How do I get a taxi from Bristol Temple Meads?

These are whole-car prices, settled when you book and not recalculated at the end of the journey.

Saloon prices, for up to 4 passengers with 2 large cases. Estates, 6-seater MPVs and 8-seater minibuses carry more and cost more; the luggage and vehicle sizes page sets out which is which, and the quote form prices your actual trip.

Your driver waits in the main pickup and drop-off area at the station, and confirms it with you when you book.

The forecourt is a working, busy space shared by the rank, buses, set-down traffic and the station's own vehicles, so the driver tells you exactly where to walk to rather than leaving you scanning it. The main way out is through the ticket barriers, left, and out of the main doors onto the forecourt. There is also a side entrance through the Midland Shed from the Friary, which is often the quieter option. If you need step-free help, there are lifts to every platform and the Passenger Assist meeting point is in the station reception booking hall. If you need a wheelchair accessible vehicle, book well ahead and read what we can and cannot offer on the accessible taxi page first.

If somebody is driving you instead, there is an APCOA car park on site, open around the clock, with separate indoor and outdoor tariffs and cheaper rates at weekends. Check their current price rather than a figure quoted second hand. Useful if someone is waiting out a delayed train rather than dropping and going.

Tell us straight away, and the driver moves with the train.

Two things we need from you, and they are the whole arrangement. Tell us which train you are on when you book, and tell us straight away if it is delayed. Your driver is timed to arrive when the train actually arrives, so a delay you do not pass on is a car sitting there for a train that is not coming.

Worth being straight about the numbers: a train pickup includes five minutes' free waiting, where our airport work includes flight tracking and 45 minutes. Five minutes is enough to walk off a platform and out of the building, and it is not enough to absorb a late train. That is the whole reason we ask you to tell us.

Yes, on the station forecourt, and we are not on it.

The rank is for hackney carriages licensed by the city council, which can be hailed and can queue for walk-up work. We hold a private hire licence, the minicab side of the trade, which carries a different rule: every journey has to be booked in advance. We cannot sit on the rank and we cannot be flagged down. If you have just got off a train with no booking and there is a car on the rank, take it, and we would rather say that than have you looking around the forecourt for us.

Where booking ahead earns its place is everything you cannot control from the platform. The rank gives you whatever vehicle is next in the queue at whatever the meter reads, and after several trains land together that queue is a queue. A booked car is a known price, a known size and a known time, held for you. The fuller comparison is on the rank versus pre-booking page.

A taxi from Temple Meads to Bristol Airport is £39 fixed; the A1 Flyer bus from the station is £9.50 single. If you are on your own with a small bag, take the bus.

The A1 Flyer runs from Temple Meads to the terminal for £9.50 single, 30 to 40 minutes, around the clock. There is no railway station at Bristol Airport, so the bus is the public transport answer, and from this station in particular it is a good one. We are not going to pretend a £39 car beats a £9.50 bus for one person travelling light.

The arithmetic turns at the second and third passenger. Two people splitting £39 pay £19.50 each. Four people pay £9.75 each, which is 25p more than the bus fare, for a car that leaves when you do, takes your cases in the boot and stops at your terminal door. Add a buggy, a child, or four suitcases between you and the comparison stops being close at all.

The other thing worth weighing is what a missed connection costs. The Flyer is frequent and reliable, but it is a bus in city traffic with a fixed route, and if your flight is the first one out of Bristol the margin for a bad run is thin. Bus fare and times: firstbus.co.uk, checked September 2026.

The further you are going, the worse the train gets at it.

Heathrow is the clearest case. There is no direct train from Bristol: you change at Reading and buy a second ticket for the last leg, carrying your own luggage through the change, and the whole thing unravels if the first train is late. £179 fixed is one car from this forecourt to your terminal kerb, and it costs the same whether the M4 is clear or crawling. Gatwick at £229 is the same argument with more motorway in it.

Cruise passengers are the other group the railway serves badly. Southampton at £159 means a boot full of large cases going straight to the terminal, against a rail route with changes and a taxi at the far end anyway. The full set of runs is on the long-distance index.

Temple Meads is Bristol's main station and the hub everything else connects through.

From autumn 2026 it also becomes the city end of the reopened Henbury line, bringing in the new Bristol Brabazon station and Ashley Down on an hourly service, so a Brabazon passenger heading for the airport changes here for the Flyer.

For fares to other parts of the city, the fares by area page lists the airport run postcode by postcode, and there is every Bristol station compared side by side.

Tick Taxi is an independent private hire operator licensed by South Gloucestershire Council and Bristol City Council. All pickups are pre-booked. We are not affiliated with Great Western Railway, Network Rail or the station, and nothing here is an official station service. Station facilities from GWR, checked September 2026.