First Wessex, the Dorset arm of First Hampshire & Dorset, have announced more buses across Weymouth from next weekend.
The changes are taking effect on 05 October. The COVID Page suggests that these are only minor changes to the timetable but let’s delve into the detail across the seaside town.
Weymouth Town Services
Service 1 appears to lose some of it’s dedicated schools duplicates for Portland and the Weymouth College service is retimed a few minutes earlier, presumably due to traffic.
What is interesting here is that services will still continue until after Midnight, where other operators are curtailing services in line with pub curfews.
More importantly though, under “minor changes” the Sunday service is being reduced from Every 20 Minutes to Every 30 Minutes. Personally, I would not call that minor, nor is it explicitly mentioned on the Dorset COVID page.
Service 2 gains an extra early bus weekdays, leaving outbound towards Littlemoor at 0540
Service 8 gains a Schools Special on weekdays. The duplicate bus leaves the town’s Debenhams bus stop at 0757.
Service 10 also has some changes to it’s school services. Where the buses amend to create trips for Thomas Hardye School, the public workings that start and finish around Dorchester instead of Poundbury have been fine tuned.
It’s also worth noting that the evening services on every day are retimed, including a later last bus.
Jurassic Coaster services
The Jurassic Coasters have also received their monthly update to the timetable, where it appears that a number of duplicates run for Woodroffe School has reduced. It could be that they will run unadvertised or as the dedicated A3 service which mimics the X53. Otherwise there is nothing new to note.
Similarly the X54 appears to be losing it’s morning duplicate for Purbeck School, otherwise the Winter timetable continues.
Changes seem to be less frequent now
Yes, most of the service changes in Weymouth this weekend are going to be minor. It would have been nice if the Dorset marketing team were to highlight the changes to Sunday services to Portland, but it’s a very picky suggestion.
What I do like is that First Hampshire & Dorset have actually kept things neat and tidy on their update pages at the moment. I have mentioned a few times, right across the companies, that update pages got messy.
The service changes are now much less frequent though. For a while you were seeing service increases on an almost weekly basis, again right across the different bus operators, but now things are settling down for the new normal, I am not expecting as many big timetable recasts until the next wave of COVID hits.