markcurran.co.uk: Corfu City Bus

In June 2018 I went to Corfu for the weekend (primarily to then fly to Thessaloniki via Athens and back, long story but it made perfect sense). Not being a fan of taxis I sought to make use of the local bus service for my travels between the airport at Corfu and the town on Kanoni, a couple of miles away. And sometimes you come across a nice little operation with well presented buses (in no way influenced by their choice of bus) and think 'I want to write about that...'....so here goes!

The hourly bus service between Corfu Airport and Corfu Town gets prominent placing out the front of the airport terminal. On the other side of the road are taxi and the line up of coaches taking package holiday tourists from airport to their accommodation.

However I didn't initially use the airport bus but walked to the kinda-nearby route 2 for a quicker link to my booked accommodation in Kanoni town. This is the stop.

An assortment of secondhand Mercedes 405s make up the majority of the Corfu City Bus fleet. Still a fine vehicle! This short wheel base version (one of four in the fleet according to their website) is approaching the southern terminus of route 2, where it completes the hairpin turn and then reverses on to the stop.

A pair of Mercedes 405s with slightly differing interpretations of the wavy front colourscheme stand in Corfu town.

Vehicle interiors are getting a little scruffy but all the important things like air conditioning work well.

However the second hand nature of the buses is evident, such as emergency instructions in German. Many buses carried internal fleet numbers and cab signage from their previous operator.

Route maps are displayed inside the buses. However they are not full route maps: the best interpretation is that they are routes of interest to tourists.

If bus tickets are bought in advance, from a local or shop or the machines at stops in Corfu town, they cost 1.20 Euros. They are validated for each trip by being dipped in to the driver's ticket machine. However if they are bought from the driver they are 1.70 Euros. I received both pre-printed tickets which needed validating, and the more modern receipt type ticket from drivers.

Day tickets for Corfu City Bus are also available. They allow for a discount on the open top tours of the Corfu town area; I assume the open top service and Corfu City Bus are related operators.

If you take up the option of the open top bus tour there are two Dennis Tridents in use with the Corfu City Tour, which according to the Open Top Bus Site were formerly in use in San Sebastian, Spain.

There are also three of these IndCar contraptions for open top tours.

Timetable information is generally very simply presented and easy to follow. It is not hot on intermediate timing points though. Corfu town square the effectively the blue bus station, and longer distance coaches round the island of Corfu run from the green bus station, a little way out of town.

The bin men were revolting! And accordingto on-line forums their strike is either an annual or permanent feature of life on Corfu. There were piles of rubbish everywhere.