Xelabus confirmed over Christmas that when the schools went back last week – okay, when schools did a day in school last week – that they would not be returning to anything near a normal service. When the new national lockdown was announced, they continued to run a significantly reduced service and they have reduced it further going into week 2.
As a reminder you must only use public transport for essential purposes, and reduce use of public transport where you can. You remember hands – face – space and that due to the nature of the pandemic, rules and services could change at very short notice.
The Website can be …. tempremental
If you are stuck seeing details of the Xelabus website on the Xelabus website, then do persevere. I have noticed that there is not always the best at working when requested and I am not alone in seeing it completely fall over sometimes.
I am surprised at that, on the simple reasoning that they do accept certain card payments via their website. That does usually need a level of service resilience, which does not always come across.
Anyway – persevere.
But don’t rely on it
Edited again: 0700 22nd February to Add
In the time between 11th January and 22nd February benefit of the doubt was given to Xelabus to let them update their timetables.
It appears that Xelabus has no intention of updating the timetables on display on their website, although they appear to have completed a print run of the current timetables.
Whether they are accurate, well if I ever have need to travel on the 1520 X10 out of Southampton during this current Lockdown, we will find out. [Yes, that is a bus that is apparently not running, but still advertised.]
Edited: 2000 Monday 11th January to Add
Some changes if not all are now on the Xelabus website. I won’t say that the offering works, because you have to take the timetable that is downloaded and then compare it to the news item about changes to services.
Even after a small interaction with Xelabus via Twitter today, there seemed to be little concern with still advertising suspended services. It should not be that hard to edit a PDF for uploading on the website, even if BusTimes could not be recalled from the printers in time.
So although the rest of this section is not removed, some things have been resolved.
The data on the website is wrong anyway.
Many of the timetables on the Xelabus website are completely wrong. There is an X8 service advertised in the timetables section, which unless you go to the News section you will find is not actually running.
You will also see that the timetables section of the website is advertising double the number of buses running to Hiltingbury than is actually running, a full service X21 which is not even mentioned in the News section, and scant actual cohesive information.
You would expect, with many travellers now having an irregular, essential travel only usage, that accurate information would be essential!
It’s also worth noting that the “Open Data” service provided to the Department for Transport has not been updated either, which is a poor show and would suggest something is going wrong in the back office.
Service Levels
This is the level of service that Xelabus will run from Monday 11th January. It should be noted that schools are largely closed, which means you should contact your school or Xelabus if you need more information. Due to the low numbers of key worker children, most schools closed-contract services across all companies are suspended.
Bitterne Hoppa – Normal service on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Service X4 – Hedge End and Eastleigh
SATURDAY service Monday to Saturday
NO SERVICE Sunday
Service X6/X7/X7a – Hiltingbury and Eastleigh
Current reduced service (Every 4 hours on each direction) Monday to Friday
Normal Saturday service
NO SERVICE Sunday
Service X8 – Boyatt Wood Shuttle
NO SERVICE on this Sundays only route
Service X9/X10 –
Current reduced service (Every 2 Hours) Monday to Friday
Normal Saturday service
Service X11 –
Normal Service Monday to Friday
Service X12 –
Normal Service Tuesday and Friday
Service X15 –
Normal Service Monday to Friday
Service X17 –
Normal Service on Wednesdays