Historical Travels: Bus Timetables

Bus timetables are a great resource to understand how people traveled, both back then and today. 

Bus timetables can provide the answer to a litany of questions, such as:

• How long did it take someone to travel from one location to another, via bus?
• What bus companies were operating specific routes?
• What potential rest stops would a bus utilize, along its route? 
• How do routes change, as the landscape and roads evolve over time? 
• How much would a bus ride have cost?

Please see below, for examples of bus tables that can be useful to your research. Make sure to review newspapers, guidebooks, and city directories to find these timetables.

Greyhound Bus Terminal, 33rd and 34th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 482565

When searching for bus timetables in our Online Research Catalog, we recommend the following keyword or subject search: 

• bus lines timetables [area of interest]
  • Ex. bus lines timetables Europe

In addition, since not all materials will be indexed under "bus lines," searching under

• guidebooks [place of interest]
  • Ex. guidebooks Massachusetts

can provide additional resources that host this type of information. 

Similar keyword searches can be utilized in other digital repositories, such as Hathi Trust.

As noted above, timetables are also often time found within periodicals. As such, check out our Timetables main tab, to see how you can locate periodicals through New York Public Library's databases.