Why the same bus number exists in different towns

Search for a bus by number alone and you will often get results scattered across the country. That is not a fault in the search. Bus route numbers in England are local, not national, and the same number is reused freely from one area to the next.

How common is it?

Very. Across the areas this site currently covers, the number 1 is used on routes in 31 different administrative areas. The number 7 appears in 24, the number 2 in 23, and 10 in another 23.

These are not variations of one long route. They are entirely separate services, run by different companies, with no connection beyond the digit on the front.

Why numbers are not unique

Route numbers are allocated locally. Historically they were set by the operator or the local authority for a particular town or county network, and they stayed that way through decades of changes in who runs the buses. There has never been a national numbering scheme, so nothing prevents two areas from both having a 1.

Low numbers are the worst affected, for the obvious reason: they are the natural choice for a town's main route, and most towns have a main route.

What this means when you search

A route number on its own is not enough to identify a service. You need one more piece of information, and the most useful is usually where it goes.

That is why route pages on this site are named by number and by the places at each end — for example /bus/21-newcastle-brandon. Two routes numbered 21 in different parts of the country get different pages, and the destinations tell you immediately which one you have found.

If you search by number and get several results, look at the destinations rather than the number. The place names will make the right one obvious.

Letters after the number

Suffixed numbers such as 13A and 13B are a related convention. These usually mean variants of a base route — the same corridor for most of its length, then a different section at one end, or a different routing at certain times of day.

They are separate services with separate timetables, so a 13A is not a substitute for a 13 unless you are travelling on the part they share. Check the destination before boarding, not just the number.

Numbers beginning with X are commonly used for faster or limited-stop services, but this is a convention rather than a rule, and it is applied differently by different operators. Do not assume an X service calls at your stop just because the equivalent numbered service does.

Finding the right route

The most reliable ways to land on the correct service:

• Start from the stop, not the number. Open the stop you would actually board at and look at what departs from it. Every departure is the right route by definition.
• Start from the town. A town page lists the routes serving that town, so the 1 you see there is the local 1. Try Newcastle, Manchester or Birmingham, or find yours from the town list.
• Browse by region. The route lists are split by region — North East, Yorkshire, North West and West Midlands — which removes the duplicates from other parts of the country in one step.

Why we do not renumber anything

It would be tempting to give every route a unique identifier and be done with it. We do not, because the number on the front of the bus is the number you need at the stop. A route called something different here from what it is called on the vehicle would be worse, not better, however tidy it looked in a database.