Next Bus by Traveline

For next bus departures and bus locations try NextBuses.mobi. This is the mobile service, but is nice and plain on an ipad or ordinary pc/mac.

Nextbuses is not yet realtime for much of rural East Lothian, indeed most of the the periphery. However the next scheduled service is shown (the time is displayed as opposed to in X minutes). This alone can be useful where timetables are missing, out of date or not available – e.g. because the stop is an unmarked one.

As with other similar journey planning applications, basic scenarios / problems seem to be easy to work with.  If you are familiar with a route and service and the route variations / idiosynchrasies all is well.  But it can get quickly disorientating, requiring map reading abilities and technical abilities if you are less familiar or completely unfamiliar with the route or navigating the screens. This is compounded when working on a small screen.

The service seems useful only for the next bus problem. It doesn’t go as far as to to tell you the route of the next service. In the case of a service like the 130, which has 4 variant routes this isn’t helpful as the destinations shown are all the same. If you have prior knowledge this maybe is not an issue. (Numbering the variant routes would overcome this and be better for displaying the static data.  The Show Nearby stops option is quite helpful, but doesn’t show those associated with a particular route.

Getting NextBuses on all web-enabled mobile phones is easy, no app needed.

  1. currency: this source should be up to date and current; however if recent changes have been made and the data has not been registered with Travelinedata, then changes will not show along with all web services that rely on Travelinedata
  2. accuracy: the information is accurate; we evaluated this by taking 3 random stops and checking the online pdf timetables. The data seemed to be accurate.
  3. clarity: the layout of the basic screens seems clear, but once the map options appear it is unclear exactly how you select a stop as the map itself is unresponsive. Once you have navigated the various options getting back to the departures board is easy enough and reasonably clear.
  4. usability: the resource is fairly easy to use, but I would think that some users would find it quite frustrating
  5. availability: the resource is reasonably well publicised, but we have not found anyone who has reported using it.
  6. operability: the resource worked perfectly and without error on a variety of operating systems and devices
  7. there are no costs associated with the above

More info