The last bus home

It’s 21:30 in town. Where can you still get home?#

Choose a city and move the clock. Each dot is a town within 50 km, placed at its real bearing and distance. It goes dark when its last direct bus leaves.

One Saturday across England#

Every town of 10,000–100,000 people is paired with the city of 100,000 or more, within 50 km, from which it gets the most direct buses on a Saturday. That gives 722 towns.

25.5% of them (184) have no direct Saturday bus from any of the 66 big cities (London counted once, from the West End). For 54 of them, one of the cities is London: its outer boroughs, such as Croydon or Kingston, may have buses to them, but they are not counted as separate cities. There may be another way, by train or with a change; the page doesn’t check.

Of the 538 that do, the last bus leaves before 19:00 for 10.8%, and before 21:00 for 17.3%. At the other end, 139 towns have a bus after midnight.

With the pairing fixed in advance (the nearest city in a straight line) and the same stop rules: 31.0% with no direct bus; 38.8% of all towns with none or a last bus before 19:00 (with the rule used here, 33.5%). That pairing was replaced because the nearest “city” was often a satellite the buses don’t serve (West Bromwich, Salford), and sometimes across water.

Where the evening ends before dinner#

Towns of 20,000+ with the earliest last Saturday bus from their main city:

Two towns are left out of the table. Bognor Regis has a single direct journey from Portsmouth, in the morning, because the coast route is registered as two services split at Chichester. Goole’s last direct bus from Hull leaves at lunchtime. And some of the “cities” are big only by population and have no city status: Telford, Stockport and Ipswich.

Friday, Saturday, Tuesday#

Friday night looks almost the same: 24.9% with no direct bus, and for 10.9% of the rest the last one leaves before 19:00. On a Tuesday, 25.1% and 10.9%. The difference shows after midnight: 139 towns have a bus after 00:00 on Saturday, 132 on Friday and 105 on Tuesday.

“Last before 19:00” counts only towns that have a direct bus. The board at the top shows all three days for your town.

Where Romanians live, and when their bus leaves#

At the 2021 census, 530,325 people born in Romania lived in England. The four districts with the most were London boroughs: Harrow, Brent, Newham and Barnet; in all, about a third lived in London. Outside London, the districts with the most were Birmingham, West and North Northamptonshire, Luton, Coventry and Milton Keynes.

The census gives country of birth only by district, not by town, so the table lists the towns in the districts with the most Romanian-born residents, not how many live in each town.

No direct bus#

When your town has no direct Saturday bus, the board names the cities that were checked and shows the nearest town that has one, in a straight line (sometimes across water). The page does not check how to get there.