The Transport for Cornwall website contains a listing of timetables for bus services in Cornwall. This should be the authoritative listing on which passengers can rely. With over 100 route numbers some of which have dozens of journey times every day, I accept that it is inevitable that there will be some small errors from time to time in the information provided. However, the number of errors on the TfC website is simply astonishing.
Each timetable has an online, interactive version where the passenger puts in the date and direction of travel to find the times of services on that day. Most of these are, hopefully, correct although there have been a couple of occasions over the past few months where Go Cornwall Bus has warned that they were not displaying properly and advised passengers to use the pdf versions of the timetables. Most regular travellers are likely to use the pdf versions anyway as these, once downloaded and/or printed, are more convenient than having to go on to the website each and every time that they travel.
It is these pdf versions of timetables that have a plethora of mistakes. Many of the linked pdf timetables are not the latest version (which should be 1 September 2025). Sometimes the previous version of the timetable is unchanged but there is no way that the passenger would know if it was unchanged or had been updated since the date of original publication.
The listing on the TfC website of services is also difficult to follow. Go Cornwall Bus has put all of its services at the front of the list and First are left with theirs at the end. This results in odd situations where GCB run evening and Sunday services to fill in the commercial daytime services run by First and passengers have to search for both versions in the listing.. Stagecoach services do not feature on the list at all even though they are in the composite timetable book.
I have compiled a list of all the services as per the TfC website and shown where the pdf versions are wrong, or there are other errors. See summary of timetable errors.
It is clear that nobody in Go Cornwall Bus, the custodians of the website, nor anybody in the passenger transport unit of Cornwall Council, has ever gone through the website and checked whether there are mistakes. I wrote to the Cornwall Council portfolio holder for Transport on 19 November and provided him with my analysis. He promised to raise the issue with the public transport team in the Council and with the managing director of Go Cornwall Bus. 10 days later, nothing has changed on the website even though it would have taken a half-competent administration person with access to the TfC website a matter of a few hours at most to have located the correct pdf timetables and to upload them. Just to remind readers, Go Cornwall Bus were given an 8 year contract by Cornwall Council to be the prime movers in the Transport for Cornwall partnership. And now, with the withdrawal of First Bus from Cornwall, Go Cornwall Bus will probably have a de facto monopoly on bus services in the county.
It really is not good enough.
Update
2 December 2025
I emailed Dan Rogerson, portfolio holder for transport at Cornwall Council, and Richard Stevens, managing director of Go South West, with a link to the above story. Richard Stevens emailed me promptly on Monday morning and apologised for the mistakes, said that he accepted responsibility and promised that he will ensure that the information is corrected by Friday this week. Dan Rogerson also emailed me and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. However, he did not apologise for any failure on the part of Council officers to have noticed any of the errors before I brought it to their attention.