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Lecturer spends months proving why Leeds buses are always late

Has your bus ever been late?

Clementine Hall - 7th September 2022

Dr Ben Hanson has submitted a 3,000 word research document to local transport bosses to help make their service more accurate.

There's nothing worse than waiting at the bus stop, watching the clock tick away from the supposed arrival time.

One minute can feel like forever and more often than not, you find yourself beadily watching the road awaiting your golden chariot for a lot more than one minute.

Well, a local Leeds man feels your pain and has taken it upon himself to spend months researching Leeds buses and their timetables to prove why they are late.

Dr Ben Hanson, 31, is a physics lecturer at Leeds University. He decided to study the 'live tracker' displays for two bus routes in the city that he used regularly.

Using a computer programmer to precisely measure if the buses were late on these two routes over a period of time, he found that when the buses were due to arrive in five minutes, they were late a whopping eight out of ten times.

He also discovered that buses often take up to a third longer to arrive at their stops than is predicted on the noticeboards.

Using his findings, Dr Ben Hanson has now submitted a hefty 3,000 word research document to local transport bosses in an attempt to help make their system more accurate.

He told SWNS, as reported by Leeds Live, that he was motivated my 'personal grievance' over the transport's inaccuracies and that he is now hoping that the West Yorkshire Combined Authority will use artificial intelligence to make the schedules more accurate.

Ben said “The goal was to get onto the internet and find out where the live timetables are getting their bus data from - which you can actually do quite easily. Once I did that, I created an automated way of doing that by writing a computer programme that checks for you. And I made that computer programme pull down every single minute for two solid weeks."

His in-depth research focused on the number 72 bus, that runs between Leeds and Bradford, along with the number six bus, which travels through the city centre.

His overall analysis revealed that the "live tracker" boards, which we all rely on, are systematically incorrect as buses arrived up to 33% later than they were predicted during the course of his research.

Hopefully Ben's research will improve the transport links in and around the city and prevent us from waiting too long at bus stops.

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Feature image - SWNS