To think that buses are not quicker.

[Letstryagainshallwe]

I have a friend who drives to work, I speak to her most mornings and she's always complaining how long it takes to get to work. She seems to think it's much quicker to get a bus, despite the fact that buses stop frequently to let people on and off and don't always go the quickest way as they have a route to follow. Even when I say this she still says "oh well buses have bus lanes" I can't think of any bus lanes in my area, bus lanes are in more built up places. So if you were going to the same place by bus or car which on do you think would be quicker?

Do you have the equivalent of the TfL journey planner for your area?

Like google maps?

Depends on how reliable and frequent the bus is. Our buses are at best every half hour and it takes two buses and two ten minute walks to get to work. It takes between 70 and 90 minutes and that's if both buses turn up on time. It also costs nearly £10 a day return because the buses are from different companies despite going from one side of the same city to the other.

In a car it takes 25-40 minutes door to door depending on traffic and parking in free office car park.

I've actually found that walking home from work is quicker than getting the bus by about 20 mins no being stuck in traffic

City mapper is great at journey planning 😊

I broke my arm last year & had to take the bus to work. Driving took 25 mins; bus journey was also 25 mins but I had to walk for 15 mins first to get to the bus station. The time was inconvenient too - I didn't get there early enough. It totally depends where the bus stops are and whether the rouyte is direct or not.

If she thinks the buses are quicker why doesn't she get one?

This seems like a weird thing to complain about.

Cars are quicker here - most bus routes don't even run in the winter months, and even in the summer they stop at 6pm! There's normally no bus service on Sundays or Bank Holidays either.

It can take 15-20mins to face bf a parking spot for n my city, then you need to watch your time (max 4hrs usually) and go back to the car afterwards.
Buses drop you off and then you can get a different one from somewhere else home.

Sorry, Freudian, didn't tie up the two posts.

Was more wondering in general if buses were quicker than cars

This is not a question that can be answered "In general".

On google maps she can put her home address in, setting off time and work address and it'll give an estimation of the journey time.

The public transport option will tell her which buses to catch and how long it should take.

There may be an 'in general' answer but it really is one of those questions that is very much 'it depends'.

DSis has a bus stop right outside her house that runs every 10 minutes and stops right outside her workplace. There are bus lanes part of the way. If she drove to work she would need to pay for car parking as city centre. The best option for her is using the bus. As posted above, despite living in the same city as DSis, it is much quicker, and probably cheaper, for me to drive.

Where I live and have lived - towns and villages - it would never, ever, ever be quicker to travel by bus. e.g. 15 minute drive takes an hour by bus (on the one bus that run so each day!)

Where I grew up public transport was barely existent and there were no bus lanes so cars were quicker...when I moved to London I was amazed at the amount and frequency of public transport. There are bus lanes too. However, I have taken a taxi outside rush hour and done the same journey by bus at exactly the same time. The taxi was about ten - fifteen minutes quicker when factoring in the getting to bus stop, waiting for all the stops, getting from the bus stop. But the only way to resolve this is with a stopwatch and one journey by bus and one by car.

PS I hate TFL journey planner after it sent me on a mad roundabout hour and a half journey to a walk in centre when I had an infected kidney stone which I could have done in half the time. I work routes out myself now.

Surely the only place where buses would be quicker is where there are bus lanes and lots of congestion.

It would take me 20 minutes to drive home from work, 30 minutes in bad traffic. It takes me 90 minutes by bus. The bus doesn't come until 20 minutes after I've left work, and I then have to get off and wait for another bus for 30 minutes. The bus journey itself is fine, it's all the waiting around that takes ages.

I drive 8 miles to work in the morning and it takes me about half an hour. Mainly 30mph areas, edge of a small town type driving.

If I got the bus it would be a ten minute walk, a 20-30 minute bus ride then a 20 minute walk due to where the closest bus stop to my office is.

So for me, driving myself is definitely quicker. Plus in the afternoon I have the added pressure of only having half an hour to get home from work to collect my daughter from school, so I wouldn't have the time to get the bus anyway.

I'm in central London, lots of bus lanes, I can usually take several different busses so wait under 5 min. It does not go from my front door to the work front door exactly. Car would get stuck in traffic and need parking, but starts right where I start and ends exactly where I want to go. I'd say no difference. Bus is much cheaper though.

in town it is usually quicker to walk (anywhere) than get the bus. Out of town it is quicker to drive. If you are near a convenient train line (& the trains aren't cancelled) trains are quickest. I hate going on a bus & will do almost anything to avoid it.

(e.g. dh's commute - train 15 minutes, car 30 minutes, bus 45-60 minutes)

Five minutes in a car could be a short walk or it could be 4 or 5 miles if mostly fast A road or motorway. It could be an hour's brisk walk.

There are parts of Kent that can be driven to in 20mins from central London (outside of rush hour). Your friend is an idiot op.

It's a daft question because it depends on the service, time of day, etc., etc. My quickest ever journey home from work was by bus, but it relies on the perfect combination of circumstances. (Previous bus running late, so all the people who would normally be on my one are being swept onto the crowded one preceding it.)

Usually it's about 20% longer by bus than by car, but then again often I'd have spent a similar amount of time looking for somewhere to park.

Usually the longer the journey, the bigger the difference in time. I once took a 4-hour bus drive for a route that would have been about an hour in the car. But I didn't have the choice on that occasion, so I had to put some music on and suck it up.

Definitely not quicker. Ds gets the bus to Leeds each day. It's only 10 miles and the bus takes 45 minutes!

I could walk for 40 minutes, then get a bus for 40 minutes, then walk for 10 minutes.

OR

I could drive there in 15 minutes (25 minutes in rush hour).
There is no comparison where I live!