Bus Wisdom for Daily Life - Finding a Seat at the Origin Stop, and Routes That Need No Timetable

Timetable numbers can work for you

Our earlier articles (Toei Bus by the numbers and Toei Bus on the map) enjoyed the figures in the timetable simply for the pleasure of looking at them. This article is the practical companion: the same numbers, reread as wisdom that makes everyday bus journeys a little easier. All figures come from our own analysis of the timetable as of August 2026.

If you want a seat, learn where the buses start

Whether you get a seat depends enormously on the stop you board at. The ones to aim for are the stops where a run actually begins. You step onto an empty bus, so your chances of sitting down rise sharply.

Across the whole Toei Bus network, 223 stops have at least one departure that starts there, a little over one stop in ten. Route 都 02 is the standout: buses begin their runs at 8 of its stops, among them 大塚二丁目・大塚駅前・春日駅前・本所一丁目・東京ドームシティ. Long routes have more of these mid-route origin points than you might expect, so the stop one place before your usual one may well be where a bus starts.

To check whether your own stop has such departures, look in the timetable for trips marked as starting there (当停留所始発), or watch Busdoko, which shows buses waiting before they set off.

One bus to the hospital, one bus to the park

30 stops have a hospital or medical center in their name, and 39 of the network's 151 routes call at one of them. Put another way, one route in four stops directly outside a hospital. As a way of getting to an appointment, buses are tied to hospitals far more closely than most people realize. A few hospital stops are served by three routes at once, including Kokuritsu-Kokusai-Iryō-Kenkyū Center (National Center for Global Health and Medicine) and Juntendō-Byōin (Juntendo Univ. Hp.).

The same is true of parks as places to go. 44 stops are named after a park or garden, and 67 routes serve them. 上 46・臨海 28-1・臨海 28-2・西葛 26 stand out, each passing three or more park stops on a single run. Take 上 46: stay in your seat and you can travel from Ueno-Kōen (Ueno Park) through Asakusa all the way to Shioiri-Kōen (Shioiri Park), a tour of the parks without ever changing buses.

Some buses need no timetable at all

On routes with plenty of departures, there is hardly any reason to check the timetable. On 都 01・王 40 甲・東 22, the gap between one bus and the next never exceeds 7 minutes between 6 in the morning and 9 at night. For 15 hours straight, walking to the stop means a bus is about to arrive.

If the route you use every day is that kind, you can leave the house without a thought for the clock. If it runs less often, make our guide to reading a bus timetable your ally and plan around the departure times. Working out once which kind your route is will change how you organize your day.

The same stretch takes longer in the morning

Buses run on ordinary roads, so journey times change with the hour. On 草 41, for instance, the trip from Adachi-Umedachō to Asakusa-Kotobukichō is timed at 33 minutes on a bus around 8 in the evening, but 58 minutes on one in the 7 a.m. hour: a 25-minute spread over exactly the same stretch of road.

The difference comes from traffic, and it is already built into the published timetable. For trips with a fixed time, such as a hospital appointment or meeting someone, allow roughly 1.5 times your usual journey in the morning and evening peaks and set off with time in hand.

A bus that takes 10 minutes even end to end

Some buses do away entirely with the worry of missing your stop. 学 06 runs 1.64 km from its first stop to its last, about 10 minutes if you ride the whole way. Drift off to sleep by mistake and the terminus is right there.

Short-hop routes like this one fill in the distances that are just a bit too far to walk. On a hot day, or when your hands are full of shopping, letting the bus carry you a single stop is bus wisdom of the finest kind.

Bonus - the stop that opens at 8 at night, and the stops with one bus a day

To close, two stories you will want to tell someone.

The first bus of the day at Ginza-Rokuchōme (Ginza 6) turns up at, of all times, 20:02 at night. The stop sits on a routing used only during the evening, and all 15 of its daily departures are packed into the window from 8 p.m. to just before 10. Prime Ginza real estate, with a bus stop that opens for business only after dark.

At the opposite extreme, three stops along 両 28, namely 清新町健康サポートセンター前・清砂大橋西・西葛西駅南, get just one bus in an entire weekday. Miss it and the next is tomorrow, which makes them among the rarest stops in the city (rest assured, each has another stop nearby). It is a tiny, magnificent view hidden in everyday life, and a glimpse of how deep the world of buses goes.

The figures in this article come from our own analysis of the timetable as of August 2026. Actual operation can vary with road conditions and other factors.