Bus stops on country roads that have no visible markings that they exist

I'm looking to do some bus travel around Norfolk as part of doing a series of walks around Norwich and The Broads, and checking bus times led to me to also check where the bus stops were on Google Maps. I then noticed on just one road (a 50mph or National Speed Limit road) there are a number of stops near adjoining roads or public footpaths, but looking on Street View there are no bus stops at all. Nothing on either side of the road, not even a paved area to wait on. This can be the same in villages too.

Checking bustimes.org shows the supposed locations of the stops on Google Maps are shown on the timetable (and on some of these roads there's a surprisingly frequent service), but I would be somewhat concerned that passing buses may not stop even if you were waving - especially if they're going fas.

I thought a bus stop needed at least a basic pole for both the driver and passenger?

Apologies if this is the norm all over the UK in rural areas, but it really has got me confused and anxious!

I also wonder how anyone knows where the bus stops are meant to be, or did before we had Google Maps.

By no means uncommon, especially in rural areas. Indeed, I can think of a few terminating/starting points that were probably unmarked.

And people knew where the bus stops were by local knowledge! You stood there with your parents, and then alone later in life.

And if you were visiting the area you asked, often by asking the driver who dropped you off "where's the stop for going back mate?"

In my youth rural buses would pick up / set down anywhere safe outside towns e.g. right outside your house. Is that still the case?

Not the norm but certainly the case in some locations. The A40 between Witney and Cheltenham doesn't have signs at every stop.

Every day is a school day! I really cannot comprehend the need for local knowledge handed down from generation to generation on where a bus stop is. My fear is that a bus driver isn't going to know and will just go zooming by and the next bus might be hours (even days) later on some routes!

The last bus I took from Norwich Bus Station was a white mini bus and had no number in the window (it did have branding on the side, which is possibly not a lot of use at most places on the route). I guess that just adds to the challenge, as now you are either going to miss it or just wave at every vehicle that might be a bus!!

6Gman said:

By no means uncommon, especially in rural areas. Indeed, I can think of a few terminating/starting points that were probably unmarked.

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Happens even in major conurbations. 385 in Greater Manchester terminates at in unmarked patch of gravel with not a bus stop flag in sight. Only clue is a road sign warning that buses may be turning.

when I was a kid in Somerset, virtually none of the village bus stops had signs. Just a few in the bigger towns
I read somewhere it was down to the county council refusing to pay for what it thought was Southern/Western Nationals responsibility - despite the number of independents.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but shouldn't local authorities be putting at least a simple pole and sign up? The sign can have the bus stop code on it so people can check apps at the very least.

I had no clue how widespread this is, which is why I've never mentioned this in posts about why people don't use buses outside of major towns and cities. This seems like yet another reason that many people would be put off, or simply not even know they could use a bus for something like visiting a rural village/pub/landmark or using public transport to get you to/from a place where you want to hike.

If you remain concerned, your best bet would probably be to confirm practice with the operator. As you say Norfolk Broads, it seems as though you might come across Sanders, who seem more than wiling to answer customer queries.

One possible explanation for a bus stop only existing in the virtual realm, is that it's one of those bus routes where for part of it, usually a rural part, you're allowed to get on/off wherever it's safe to do so, but an official database still needs coordinates for timing purposes, and logically these would also need to be places someone could find if given a decription.

The alternative, that there are still areas of this country yet to emerge from the Middle Ages, doesn’t bear thinking about.

I've been trying for years to get a physical bus stop fitted at the Eccup Reservoir stop, Harrogate bound, on the A61 between Alwoodley and Harewood in West Yorkshire, as well as the stop opposite towards Leeds made safer (it's on a bit of mud/grass with trees blocking it's view on the road) but West Yorkshire Combined Authority say both are not well used.

I use the Harrogate bound stop once to twice a month, sometimes more often, and used to use the Leeds bound stop but it's become too dangerous to use, so now I have to walk even further from work up to Alwoodley Gates. Regarding the Harrogate bound stop, I've had many a driver ask me where the bus stop is when I've rang the bell, and some are so unsure they even drop me at the end of the lane for Eccup Reservoir which is handy lol.

I'm not the only user as a colleague also uses this stop once or twice a week (he walks up to Alwoodley Gates for the return bus) and I've known some colleagues in the past who used it daily until they got sick of the 36 driving past it lol. As a side note, a good few years back one of those colleagues ended up really late for work, the driver refused to acknowledge his protests that the Eccup stop existed as it wasn't physically there and dropped him off at Wikefield Farm. There is no roadside footpath back to the Eccup turnoff, so he took his chances and decided to follow what looked like a path through fields, eventually he ended up on the Emmerdale set lol.

On my local route we have two unmarked stops in one direction (the other has flag & timetable). In one of the cases it is in a road junction between two villages and there is no real place for a flag. Knowing about these comes down to route knowledge and in my case these two do get used daily.

43055 said:

On my local route we have two unmarked stops in one direction (the other has flag & timetable). In one of the cases it is in a road junction between two villages and there is no real place for a flag. Knowing about these comes down to route knowledge and in my case these two do get used daily.

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Bus stop flags on one side of the road only is/was quite common. Usually with words to the effect of “both sides of the road” on the flag. With reference to drivers not stopping, any driver who is sufficiently inattentive as to fail to see someone at the side of the road with their armour hailing a bus deserves to be relieved of their job at the terminus and any prospective passenger who doesn’t clearly indicate their wish for the bus to stop only has themself to blame.

Even here in suburban Newport there's a completely unmarked stop in the Asda car park.

I think it was used for the long-gone free buses but started being served by normal services fairly recently.

Unmarked stops are now usually known as Custom stops, as that is the designation used in the National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) database. The records for every authority can be downloaded from https://beta-naptan.dft.gov.uk/
Having just checked those for two authorities that both cover a mix of urban and rural areas, the proportion of custom stops is roughly 10% in one and 15% in the other.
While a large number are low use unmarked stops in the countryside, other custom stops will include those inside school grounds that are not marked in the usual way.
In some cases, they continue to exist because trying to upgrade them would fall foul of contemporary standards, but if left alone, they can remain available to use.
The advent of compulsory next stop announcements has put further pressure on identifying any that are missing from NaPTAN, but should help drivers and passengers understand broadly where they are.

As a country lad, this was very much my childhood. There were simply loads of places that were either "unofficial" locations that would be a lane end, a farm or a few houses. Some of these were fare stages, and a few were even timing points. I just had a little stalk on Streetview of ones that I can remember - some have been formalised and now have a bus stop flag and even a shelter. However, the cost of creating a refuge/hardstanding with a kerb plus a bus stop pole on a road without a footpath in any case for very infrequent use is just not worth it.

As has been said there are many stops with no markings which are custom and practice stops. I have though noticed that more stops are being marked, presumably due to a higher turnover of drivers, lack of training or knowledge in some cases and on road safety grounds. Newly marked stops in my observation tend to be on trunk routes.

Many years ago I was told that in Scotland the 30 and de restriction signs at the entrance to villages were bus stops but not sure that is the case now. I can think though of locations where there are marked stops adjacent to the restriction signs.

Another problem with no marked stops is roadworks. Whilst travelling through Lowick in Northumberland recently there was a lad waiting for the bus on the Main Street at a custom stop in the middle of roadworks. I am pleased to say that our lady driver stopped for him but can imagine in some places this would not happen.

jon0844 said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but shouldn't local authorities be putting at least a simple pole and sign up? The sign can have the bus stop code on it so people can check apps at the very least.

I had no clue how widespread this is, which is why I've never mentioned this in posts about why people don't use buses outside of major towns and cities. This seems like yet another reason that many people would be put off, or simply not even know they could use a bus for something like visiting a rural village/pub/landmark or using public transport to get you to/from a place where you want to hike.

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Agree it's a bit crap, but on the bustimes.org live map you can see the vehicle colour / registration, so at least you know what to look for at the 'stop'.

telstarbox said:

Agree it's a bit crap, but on the bustimes.org live map you can see the vehicle colour / registration, so at least you know what to look for at the 'stop'.

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Yeah, but this doesn't seem like a good way to convince people to get out of their cars! It makes us look like we're part of a secret gang that knows something the average person doesn't.

We don't want buses run like that, however much someone might be happy to not have the bus too crowded. The problem is when buses aren't busy, they don't make money and companies decide to axe them.

It was the same on Brighton & Hove's Regency route between Hailsham and Lewes until recently. A fast, 60mph main road but no bus stop flags on the 6-or-so stops until probably a little under a year ago.

Even now it's not great during the winter as the road is unlit so many drivers will miss waiting passengers, even if they're furiously waving their phone torch around. My Dragon's Den idea is that there should be such a thing as a solar-powered beliesha beacon light operated by a 'request stop' button for stops like this

I saw something similar for a Stockholm ferry so the captain knew whether to pull into the harbour or not.

Acathater said:

when I was a kid in Somerset, virtually none of the village bus stops had signs. Just a few in the bigger towns

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There were no formal bus stops anywhere in Somerset until 1939, buses were just like a taxi that you hailed them wherever. Some were then put in towns to minimise the stops and save fuel in wartime, plus it was difficult to see passenger handsignals in the blackout. Thereafter, in towns only. If this sounds difficult for the crews - it was.

Certainly into the 1970s, and possibly still, they stopped anywhere outside towns. Western National had a particular form of bus stop sign, just one per village, of a large roadside notice board, painted green of course, with all the sheets for all routes around from the area timetables pasted onto it, and the whole lot overprinted in pale red with "BUS STOP". Sometimes the inspector putting the pages up underlined the relevant village's times, in there somewhere, with red biro.

I believe the crew's rulebook said they "must keep a sharp lookout at all times for passengers".

Man of Kent said:

Unmarked stops are now usually known as Custom stops, as that is the designation used in the National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) database. The records for every authority can be downloaded from https://beta-naptan.dft.gov.uk/
Having just checked those for two authorities that both cover a mix of urban and rural areas, the proportion of custom stops is roughly 10% in one and 15% in the other.
While a large number are low use unmarked stops in the countryside, other custom stops will include those inside school grounds that are not marked in the usual way.
In some cases, they continue to exist because trying to upgrade them would fall foul of contemporary standards, but if left alone, they can remain available to use.
The advent of compulsory next stop announcements has put further pressure on identifying any that are missing from NaPTAN, but should help drivers and passengers understand broadly where they are.

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Yes, this.

And to add to this, where there is a marked stop on one side of the road that shows 'both sides of the road' then the 'unmarked' stop on the other side of the road should have its own stop number / code and be includes as a 'custom' stop, rather than buses in both directions being shown as calling at the single marked stop.

NAPTAN also has the capacity to have 'hail and ride' sections of road marked separately - these are entered as 'stops' (and will be shown as such in things like Google Maps) but if they are set up correctly, the data will include the start and end of the hail and ride area for each 'stop'. I think the guidance says that each individual street should be set up as a separate hail and ride 'stop', and if one road is long enough, there should be a 'stop' every X distance.

Not all systems can cope with this - I occasionally use a TFL bus route that has only recently been converted from hail and ride to fixed stop on a few sections, and the display / announcement on the bus would announce the next marked stop on entering a hail and ride section.

Yes, in an ideal world, every bus stop would be marked and have a timetable on display, but there are bus stops out there that genuinely only have one bus departure a month (the sort of community transport shopping / market service that runs on the second Thursday of the month or whatever), and on the other side of the road it's only ever going to be used by people coming home on that journey rather than anyone waiting for the bus there.

Even more of an inconvenience in some rural areas can be the long distances between bus stops. Unmarked bus stops can cause problems, but their locations can usually be determined by a bit of research on the various bus apps and bustimes.org. However, a bus stop with no visible markings is better than no bus stop at all. There are many routes where there are bus stops in the villages but no stops sometimes for a significant distance between villages.

Sometimes when I have been out walking it can be difficult to find a bus stop close to the beginning or end of a walk. I don‘t expect to find bus stops in a completely isolated location where there are no houses, but sometimes buses don’t stop when there is somewhere like a pub, hotel, garden centre or other attraction close by. This can sometimes result in a long walk along a busy road with no pavement to a bus stop in the nearest village. This is most frustrating when the bus travels along that road but there are no bus stops. A couple of years ago I stayed in a hotel in Norfolk where the bus passed by the hotel gate but it was a half mile walk along a busy road to reach the nearest bus stop.

Again a few years ago I was in Scotland and wanted to visit the National Trust for Scotland Threave Gardens near Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway. Various buses from Castle Douglas, including the Dumfries to Stranraer bus pass entrance to the gardens but there is no bus stop. I boarded the bus in Dumfries and told the bus driver that I wanted to get off at Threave Gardens. The bus driver stopped at a bus stop on the outskirts of Castle Douglas and I was told this was the nearest stop. I then had to walk almost a mile along the the road where the bus continued travelling after I had got off. There were numerous perfectly safe places where the bus could have stopped close to the garden entrance.

I understand that there are many rural routes where bus drivers will stop at locations where there is no official bus stop but as a visitor to an area it is not easy to have information about this.

It's ridiculous that so many countryside/village stops are unmarked, and a massive disincentive to use buses in the area. And I'm not just talking about once a week pensioner shopping buses, but stops served several times a day.

In most cases, a bus stop could be hung somewhere in the area or something could be painted on the road.

ChrisC said:

I understand that there are many rural routes where bus drivers will stop at locations where there is no official bus stop but as a visitor to an area it is not easy to have information about this.

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and what's worse is where driver A will stop at a particular unmarked 'stop' and driver B the next time won't.

This is all fascinating.. and a little concerning at the same time.

Perhaps Geoff Marshall needs to do a new video series 'All the stops' and show where each and every one of them is!

Mikey C said:

It's ridiculous that so many countryside/village stops are unmarked, and a massive disincentive to use buses in the area. And I'm not just talking about once a week pensioner shopping buses, but stops served several times a day.

In most cases, a bus stop could be hung somewhere in the area or something could be painted on the road.

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We're talking about a problem that doesn't actually exist.

Where are the complaints about passengers not being able to access buses? Before I moved, I lived in the sticks and there was no bus stop flag or anything but stick your hand out and the bus would stop. That's what happens. On the busier roads in the area, there are actual stops but that's because the traffic levels are such that you don't want buses stopping in ad-hoc locations but in other areas, it's not needed and never has been.

The reality is that there are thousands of unofficial stops around the UK. For the councils to go round sticking a sign up (and often there isn't a place to) would be a very expensive task and to what end?

The vast, vast majority are barely used, and only then by local residents, and it's an expensive solution to a problem that no one is talking about!

Well I didn't even know it was a thing, so it was never a problem for me until I realised (and now I wonder who else wasn't aware?). I was merely looking for various places to walk and noticed bus stops that I thought would be good to take a bus to/from one of those locations. It could very well change how I plan trips, because unless you only do circular walks there's going to be a need to arrange some from of transport at one end.

Unless you can hail the bus at any location, which I'd argue you can't on a NSL country road, then not knowing where a stop is means most people won't know there's a bus stop and would assume you need to walk to the nearest visible stop - which could be many miles away (and so, no, they won't do that). Or they try and stand roughly where the stop is meant to be and hope the driver is aware.

If even one bus just drives by, you are now going to be waiting a while for the next one with no guarantee of that one stopping. How long do you wait if the bus runs every 1 or 2 hours? What if there's only one bus in the morning and one in the evening? Do you now walk, or call a cab? If you opt for the taxi, you might as well do that in the first place, or drive yourself, or not go.

I'm in two minds about waiting on a fast road to hope I spot the bus and get it to stop, but I'm probably more willing than most. My wife would never dream of doing something like that, so the bus wouldn't work for her in such circumstances and she's fitter than me when it comes to long walks.

Now I am quite sure that the cost of putting up a pole and sign isn't significant, but the authority probably has to do more than that. It may need alterations to the kerb, a flat clean surface, and maybe even a shelter or seating, as well as a timetable or (these days) a screen to show the next bus information. If any of those things are a requirement, then doing nothing would be seen as the preferred option because of grandfather rights. But then you change the legislation so rural bus stops don't need the same level of markings. Maybe something like a bollard would suffice, to show where the stop is.

I definitely think there needs to be something. These days when a lot of people don't know their neighbours, I can't see how relying on local knowledge handed down from generation to generation is going to work as it perhaps once did.

jon0844 said:

Well I didn't even know it was a thing, so it was never a problem for me until I realised (and now I wonder who else wasn't aware?).
If any of those things are a requirement, then doing nothing would be seen as the preferred option because of grandfather rights. But then you change the legislation so rural bus stops don't need the same level of markings.

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We have a mixture of road markings near me, most of the bus stop markings on the road are faded, I don't think they have been repainted for 5+ years (except a couple of stops in town centre). Even some of the busier town centre stops don't yet have level boarding.

But some of those faded markings on the road are no longer served, some even more faded ones are served, and there are some stops with no markings (or pole) where bus was rerouted but markings were not added.

It is actually very difficult for visitors to understand as they don't have the local knowledge of changes over last few years, where obsolete stops still marked on road, and new stops aren't. Classic do nothing.