Guides › Regional networks

Translink — Northern Ireland

Publicly owned buses, coaches and trains across Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is different from the rest of the UK: its bus and rail services are publicly owned and operated by Translink, with no competing commercial operators. Metro runs Belfast city services, Glider provides bus rapid transit across the city, Ulsterbus covers the rest of the province, and Goldline runs express routes between towns.

What to expect

A single integrated network with one fare system, which makes journey planning simpler than in Great Britain. Glider services use distinctive articulated vehicles with off-bus ticketing on core Belfast corridors.

Tickets

The iLink smartcard covers travel across Translink bus and rail by zone, and is usually the best value for anything beyond a single journey.

Tracking Northern Ireland buses

Translink does not publish an open realtime vehicle feed, so our Northern Ireland coverage is timetable-only. Ulsterbus and Goldline timetables and stops are loaded from Open Data NI.

See Translink — Northern Ireland on the live map How our tracking works