It's not just you. Portishead's live bus times don't work

Regular bus users in Portishead know only too well that the digital displays at bus stops and on some mobile apps are not at all accurate on predicting when buses will arrive in and around our town.

I myself notified First, North Somerset Council and my local councillor about it months ago - and was promptly ignored by all three.

Now it appears that there is officially a problem after all as the Bristol Post reports. The buses are tracked by the real time system using a radio signal. That signal is particularly poor in Portishead and Pill which leads to the computer just guessing where the buses are and giving us inaccurate 'live' times at bus stops and on our mobiles.

The council are planning to install a new base station for the system, which should make it more accurate.

With First's timetable change on the X2 and X3 in March designed to help solve the chronic unreliability on those routes, things should hopefully start to get better for Portishead's bus users soon.

Have you been left stranded due to misleading 'live' times on the bus stop displays? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

X2/X3 new timetable from 29th March / Meet the manager online

First X2 and X3 will get a new timetable from 29th March. First are recasting the timetables on several routes in and around Bristol in order to try and make them more reliable. The Portishead routes have been particularly unreliable so hopefully the changes will work.

First are holding an online meet the manager session next Monday. Details here.