First Hampshire in the Portsmouth and Fareham areas are improving their services from Monday. These are only affecting weekday timetables and only really improving the busier routes.
Marc Reddy, who is the Managing Director across First Hampshire and Dorset (so basically everything along the coast – from Portsmouth to Weymouth) has said a few times that there are finite resources that the company needs to focus to weekday services. So it not a surprise that any improvements are first going to be on this.
Of course, this is not to say that things will change when the Government threatens to shut the country down in just two weeks time. Whether Robert Peston is actually accurate in his theory in the Spectator we can only wait and see. As we put politics to one side though, let’s look at the changes afoot across Portsmouth, Fareham and Gosport.
Schools (& College) Changes
Something which did surprise me from the very start, South Downs dedicates bus services from the west re-started as public bus services. Now, I have never tried to get on them, although I did use the 7C a lot in the past when I lived in Waterlooville, but they are now going closed door.
This means that from Monday, the SD4 (Bishops Waltham & Fareham), SD5 (Gosport & Fareham) and SD7 (Southsea & Copner) services to South Downs College and it’s Havant campus; will now be for college students only.
The SD7 service in the afternoon also has a slight change in timetable, leaving the Crookhorn campus at 1640 instead of 1615. To be fair though, this would tie in nicely with the other services and suggests it was a typo.
Also focusing on South Downs College, there is a small change which removes the 1645 7c service from the college, presumably moving students onto the SD7 as a result.
Portsmouth Changes
Frequencies are changing on core services from Monday as well.
Services 1 and 3, which provide an inter-worked link from Fareham to Portsmouth, Fratton and Southsea is changing.
What is important is that the 10 Minute daytime frequency is not changing. Most buses appear to have changed a few minutes earlier or later than now though, so make sure you don’t miss the new times.
There are also more frequent buses up until around 9pm (the 1 is currently half-hourly from 7pm) and both services now have later buses up to
The new Service 1 PDF is here.
The new Service 3 PDF is here.
Eclipse Changes
Something that is definitely a benefit, especially from the trips I have taken on it, is that the Eclipse is almost back to full strength.
From 0930 to 1530, each Eclipse service is increasing from Every 12 Minutes to Every 10 Minutes. This means that from Fort Brockhurst and along the BRT bus lane there is a bus every 5 minutes.
There do not appear to be any significant timing changes other than this and the route still finishes earlier than it used with last services just after 2230 from each end.
Of course…
All this continues to depend on the fact that the Government seem to make their decisions with around 24 hours notice. Although bus operators are continuing to return services to normal, they can still withdraw them en-masse with just 72 hours notice.
As always, I will let you know as soon as I know. Please leave any thoughts below, I hope you are getting the benefit of this page, but you never tell me!