Thursday, 23 June 2016

Bus service maps of London and the Home Counties



Since there are loads of cross boundary bus services bordering the Greater London area, many of those cross boundary routes are part of London Buses.

The North West, North East, South East and South West London bus maps also show cross boundary services. The routes that are in green are not part of the London Buses network and so different fares apply.


On the TFL bus map page, they haven’t provided information for non-London bus services which cross the London boundary.

Below I have linked to various bus maps and guides of the Home Counties provided by the council and the bus company.

Essex
The bus maps are provided by CartoGold, an interactive bus map for Essex County Council.
Thurrock Borough Council (Unitary Authority) provides a ‘spider’ diagram map for their area.
First Bus Essex provides their own network maps for their services in Essex.
Ensignbus also provide their own network map serving the Thurrock area.

Kent
Kent County Council provides bus guides and maps for their county.
Fastrack, a Bus Rapid Transit service also provide a route map of their service.
Arriva provide their own network maps for the South East England area they serve. (Except for London)
Stagecoach provides local area maps serving the region of Kent and the South East of England (except London).

Surrey
Surrey County Council provides bus guides and maps for their county.
Abellio Surrey provide their own network map.
Compass Travel provide their own network map.
Southdown PSV provides route maps for their services.

Slough (Berkshire*)
Slough Borough Council provide their own area map and bus station guide map.
First Berkshire and Thames Valley provide their own network map for their area.

Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire County Council provides maps for their area.
Carousel Buses provides maps for their services.

Hertfordshire
The bus maps are provided by Intalink for Hertfordshire County Council.
St Albans City & District council provide their own bus guide.
Centrebus provides their own route maps
Mullanys Coaches provide their own service maps
Uno provide their own service maps

*Berkshire has no county council as they are succeeded by six unitary authorities.

I do think Transport for London and the councils should link to each other on their bus guide pages which would make it easier for users to access bus information.

Short review:

Since the Essex County Council bus guide is hosted by CartoGold, they haven’t provided the PDF format for their county-wide bus map.

Also on the Essex interactive bus map, they didn’t include the Thurrock bus guide as they tell you to look at Thurrock Council's publicity to view extensive bus services within that area. When I looked at the bus map of Thurrock, it was different to the main Essex interactive bus map because the Thurrock bus map is based on a spider map.


Moving on to the Kent maps, with their individual town maps, I like the way how they show separate bus services shown in their map.

Also, with the Kent county-wide bus map, it’s huge, as it covers the whole county of Kent. I like the way they feature different tones of green colour because it shows the difference with the bus services as the dark green is shown to be running 7 days whilst the light green is shown to run operating 5 to 6 days a week.
The bus maps and guides provided by Surrey County Council are similar to Kent County Council bus maps.

Slough Borough Council provides their own bus map jointly with their bus station guide, again their map is similar to the one provided by Kent County Council.

Buckinghamshire County Council provide their own bus guides, this time they have split their county map into separate PDF documents, again their bus route diagrams are similar to Kent County Council's local town bus guide.

Hertfordshire Intalink provides a county-wide bus map and they’re similar to the London Buses guide map. Their local bus maps are similar to the London Buses guide map because they don’t show any route diagrams, but the road is in dark grey and shows where the bus serves.
                                                                                                                                                         
This was just a quick article to inform people about bus times. For more information visit the Traveline website and download their app from the Apple Store and Google Play for live bus departures on the go.

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