How often does rural buses delay

4 comments

1. Its usually about 5 min of delay max, that’s my experience when I was with a bus line that only took tickets and cash.

2. I only have anecdotal experience. Since buses travel with other traffic I don’t expect them to arrive exactly as scheduled like trains do, but I was still taken aback when the bus I was waiting for was more than 15 minutes late. The next scheduled bus was an hour away so I started panicking if I had missed the bus entirely (maybe I didn’t read the destination on the buses correctly and had let it pass) and was about to give up and call a taxi when it finally arrived.

   I think it’s just worse in rural areas is because they travel much longer distances than in the cities + don’t come often to begin with + the delay builds up at every stop if a lot of people have to board. It’s important to plan your itinerary with buffer time if you’re taking a bus!

3. Are you talking about highway buses or local buses? Highway buses are typically on time within a few minutes, unless there was unusual traffic, since they have experience with the route and allot time for each stop. Local buses have a lot more stops, some of which may not have anyone or may have people needing special assistance. They tend to be less punctual. Check for the bus company’s website, though. Some have an app to track schedules.

4. This won’t be the case with all local busses but certainly complicated our travel plans at the time. I had significant delays in getting on the Kawaguchiko local bus in December of last year.

   Towards the end of the afternoon, the bus filled up with more passengers than it let off on each stop with each group taking longer to cram into the bus. After some point in time, our bus driver stopped to profusely apologize to each group of passengers he couldn’t fit into the bus. A lot of the passengers that arrived to the highway bus transfer station missed their connection, including us. We were at least 45 minutes late compared to our original ETA.