Double Decker Checker shows you a map of all the UK's 'local' buses routes and journeys. You can select them to see their bus stops, timetables and live buses.
I started this in late 2023 when I realised that there was no simple way of seeing all the 'local' bus routes across the country without visiting dozens of different websites. Note that this isn't really a 'route planner': if you just want to get from A to B (as long as A and B aren't too far apart) - there are quite a few websites and apps which will find you an efficient way to do so. This is more of a bus 'browser'. You can pick one route from many possible ones; you can plan a long distance journey over several days and, of course, you can see when your bus is approaching wherever you are in the UK.
September 2024: Double Decker Checker is still being developed (approx weekly updates). It mostly works and feel free to play with it but don't trust it yet; routes display, timetables and live vehicles may all be inaccurate or wrong. It may crash in a variety of ways (but it won't harm your computer - it's just javascript and API calls).
Your data: We don't collect any data from you other than standard webserver logging, which is deleted on a standard rotation schedule. Your settings (approximate location if you allow it, layer setting and device category) are stored in cookies on your computer. We don't share any of this with anyone else.
Monetisation: This website is free to use and carries no advertising or tracking of any kind. That may change if it gets busy (it would need more server resources, and Google charge for the use of the maps api above a certain level). If that happens, we'll say so here.
Any ideas, bug reports or suggestions are most welcome at either: info@doubledeckerchecker.org
Firstly, you can zoom in and out and drag around the map to find areas of interest and see the bus routes in that area. Bus lines and journeys differ depending on the day (for example, there are less buses on Sundays, some lines only run on schooldays, bank holidays etc), so use the day selector in the control panel on the left to set the day you want to see.
Because there are a lot of bus journeys (around a million) in the country on an average day, we can't always show them all at once. So when you're looking at the whole of the UK, you will see only a selection of the lines which actually run on your selected day. This doesn't really matter because you can't distinguish them anyhow at this zoom level.
As you zoom in to an area, it becomes possible to show all the active routes because there are less of them. The tick (or cross) just to the right of the logo at the top of the control panel tells you whether you are seeing all the active routes. If it shows a cross, zoom in a bit more until it shows a tick.
As you zoom in further, you'll see little arrows appear on the routes, showing the direction of travel. Also, when the mouse passes over a route, it changes colour to indicate that you can click on it. When you click on it, it changes colour again and gets thicker to show that its selected.
When you click on a route, a small window pops up with information about that route. Where a line has more than one direction, they are shown separately. Click anywhere in the direction you want, and the line is loaded into the 'lines pool' in the control panel. The route on the map is shown in green and little blobs appear on it to show where the bus stops are. You can click on a stop to see its name and a picture of it. If available (not all buses support this), the live buses on that route are shown too.
Click on the gear icon at the top of the control panel to access settings.
With 'Allow' selected, the map will open centred on your location (if your device is configured to allow it). If 'Block' is selected, we start with the whole UK visible.
When you zoom in, particularly in urban areas, the map can look quite cluttered with many bus routes crammed into a small area. For this reason we don't show much on the map apart from bus routes. But you can add 'points of interest' using this selector which can be helpful for finding landmarks, destinations, bus stops etc.
You may be able to improve performance by telling us what kind of device you're using. On a modern laptop or desktop computer with plenty of memory, DDC can show many hundreds of routes on the map, which gives an accurate visual picture of the reality. If we do that on (say) an older mobile phone, the phone's browser will soon run out of memory and will run very slowly or crash. So: If your device seems to be working well, is responsive and not going wrong, try selecting a 'better' device type and you should see more routes being loaded. If OTOH it hangs up for seconds at a time or crashes or just runs annoyingly slowly, select a slower device - you'll see less routes, but it will work better.
The Double Decker Checker shows local bus routes for a selected day; select it here. Bus timetables are updated frequently, so the more days ahead or before 'today' you select, the less reliable the data will be because the operator may replace the timetable at any time. For example, if you select a day which is in the past, you will see that the further back you go the less buses there are; that's because when a timetable is updated, it typically doesnt include the past. Selecting a day in the future will give correct information at the time you do it, but it's always possible that the operator will change the timetable 5 minutes after you looked at it, so check again later.
The lines pool shows all the line / directions you've selected. Its title bar contains:
Hide unselected routes.
Show lines on the map.
Close all.
Each entry in the line pool has the following controls:
Show the timetable.
Show stops.
Show line on the map.
Close.
You can search for a line in the search box in the control panel on the left. To do a 'literal' search, put double quotes around your search pattern. For example, if you're searching for line '10' and you just enter 10 (with no quote marks) you'll get many hundreds of results including (for example) '107A', '1000', 'X10', '7100' etc. If, instead, you search for "10", you'll only get lines actually called '10'. There'll still be a lot of them, but many fewer. If you search for 'Chester', the results will include Manchester, Colchester etc. Use double quotes around the word though, and only "Chester" will be found.
We search the line names and descriptions supplied by the operators and we also search place names. So your search results may include 'Line' and 'Place' entries.
You can use multiple words in the search, but note that Double Decker Checker is not a route finder. If you search for (say) "Plymouth to Barnstaple", it will find bus lines and places in Plymouth and Barnstaple, but it won't find you a route between the two.
That's a big question to which we don't really know the answer. We update at least once a week, so nothing shown on the map should be more out of date than that. But the reliablilty of the routes, and in particular the timetables is, more complicated. The data is supplied by the operators but passes through quite a few processes which we don't control before it gets to us. If it really matters to you, we'd recommend that once you've found a line you're interested in, you check with the operator's own website before relying on our timetable data. They should be the same...
It's complicated. First, there are different kinds of passes: English National Concessionary Travel Scheme, Disabled Person's Freedom Pass, Age-related free travel bus pass, etc. Most of these do provide free bus travel on 'local buses'. In theory, all the buses shown on this map are local buses, so ought to be free.
In practice, we would strongly advise you to contact the bus operator via their website or phone before assuming a service is free for you. I'm not an expert and would welcome anyone who knows more about this subject getting in touch via info@doubledeckerchecker.org.
Click on the route to highlight it and a small window pops up with a section for each of the route's directions. Click on the direction you want to see and it's added to the 'lines pool' in the control panel on the left. If live bus information is available for that line, you will also see the buses on the map.
If you 'hover' or click on a live bus icon on the map, you will see its speed and some other information.
Some routes are shown as straight lines running from bus stop to bus stop, so they seem to run across fields and through houses etc. This might be because the bus operator doesn't provide the actual route, or it might be that the data provider (normally Traveline or BODS) doesn't include it. Luckily, where this happens, it's usually pretty obvious to see where the bus actually goes and in a sense it doesn't matter; its route through all its bus stops is always shown. This problem should diminish over time as more operators do provide the actual bus 'tracks'.
See the credits page.
These pictures are provided by Google's streetview API - I think they sometimes just don't have the exact picture requested and provide the nearest thing they have.
Some operators supply their data in quite a complex form - for example, there may be more than one set of timetables for a route and it's not always obvious which one is current. In some cases, our system may get it wrong. There are around a million bus journeys in the UK every day, so we can't realistically intervene manually to sort these things out. We expect the completeness and accuracy of our data to improve over time.
Yes - see the 'search' section on the 'How to use' page.
See the 'How to use' page. Note though that the Double Decker Checker is more of a browser than a route planner. If you simply want to know how to get from A to B, you might be better off using a conventional route planning website or app.
Not yet, but once we have the website working properly, we will produce apps. It's obvious that for many uses, an app would be more convenient. You can use this on your phone or tablet though by going to http://doubledeckerchecker.org in the browser. Rotate the phone in to 'landscape' mode and you should find it quite usable, if a bit fiddly. You will probably want to adjust your settings too.
A terrific resource for timetables and a lot of extra bus information.
Traveline have an excellent route planner, though it doesn't like very long journeys involving many different buses.
Too many to mention here.
No, that would be silly. Anything which is a 'local bus', regardless of the actual vehicle type.
This government service provides timetables, bus location, and fares data for local bus services across England. It is free open data, and does not require a licence.
This government service is the national dataset for uniquely identifying all public transport access points in England, Scotland and Wales.
Traveline Information Limited offers several open data options including TNDS, NextBuses API and National Operator Code database (NOC).
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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