Bus timetable questions: connections, waiting and midnight

Set up a journey before subtracting times

A timetable question can ask for time on a vehicle, time between departures, or total time from an origin to a destination. Those are different quantities. Underline the starting event and finishing event before calculating. Keep walking and waiting separate from riding so that the same minutes are not counted twice.

For this exercise, assume the buses run exactly as shown, all listed trips operate on the same practice day, and changing platforms takes four minutes. These assumptions belong to this question only. They are not a real connection guarantee or an agency operating rule.

Example 1: which connection is possible?

The first bus arrives at 08:36. Add the required four-minute platform change: the passenger is ready at 08:40. The 08:39 departure is too early even though it leaves after the first bus arrives. The available connection in this exercise is 08:49, arriving at 09:07.

Total journey time is 55 minutes, from 08:12 to 09:07. You can check it in parts: 24 minutes on Route A, four minutes changing platforms, nine minutes waiting, and 18 minutes on Route B. The sum is 55. Calling the entire 13-minute interval “waiting” is acceptable only if the question includes the platform change in that label; keep your definitions consistent.

Example 2: what changes after a delay?

Suppose Route A instead arrives at 08:47. The four-minute change ends at 08:51, so the 08:49 trip is no longer possible under the supplied assumptions. You cannot infer the next departure from two listed trips. If a question does not give a repeating interval or another departure, the correct conclusion is that more timetable information is needed.

This is a useful distinction: calculating carefully does not create missing data. Do not continue a ten-minute pattern just because the two departures shown happen to be ten minutes apart.

Example 3: crossing midnight

A fictional night journey leaves at 23:48 and arrives at 00:17 the following day. There are 12 minutes from 23:48 to midnight and 17 minutes after midnight: 29 minutes in total. Directly subtracting 23:48 from 00:17 without accounting for the date produces a misleading negative result.

Now add a connection leaving at 00:24 and arriving at 00:41, with a four-minute change still required. The passenger is ready at 00:21, waits three minutes and rides another 17. The complete trip lasts 53 minutes: 29 + 4 + 3 + 17. Check by counting 12 minutes before midnight and 41 after it.

Try a variation

Change the first arrival to 00:22. Can the passenger still take the 00:24 departure? No: the platform change ends at 00:26. That remains true even though the vehicles are only two minutes apart. Write the answer in words before checking the arithmetic.

For a real journey, use the current agency timetable or trip planner and check service dates and disruptions. For another practice session, change only one assumption at a time. Pair this exercise with route and transfer decisions when you are ready to combine a map with a schedule.

Common questions

Original TransitPrep practice material. All example figures, networks, notices and procedures on this page are fictional. They do not reproduce an employer’s examination.