bus spotting

{{Short description|Hobby}}

{{Multiple issues|

{{Original research|date=August 2019}}

{{Expand Japanese|date=March 2023}}

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{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}

File:Ikarus-Zemun IK160P.jpg

Bus spotting is the interest and activity of watching, photographing and tracking buses throughout their working service lives within bus companies. A person who engages in these activities is known as a bus spotter, bus fan, bus nut (colloquial British English) or bus enthusiast.{{cite book|author=Nathan Belofsky|title=The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities: Pizza Police, Illicit Fishbowls, and Other Anomalies of the Law That Make Us All Unsuspecting Criminals|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zff7aLA3toMC&pg=PT97|date=3 August 2010|publisher=Penguin Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-101-18896-5|page=97}}

There are many enthusiasts of the bus and coach industry across the globe. Like train and aircraft spotters, bus spotters activities include monitoring bus route allocations, sharing knowledge about buses and taking pictures of buses.{{Cite web| title = Forget selfies and One Direction, this teenager is a bus spotter| last = McCarthy | first = James| work = WalesOnline| date = 4 July 2015| accessdate = 30 August 2017| url = http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/forget-selfies-listening-one-direction-9586170}}{{cite book|author1=Hermann H. Field|author2=Hermann Field|author3=Kate Field|title=Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YBIyiXMu0uUC&pg=PA275|year=2002|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=978-0-8047-4431-7|page=275}} Some may be so keen that they might track a vehicle through its life, knowing for example which fleet numbers it has carried with different owners and when mechanical parts or interior fittings were renewed.{{Citation needed|date=March 2023|reason=Is there a source that this might be the case for some "bus spotters"?}}

Since bus spotting involves urban mass transit, it often goes hand in hand with metrophily. Such enthusiasts can be known as "transit fans".

There are a number of magazines aimed at bus enthusiasts and spotters, e.g. Buses Magazine.