET had conductor operation in the past but that was considered uneconomic. As I said, they could force people to board through a single door like Amsterdam and check all tickets if they wanted to. There would be a massive cost in dwell time and mean they would probably have to buy more trams. Almost everywhere that has trams uses roving inspectors. I am not saying anything earth shattering here. In this respect, Britain is not unusual.