Live Bus Maps
How useful are they?
On Sunday 17th September there was a road accident at Kenly Green and the 95 bus couldn’t get through so had to be diverted.
This is when live bus maps come into their own - you can look for the bus you are waiting for and see that it has gone off route. That will hopefully help you to make a decision on what to do…
There are a couple of places that you can look for your bus.
If it’s a Stagecoach bus then perhaps the first place to look is the Stagecoach App:
This map doesn’t appear on the Stagecoach website, it is only part of the App available to download on smartphones and tablets.
It tends to be slightly more reliable than third-party bus maps - because the information appears to be updated more frequently on the Stagecoach map than it is released to others.
But, I quite like https://bustimes.org :
Bustimes try to show the paint scheme on the bus using coloured stripes - helpful in big cities where you are trying to identify one of many approaching buses
Bustimes show information for all bus operators
Bustimes still shows buses if the bus is reporting the wrong route number
Bustimes holds a lot of extra information like the history of previous buses and future timetables
But Bustimes carries a lot of adverts which it is easy to accidentally click - so I tend to only use it through an ad-blocking browser or browser extension like https://duckduckgo.com/
But all bus location maps can have problems - around Crail (and elsewhere) buses disappear into black holes where they cannot send or receive radio signals - and buses can have problems with their equipment and just not be reporting their position at all.
It’s good to be able to report that Moffat & Williamson are gradually adding position reporting to more of their buses - this now includes the 94 and 94A route - though beware that their buses usually report the plain route number without any suffix letters. So a bus on the 94A route that says 94A on the external displays on the bus is still lilely to be reporting its position as a “94” on Bustimes - which can be confusing as it will appear to be “off route”:
You can find more tips for locating your bus on our website at: https://95crailbus.eastne.uk/home/what-happened-to-my-bus
95 Crail Bus