Free Bus Guide
No need to pay. Two routes between the train stations and across the city.
General Information
Map,
Buses run at these intervals (roughly),
daytime
10 minutes
after 7pm
30 minutes
Daily times (roughly),
Mon–Sat
7am–11pm
Sun and public holidays
10am–6pm
Quick directions
Piccadilly Station to…
Victoria Station
Blue ②
Castlefield
Pink ①
Middle Deansgate
Pink ① (Get off John Dalton Street)
Victoria Station to…
Piccadilly Station
Blue ②
Castlefield
No FreeBus. Use a bus/taxi/walk
Middle Deansgate
No FreeBus. Use a bus/taxi/walk
Castlefield to…
Beetham Tower/The Hilton (also Great Northern Warehouse, the Opera House, Science and Industry Museum)
Piccadilly Station
Pink ①
Victoria Station
No FreeBus. Use a bus/taxi/walk
Middle Deansgate
Pink ① (Get off John Dalton Street)
Middle Deansgate to…
John Rylands Library (also Forsyth music shop, Spinningfields, Manchester Crown Court and the People’s History Museum),
Piccadilly Station
Pink ①
Victoria Station
No FreeBus. Use a bus/taxi/walk
Castlefield
No FreeBus. Use a bus/taxi/walk
Notes
Information
In apps, the free buses are labelled as bus route ① and bus route ②. Unfortunately, for various technical reasons, smartphone apps rarely show free buses as an option.
If you want to try… Google Maps, or any other app that displays open transport data, can show FreeBuses. Or try Manchester’s unified Bee Transport app,
Good and bad
Good,
Free and frequent
Friendly staff (my experience)
Invaluable for those with limited mobility
Bad,
Not clear where to catch buses (better since Bee transport)
Buses look like other Bee buses, so not clear they are free
People who have lived here twenty years don’t know the service exists
Near‐impossible to find times on transport apps
Travelling cross‐city, for example from the Science and Industry Museum to Victoria Station, is too much trouble
A friend (able‐bodied) once said, “Why use FreeBus when I can walk from Piccadilly to Deansgate in twenty minutes? Take me that long to work out when the next bus is coming.” But you should consider the FreeBus—much of the city is covered, and they are friendly and easy to use.