What does "live" actually mean on bus times?

Every bus app says "live times". Almost none of them explain what that means — and the difference matters when you're deciding whether to run for a bus.

There are really three different things, and they're often blurred together.

1. Scheduled times

This is the timetable the operator published: "the 21 leaves North Road at 14:32". It's a plan, not an observation. Nothing is being measured — it's what should happen.

Most departure times you see on any bus website, including the ones on our stop pages, are scheduled times.

2. Live vehicle tracking

This is real: buses transmit their GPS position, and you can see where they actually are right now. On our route pages the green buses on the map are real vehicles, updated roughly every 15 seconds.

This tells you something genuinely useful — is there actually a bus coming? If the timetable says a bus is due in 4 minutes and there's no vehicle anywhere on the route behind you, that's worth knowing.

3. Real-time predictions

This is the "3 minutes late" number. It's the hardest of the three, because it means taking a moving vehicle, working out which scheduled journey it's running, and predicting when it will reach your specific stop.

Getting that wrong is worse than not showing it. A confident "2 min" that's actually eight minutes away is how people miss connections.

We don't currently show per-departure delay predictions. We show you the honest timetable, plus where the buses actually are. When we can do predictions properly, we'll add them — and we'll say clearly that's what they are.

What this means at the stop

• Bus is "due" but nothing has arrived? Check the route map. If a vehicle is a couple of stops back, you're fine. If there's nothing on the road, it may have been cancelled.
• Times slightly different from the paper timetable? Timetables get revised; the notice at the stop can be out of date, and so occasionally can we.
• Nothing showing at all? It may be past the last bus, or you may be at the opposite-direction pole. Big stops have several poles, each with its own times. Our nearby stops list shows each one separately.

The honest summary

No bus website knows exactly when your bus will arrive. What good information does is narrow the uncertainty: the timetable tells you the plan, live tracking tells you whether reality matches it.

For anything that really matters — a flight, a hospital appointment, an interview — take the earlier bus. See our service updates for anything currently disrupting a route.