Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
For the regular public service buses, pretty good. Few Londoners/Parisiens use them on a day to day basis, at least that's my perception, but the tfl.gov.uk and dd1.fr systems are very much up to date. One big difference between the cities here is that quite a few Paris bus lines stop working around 20:00 hrs, which in summer can catch people out, it's still day light, whereas that's rare in London, most services go on to or a bit beyond midnight.
I uses buses a lot in London (within zones 1-2), and pre-pandemic on a daily basis. Google maps is generally ok for arrival times as long as you don't expect it to be very accurate (assume a few minutes' error margin). What it's useful for is to see the general frequency of buses (are they coming every 3, 5 or 10 minutes). Tfl website is much more accurate but a bit more hassle than google maps unless you save your regular bus stops under your "favourites", so I have stopped using it.
Buses take longer and you can get stuck in traffic (or the dreaded "this bus is on diversion" where it's up to the gods how much longer your journey takes), so for anything time-sensitive it's worth taking the tube. If your trip is only
within the very touristy-shopping part of London, the bus can be slower than walking for some streets.
But overall, if you don't mind spending 20mins more on your trip, getting a seat on the upper deck is a nice way to get a sense of the city and you're often more likely to get a seat on a bus than on the tube.
I use my bus-commute to read, and losing 10-15mins compared to taking the tube and having to change twice is nothing - it's my preferable way to get to the office when I decide to go in nowadays
