Clear, printable bus maps for your community
A system designed to help local organisations publish easy-to-read maps of the buses in their area — or the buses that reach their doorstep — and keep them up to date as services change. It is a pilot: we have our first organisation and are looking for more.
Published through the portal
These are maps that have been through the portal end to end, and anyone can view, print and share them.
Who it’s for
Most often, it’s a town or parish council. But the same problem — the buses are there, and nobody can see them on one map — shows up for these too.
Transport authorities & councils most common
One map showing every operator’s buses — the multi-operator information an Enhanced Partnership scheme can call for, kept current without agency fees. County, district, town and parish.
Healthcare, campuses & schools
Fewer missed appointments, less pressure on the car park. Patients, visitors, students and new staff all arrive not knowing the local network.
Town centres, BIDs, tourism & attractions
Get visitors from the station to your door without a car. Day-trippers will not download an operator app — they will read a printed sheet.
Bus operators & community transport
Turn your own open-data feed into a print-ready network map, without paying for vector artwork every time a route changes.
Not on this list? Business & science parks, shops, village halls, event organisers, surgeries — if your community relies on the bus, the same map helps. Ask us.
Each of these tends to have a different budget that this comes out of — during the pilot there is no charge, whichever one is yours. How a price would be worked out later.
Two kinds of map
Choose whichever fits — or have both.
A whole place
A town, a rural parish, or part of a larger town — every bus within the area, drawn to scale with local landmarks.
A single point
Centred on one spot — a shop, school, station, community centre or town centre — showing the buses that serve it and where they go.
Does it work on a big town?
St Ives is a market town and fits on a sheet easily. High Wycombe has three times the network — so it is the more useful proof.
Measured first, drawn second
Every area is scored before the drawing starts, on how many lines the map would carry, how tightly they bunch and how much of the network would end up hidden underneath other routes. High Wycombe came back RED — the honest verdict being “do not just build the standard map”.
Working through a documented sequence of remedies and re-scoring after each one brought it to GREEN, with nothing congested and no route buried. The map alongside is that build.
Four outputs — you choose which you want
Each map can produce any combination of these. Turn on only what you need.
Internal — geographic
Street-anchored map of the buses within the area or around the place.
Internal — schematic
A straightened, tidied version that’s easy to follow at a glance.
External
Where the buses go — a diagram of routes to their destinations.
Where to board by arrangement
The three above answer where do the buses go. The fourth answers the question you have while standing in the bus station: I have decided to go to Bedford — which of these five identically-named stops do I wait at? It is a large-scale plan of one place, with an index of the destinations you can reach, listed alphabetically by destination rather than by route number, each row naming the stop to stand at.
Every stop letter is printed from NaPTAN, the national stop register, so the letter on the map is the letter on the flag. Where the stops around a place cannot each be named unambiguously, the map declines rather than guess — so it is checked for your place first. See one · what it is, and where it works
How it is meant to work
Apply & get approved
Tell us who you are and what you’d like. We approve your organisation and your first area or places.
We set it up
We build your map from official open data and give it a once-over before it comes to you.
You fine-tune
Adjust colours and labels, choose which outputs you want, and preview.
Approve & print
Every map is reviewed before it goes out. Download a print-ready A4 sheet — and accept updates as services change.
Built to be checked
Human review
People rely on these to catch a bus, so a person looks over every map — and approves it — before it can be printed.
Official open data
Built from the UK Bus Open Data Service and OpenStreetMap, with a monthly refresh cycle.
Readable by design
Route colours drawn from a recommended colour-blind-friendly palette, and generous type, sized for real printing.
Starting small: this is a pilot, there is no charge, and each organisation would have one area and a few places. Charges may be introduced later, always with notice — how a price would be worked out. What the pilot means.
Or take it on yourself
This is looking for a Community Interest Company
The system works, it is documented, and the code is safely held under a licence that converts to fully open-source in 2030. What it does not have is an organisation around it — it is one person’s project, and a map that lasts only as long as one person keeps maintaining it is not really maintained.
So we are looking for an individual or a small team to take it on and run it as a CIC: sustainable transport, GIS or civic tech, with the drive to lead it.
What would be handed over, why a CIC, and what is not yet resolved.
Why we are saying so publicly
Because the alternative is a service that quietly depends on one person and does not say so. Every organisation considering this deserves to know how it is run before it puts a map on a noticeboard.