Sunday 26 January 2014

Council check: Plymouth City Council

Each Sunday we rate a council for their provision of bus information. This week: Plymouth City Council.



Where do the buses go?

First signs are good: there is a citywide travel map, but who in Devon designed it? It shows roads but no bus route information. Are they serious? Here's an extract:

How are we meant to make head or tail of this?

Good intentions, but a useless end product. More useful is this list of all bus routes in the city together with links to the individual route maps over at Traveline South West. It could have been so much more than just 2 out of 5.

Timetables

Nice and easy. This page lists all routes in the city with a link to the timetable on Traveline. Can't ask for more than that. 5 out of 5.

Fares

No information on single fares, nor on single-operator tickets valid for a day or longer - you need to see the operators' websites for that. There is a day ticket that is valid on any operator: the Skipper. There is also a Plymouth Plusbus ticket, but the council forgot to mention that. Just 2 out of 5 in this category.

Summary

So we have an utterly useless map, but Traveline saves the day with maps and timetables. There is an any bus day ticket, but if you need any other ticket, it's up to you to trawl the operators' sites. Plymouth City Council scores a total of 9 out of 15.

1 comment:

  1. No comment on the map, but I cannot say that I am particularly sold on the idea of Traveline's timetables listing all stops instead of just timing points. It makes them far too large and presents the reader with possibly too much information.

    I also have increasing doubts about the fashion for interactive maps, when it is perfectly possible to have route maps showing stops and relevant road names all at once, instead of having to pan, zoom in and click little dots to see any detailed information.

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