Great Western Coffee Shop

"I was taught it's better to be ten minutes early than 1 minute late" says a Facebook post that's going the rounds.   Hmmm - depends if you're a person or a bus!

It's not always true even of people. Turn up 10 minutes early for a party?

Always seems to me that the arrival times of buses and trains must form some sort of normal distribution or bell curve. The real arrival times have an element of scatter around the intended arrival time, and given that running early should be out of the question that means that the average arrival time has to be a bit later than the published time.

Or to put it simply: most trains have to be late, because otherwise too many would run early.

I think that you are mixing up arrival time and departure time. Whilst it acceptable for a train or bus to arrive ealy, it should not depart until the booked time. As most schedules have some form of recovery time built in given a clear run they are likely to arrive early.

 

In my view, early departure of a train or bus is fine PROVIDED THAT it is part of a very frequent service.
If a passenger arrives at the station or bus stop at say 11-00 I doubt that they care if the service used is the 11-03 running on time, or the 11-07 departing a few minutes early.

This is reflected in the published timetables for busy bus routes in London, these give actual times of the first few and last few services, together with the wording "and then every few minutes"

Less frequent services should not depart early, someone arriving at 11-01 for the 11-03 service will be inconvenienced if it had departed at 11-00, and if it is 30 minutes or more until the next one.