This is really cool as a way to determine which directions and how far you can go from a given point.
I think other comments are missing the point slightly by complaining about timetables and reliability. Busses in the UK are generally not for people in a hurry.
Getting strange issues whereby routes appear and disappear as I zoom out?
I understand some routes should change as you zoom, but this seems much more random For example; I might see 5 routes zoomed in, but I zoom out one level and they all disappear completely?
Some of things it shows for Manchester are not buses (i.e. metrolink). Where does the data come from?
Edit: also Flixbus or National Express are arguably not a bus services either
Might be nice to filter it to show only those buses which are available in the next hour or two - there's no need to display night buses during the day and vice versa.
Exactly what I thought. Its also a long way short of what you need to plan a journey that involves changing buses.
Where I live it looks like I could do a lot by bus looking at just the routes, but they are infrequent and unreliable so I usually have to drive everywhere.
Outside of London, Manchester, Nottingham and a few selected other places, busses in England tend to be fairly dire, especially as you get out to smaller towns and villages.
Even if the routes are there, it's not uncommon for the actual busses to bare little resemblance to the published timetable.
In some places you'll get fancy live information screens which happily announce the arrival of a bus that doesn't exist, or more frequently, to simply state that the information isn't available, please check the paper boards.
Bus routes tend to be especially bad in rural towns and villages, but even in my fairly reasonably large town, it's quicker and more convenient for me to walk the 1.3 miles to the train station than try to get a bus.
If I plug in "bus" on google maps planner, it has me walk 20 minutes to a bus stop to sit on a bus for 7 minutes, versus a ~25 minute walk.
Alternatively, I could walk 5 minutes to a nearer stop, wait 30 minutes for the next bus, which itself then takes 26 minutes to get to the bus station, which is itself a 3-4 minute walk from the bus station to the train station itself.
And that's assuming the bus is on time running to schedule, and doesn't then hit traffic.
I'd also be paying £3 one-way for this privilege.
Once you're inside the TFL zone everything changes and busses are frequent, generally reliable, and cheaper.
Sadly yes. Some bus companies are very reliable (traffic jams permitting), but there are definitely times when they aren't, and I've used rural routes where the hourly bus might just not turn up, which makes them completely infeasible for commuting or appointments.
To replace cars with buses for trips you really need them to be rock solid.
Yeah I think the most stressed I've ever been about punctuality was when I was dependent on a rural bus to get to work on time. I love rural Britain but if you can't drive for whatever reason, it's often not feasible to live there.
It depends where you are, some areas have very good bus services and other terrible ones. Almost everywhere has been forbidden from having a more centralised approach and so most places are a mash of random companies with very different approaches and reliabilities.
I think other comments are missing the point slightly by complaining about timetables and reliability. Busses in the UK are generally not for people in a hurry.
I understand some routes should change as you zoom, but this seems much more random For example; I might see 5 routes zoomed in, but I zoom out one level and they all disappear completely?
Where I live it looks like I could do a lot by bus looking at just the routes, but they are infrequent and unreliable so I usually have to drive everywhere.
(I’m not from the UK, it sounds surprising.)
Even if the routes are there, it's not uncommon for the actual busses to bare little resemblance to the published timetable.
In some places you'll get fancy live information screens which happily announce the arrival of a bus that doesn't exist, or more frequently, to simply state that the information isn't available, please check the paper boards.
Bus routes tend to be especially bad in rural towns and villages, but even in my fairly reasonably large town, it's quicker and more convenient for me to walk the 1.3 miles to the train station than try to get a bus.
If I plug in "bus" on google maps planner, it has me walk 20 minutes to a bus stop to sit on a bus for 7 minutes, versus a ~25 minute walk.
Alternatively, I could walk 5 minutes to a nearer stop, wait 30 minutes for the next bus, which itself then takes 26 minutes to get to the bus station, which is itself a 3-4 minute walk from the bus station to the train station itself.
And that's assuming the bus is on time running to schedule, and doesn't then hit traffic.
I'd also be paying £3 one-way for this privilege.
Once you're inside the TFL zone everything changes and busses are frequent, generally reliable, and cheaper.
To replace cars with buses for trips you really need them to be rock solid.