TfL bus app/Countdown

[DontThinkJustDo]

Is it just me or is it really ineffective these days? Buses forever disappearing, buses arrive that aren't showing on the app/Countdown or no buses due to arrive for 25 minutes (always 25 minutes...) then suddenly there is one a couple of minutes away. It drives me nuts and makes getting about really tricky.

Tell me about it! I use the tfl live bus arrivals app,and just lately it has been extremely unreliable. Saying there is no bus due for 20 minutes then one arrives 3 minutes later. One bus stop I use fairly regularly is awful. It will say one is due in 6 minutes so I set off straight away as it takes me 4 minutes to walk to it. When I get to the stop,I check again and it says nothing due for 15 minutes! I know I definitely didn't miss the one due in 6 minutes as it would have to drive right past where I'm walking. Another issue I have quite frequently is the app saying 'nothing due for over 30 minutes' then a bus suddenly turns up after 5 minutes. Drives me mad. I honestly don't know why I bother with it sometimes.

I use London bus times, which is pretty good, but still has the odd disappearing or arriving from nowhere bus. It is annoying when it happens, but is fairly rare.

Google maps is quite good, just click on the bus stop.

Same with the tubes. It says 1 minute away and 5 minutes later it still isn’t there. Wish they would stick a tracker on every train, bus etc so you can just look up where they are and not worry about the timer.

I wonder how the technology works? I assumed GPS but surely that would be more reliable?

Oh I thought it was just the routes I'm using.

add it to the list of many things that used to work well but the tech has gone wrong.

I use Citimapper, find it very accurate.