Buses in Turku
In mid-2025 the city of Turku decided to reform their bus network and introduce frequent trunk lines, supported by helper and local lines that feed into the trunk network. After a year in operation, how does it fare against the old system?
The overview
The trunk lines are numbered 1 to 10 (with letter variants) and operate with high frequency (10 minutes or less between the departures). Then there are supplementary lines that go through the city centre (20 to 29) or not (30 to 39), service lines (40 to 49), local Hirvensalo lines (50 to 59), school and work lines (60 to 99), various other lines that usually go outside Turku proper (three-digit numbers) and suburban lines (letter + digit). The frequency of those lines varies from 10 minutes (line 39) to 60 minutes (24) to once per day one way (98).
Quite a few lines have a letter indicator to mark a shortened route or a variant. Mostly. I have tried to find some logic behind the numbering, but I failed miserably. For example, line 6/6A operates between Naantali and Turku, but then diverts to Lieto and Kaarina (which are not even close), but lines 24/25 are separate, even though majority of their route is exactly the same and differs only in the last few kilometres (25 also has a variant 25A).
Turku has not figured out yet how to do proper stop timetables, so all departures are valid only for the first stop on the route, and then it is guesswork for most of the time. That is also because all stops are request stops and it is allowed to board the bus using front door only - which naturally leads to massive delays on popular runs.
The ticketing system is simple: 2 hour ticket with the right to transfer, 1-7 day ticket or a 30+ day card. Prices for the single ticket vary depending on the method of payment, with cash being the most expensive (4.50€) and value card being the least (2.60€). Honesly speaking, for the quality of transport offered by Turku, the tickets are way too expensive. Then again, public transport in Finland is generally expensive and unless you use a monthly card, it is not a viable alternative to driving.
Pros
If you happen to travel often, and start and end the travel near a trunk line (or line 39), the changes are positive. The buses run frequently, cover most of the important parts of the city and there is no need to even look at the timetable. The operating hours also got extended to include early night departures every day (because night service operates only on Friday/Saturday and Saturday/Sunday nights), which is just great.
However, this is it.
Cons
If you happen to travel to a place outside of the trunk lines reach, you are out of luck. The service level in a few places actually dropped with the reform - the island of Hirvensalo is an example. While in general the service is pretty good on the main road (a bus every 5 minutes), anywhere else than the main road now needs to transfer (usually without the increase in frequency).
Another issue is the need to transfer between buses. In general I am in favour of transfers, as frequency is more important that direct connections - but the infrastructure in a few places is very far from ideal and makes life difficult. A great example of that is line 39, a much needed connection across all of Itainen Pitkakatu towards the train station in Kupittaa. This line crosses path with a number of trunk lines heading to the city centre, however there is no transfer infrastructure: the stops are far away from one another and require crossing more than one street to reach. Furthermore, despite being near Kupittaa train station, the bus stop is surprisingly far away from the platforms and is not even named to indicate the proximity of the station.
There is a big problem with reliability, especially on lines with low frequency. A missed bus is not a problem with runs every 5 minutes, but it is a problem for 30- or 60-minute intervals. And unfortunately, the buses tend to either not show or arrive massively delayed, especially in the rush hours. Poor road maintenance in winter adds to that, as does a lack of variety in the fleet (the vast majority of buses are 15 m, even in places where there is clearly no need for it).
Lastly, the city is wasting money on empty runs, and this is present on almost every line in the city. Very often the bus reaches its terminus and returns to the depot without taking passengers en route - similarly, in the early morning buses go towards their starting points without being available to the general public. A great example of this is line school line 72 that runs from Hirvensalo to Kakskerta. The line is operated with one bus on majority of its runs, yet every run is made in one direction only. After reaching Kakskerta the bus simply returns to Hirvensalo, even though Kakskerta is serviced only once per hour and a bus that takes people to a place with 5-minute service would be of great help.
Conclusions
The effects of the bus reform in Turku are a mixed bag, but all in all are rather negative. As pretty much everything that happens in Turku, the idea is great, but the execution sucks.
