Improved but still poor.

Onboard information

This is somewhat of a joke. FirstBus is very proud of their announcements and displays, but they're only on selected routes. And on those routes, the screens are either missing, off, or frozen 80% of the time. The announcements are mumbled and completely inaudible when the bus is moving or anyone is talking. And what's with it randomly blurting out random place names? You're not in Beeston! This route goes nowhere near Beeston! Not to mention the farce of at least three stops in a row being given as simply "Woodhouse" on buses heading out of the city towards Headingley!

Really, what would be nice is the system in London, where the operator is fined if the system doesn't work, the announcements are loud and annunciated, the stop names are the actual stops, and the driver can play auto announcements for diversions, stop closures and any other info needed. It would be nice to get a heads-up before going on a magical mystery tour on diversion!

Departure info

Unusable. Why? It seems to think a bus can get from the Headrow to Hyde Park in four minutes. I suppose you could, but you would have to accept a number of fatalities! An algorithm which uses the traffic conditions and the time it took previous buses to traverse the section to make a realistic time is needed. As it is, you have to get up the live bus map and calculate in your head using your local knowledge. The apps and the screens never agree, and cancellation info doesn't reach the FirstBus and thirdparty apps.

Fares

It costs me more to get to Ilkley than it does to the Minster, just because I have to change buses. There should be no cost penalty to changing buses, particularly between operators. It is impossible to find single and return fares online unless you grab a passing transport planner to exist (yes, I really had to do this!) The process to pay with contactless is very slow. The person asks for the fare and the driver has to select it. The person then touches their card - BUT WAIT! This interferes with the machine (illogically), and resets the transaction in some circumstances. The driver must then start again. This time the passenger must wait for the driver to manually select card payment, then hold the card on the reader until it is detected, then wait for the machine to load and then print the ticket. This ought to be streamlined to reduce dwell times, otherwise you're not really getting the benefit of ditching cash.

Frequencies

Low frequencies make most trips unnecessarily difficult. Unless the frequencies are every 15 mins on each main route (not really that much to ask), then trying to marry up the connections is nigh on impossible, and a small delay on the first bus could lead to up to an hour's delay. And cancellations matter much more when one cancellation leads to a 2 hour gap, rather than a 20 minute gap. Frequencies need to be upped to make the bus a feasible mode.

Radial routes

I spend far too much of my life changing buses in the city centre. The lack of orbital routes means even getting to the next suburb down takes an inordinate amount of time.