St Andrews to Dundee - bus or taxi?

Your two options are either the bus or a taxi. There is a 99 bus every 20 minutes so if one bus won't take you another one might. It stops in front of the Dundee Rail Station.

If you have to take a taxi, this is a popular route for taxis as many golfers stay in Dundee to play at St. Andrews. It's about 14 miles.

The biggest taxi company in Dundee is CityCabs 450 450 but there might be a local company in St. Andrews. Ask at your hotel.

This is great info- thanks! I suppose we would wait until we are boarding to pay and that the driver wouldn’t let us pay if we are not allowed to board. I was wondering about paying in advance to book a seat, but it seems the Stagecoach lines don’t usually work that way.
Thanks again- I’ll keep handy the taxi info you provided.

The #99 is just a city bus line, so certainly no advance booking.

What you are quoting is just a standard clause. I have never witnessed or even heard of anyone being refused boarding any bus (Stagecoach or otherwise) anywhere in the UK for having too much luggage.
The #99 is also a rail link bus to Leuchars Railway Station (so they are used to luggage) and runs every 8 minutes with a full sized bus (every 20 minutes given above is not correct unless travelling before 7am or after 7pm) . Thus this is almost an invisible risk.
It takes 17 minutes longer but there is also another bus line from St Andrews to Dundee Rail Station -the 42A at 59 minutes past each hour.

The bus fare is £5.70 each (so £22.80 for the 4). The journey is 14 miles so a taxi will be around £40.

The more significant thing is that it is 3/4 mile from the PI to the bus station, so you either walk or would need another bus anyway. If you take a bus down to town the overall fare each rises to £8.50 (North East Fife Day Rider) at which stage the difference between bus and taxi fare is negligible.

There is no reason to worry about luggage on the bus. I've taken bus 99 between St Andrews and Leuchars several times and there has always been plenty of space for luggage.

Ok, thank you all! This is very helpful- the exact type of info I need to make the best decision. I appreciate your input!

Where is your final destination that day? Where are you going from the Dundee Rail Station? Do you already have your train tickets?

CityCabs also has an app that you can download, register on and then order a cab.

My wife and I took the bus between Dundee and St Andrews last year. It is quite the "Mr. Tood's Wild Ride". The driver showed no fear. It is also nice being up high to see the landscape around d you.
The buses are just fine to take in my opinion.

In response to the questions above: our ultimate destination from St Andrews will be Inverness. We will pick up our luggage at Premier Inn no earlier than 1pm and then head out of town. We won’t have a car but I’m now realizing that both a bus all the way to Inverness and a train would take about the same amount of time.
If we wanted to avoid any transfers, it seems we could get ourselves to Perth for a train ride directly to Inverness. But of course we would need to figure out how to get to Perth in the first place.
I appreciate all your feedback! Very helpful. It’s good to know that a city bus to Dundee would likely be an option, even with luggage.

To Perth, by train or bus you would have to go St Andrews to Dundee, Dundee to Perth, Perth to Inverness.
On the bus you change at Perth Broxden Park and Ride normally, but the bus from there to Inverness is every 30 minutes. It's hourly from Dundee to Broxden.

You are making this far more complicated than it needs to be. It you want to travel from St Andrews to Inverness, just go to www.scotrail.co.uk and look for tickets from Leuchars to Inverness and you'll see the options. I've travelled from St Andrews to Inverness once and it was easy with the bus the Leuchars and then a change in Ladybank, but there are other options and you'll see them all on Scotrail's site.

Badger has it right. Look at Scotrail.

Are you by any chance using Rome2Rio? If you are, don't. We can tell you they make lots of mistakes.

As an example, the instructions they give for transfering buses in Dundee are ridiculous. (I know Dundee. I spent four months there last year.)

For comfort, ease of transfer, and less stress with a family, take the train. You have numerous options.

As Scotrail shows you there is no train from Ladybank direct to Inverness now, whatever anyone has used in the past. You always change again at Perth- sometimes with a few minutes between trains, sometimes with about 45 minutes between trains.
So any which way via Dundee or Ladybank a route via Perth is one bus and two trains via Dundee or 3 trains via Ladybank.

And in fact sometimes the fastest route is via Aberdeen- train Leuchars to Aberdeen, then train Aberdeen to Inverness. Travel time is almost identical to via Perth. It is also an easier interchange at Aberdeen than at Perth- Aberdeen is normally at opposite ends of the same long platform.

In my experience from a number of times on the route, if an inbound train to Aberdeen is late, then within reason the Inverness train is held as it only runs every two hours.

And, inconveniently, the bus IS as fast as the train, wherever you got the information from. Depending on the train it is either/or by a few minutes.