Bus Information in Bristol
1 May 2022
Photos and comments in this article are based on a visit to Bristol undertaken between Monday 7th and Saturday 12th March 2022
Finding one’s way around a strange city means that publicly-available information – whether that be a leaflet that you can carry with you or a poster display – is essential. First West of England, the principal operator in Bristol, is of course one of those operators that has given up printing timetable leaflets. So what is the quality of bus information on the ground in Bristol, for strangers like me?
Bristol is not the easiest place to find one’s way around. The main railway station, Temple Meads, is some way from the City Centre itself for a start. There are many confusing streets, many bus routes and many stops.
Several routes link the City Centre with Temple Meads, but they all follow different routes between the two, depending on turning arrangements in the city and on where they are ultimately heading. This means that there isn’t one single bus stop in the centre where you can stand and wait for ‘any’ suitable service towards Temple Meads to turn up.
I would love to see a few electronic display boards dotted around the City Centre to tell me what buses are coming that will be heading for Temple Meads, and where to catch them from. But there isn’t such a facility. During the day on weekdays, that probably doesn’t matter. You can probably just turn up at the bus stop for route 8, which is a frequent enough service that you shouldn’t end up waiting too long. But it’s less easy at quieter times of day.
It’s Saturday morning and I want to catch the 0823 train to Newport for a ride to Monmouth and Coleford that I have previously described. Route 8 only runs half-hourly at this time and the journey that would appear to be the most suitable is the 0806, but that arrives only 11 minutes before the train is due, and I have to buy a ticket and find the right platform – it’s too tight for a worry-guts like me. What other options are there?
First some good news… I am delighted to discover three Public Transport guides, issued by the West of England Combined Authority; two in my hotel and the other one at the Long Ashton Park & Ride site. These are comprehensive guides with high quality mapping and route lists, including indicative service frequencies.
Bristol is not the easiest place to find one’s way around. The main railway station, Temple Meads, is some way from the City Centre itself for a start. There are many confusing streets, many bus routes and many stops.
Several routes link the City Centre with Temple Meads, but they all follow different routes between the two, depending on turning arrangements in the city and on where they are ultimately heading. This means that there isn’t one single bus stop in the centre where you can stand and wait for ‘any’ suitable service towards Temple Meads to turn up.
I would love to see a few electronic display boards dotted around the City Centre to tell me what buses are coming that will be heading for Temple Meads, and where to catch them from. But there isn’t such a facility. During the day on weekdays, that probably doesn’t matter. You can probably just turn up at the bus stop for route 8, which is a frequent enough service that you shouldn’t end up waiting too long. But it’s less easy at quieter times of day.
It’s Saturday morning and I want to catch the 0823 train to Newport for a ride to Monmouth and Coleford that I have previously described. Route 8 only runs half-hourly at this time and the journey that would appear to be the most suitable is the 0806, but that arrives only 11 minutes before the train is due, and I have to buy a ticket and find the right platform – it’s too tight for a worry-guts like me. What other options are there?
First some good news… I am delighted to discover three Public Transport guides, issued by the West of England Combined Authority; two in my hotel and the other one at the Long Ashton Park & Ride site. These are comprehensive guides with high quality mapping and route lists, including indicative service frequencies.
The Greater Bristol guide includes a map of services in the City Centre, with a “Where to catch your bus” listing, route-by-route, showing the bus stops served and the sequence in which they are served. This helps me identify other routes I can take to Temple Meads.
Then I have to find the buses themselves. There doesn’t appear to be much logic to the numbering of bus stops in the City Centre. There are various clusters of stops with letter prefixes, and there is a little logic here (for example, the ‘T’ stops are in the Temple Meads area, ‘M’ stops near the old Market and ‘U’ stops are in the University area).
But don’t expect to find stops in a logical order. If you walk down The Horsefair / Penn Street, a major bus-boarding area next to the shops, you will pass, in order, stops S5, S3, S16, S7, S9 and S11. There are 16 ‘S’ stops in all and the rest are on neighbouring streets. Nineteen ‘B’ stops around the Bridewell Police Station are also fairly randomly distributed.
ABOVE: From the Greater Bristol Public Transport Guide and showing the random distribution of the 19 ‘B’-prefixed bus stops.
You would think that the stops would at least be labelled correctly. But, in Penn Street, the bus stop flags for stops S7, S9 and S11 are respectively labelled “Penn Street C”, “Penn Street B” and “Penn Street A”.
You have to look in the stop shelters to see the correct designations.
Right outside my hotel is The Haymarket bus stop B7 (I can see it from the breakfast room). This bus stop flag (see the top of this article) is typical of many. There’s a distinct lack of TLC and I’m not even convinced that the route list is correct. I can’t find a 3A or an X73, and, although the 3X exists, I can’t find any evidence that it stops here.
Around the corner in Bristol Bus Station, there is work going on during my visit. Route 376 to Street, which I shall write about another day, has been demoted from the Bus Station to “the Metrobus stop in Bond Street”, which might mean something to the locals but doesn’t to me! (In actual fact there are two Metrobus stops in Bond Street, but the 376 didn’t seem to be using either of them.)
Also pretty unhelpful is the advice for routes 349 and T2. These normally go from Bay 15 of the Bus Station, which is closed on the day of my visit. The sign says that buses will depart from the “nearest empty bay between Bay 8 and 14”.
ABOVE: Note the helpful advice to “Please read this notice”. Less helpful is the fact that it has covered up information on destinations served by the buses that would normally stop here. Taken on Friday 11th March 2022.
So intending passengers need to keep a watchful eye across seven bays to see where the bus is going to leave from. Perhaps the real-time electronic display in the Bus Station can narrow things down a bit for the next 349? Nope, it just shows “Bay 15”.
Outside the City Centre there are further examples of poor information presentation. At Cribb’s Causeway Bus Station several timetable panels look like they have been crossed through. I think it’s actually something to do with the design of the bus shelters, but it does look as though someone is trying to say that the timetables no longer apply – except that they do.
ABOVE: Cribbs Causeway Bus Station, Wednesday 9th March 2022
In Wells Bus Station, I find the official timetables for routes 172, 173 and 174 to Bath have been replaced with revised timetables, but the presentation isn’t pretty. The revisions are dated August 2021, implying that they have been this way for six months.
ABOVE: Wells Bus Station, Thursday 10th March 2022
And in Whitchurch, one of many very faded bus stop flags I find across the region…
I also find some less than helpful real-time information in the route 48 stop at Emersons Green, which a casual traveller might take to mean that services are not running.
In the village of Stratton-on-the-Fosse, which I pass through on route 174, there is a bus stop with a full timetable for the service to Bath, but the flag is also marked “In Both Directions”, and there is nothing on the other side of the road to indicate a bus stop, and certainly no timetable. What is a prospective customer to do if they don’t have access to the internet?
On a positive note, every bus stop for routes served by First West of England has a timetable case with full timetable details, which is good. Towards the top of the scale, every ‘metrobus’ stop, whether in the City or the suburbs, is supported by a ‘totem pole’ with real-time departure information.
In conclusion, although I did find appropriate information in most places, I think some attention to detail would help, especially in the City Centre.
And, in case you’re wondering, I caught a route 73 bus to Temple Meads at 0757, arriving at 0806 and giving me 17 minutes to prepare for my train to Newport. There was driver-change at the stop I boarded at, but the new driver allowed me to board and sit down while he got his ticket machine loaded and running.