It’s a busy week if you are using the buses. Every bus operator is changing services to tie in with the return of the schools and colleges. First Solent have some additional changes, so we will cover as much as we can, it also means that we need to split down our coverage to each of the three.
The New Advice
The Government advice will move from Stay at Home to Stay Local on the same day, so there are a few things to remember:
- All schools & colleges re-open. Universities re-open for practical courses only.
- Childcare and children’s supervised activities can resume to support working parents.
- People can leave home for recreation or exercise with one person from outside their household, in addition to as a household or with your support bubble.
- Care home residents will be allowed one regular visitor.
Changes from 8th March
Changes are happening to most bus services working in the Gosport and Fareham area:
- Services 1 and 3 – which provide an interworked service between Fareham, Cosham, Portsmouth and Southsea; will resume a bus every 10 minutes on weekdays, which was only stopped a few weeks ago.
- The Eclipse E1 & E2 services will return to an 8 minute peak time service and a 10 minute service off-peak on weekdays (16 minute and 20 minute frequencies on each route)
- Service 9 & 9A will return to a bus every 20 minutes (every 40 minutes on each route through Rowner).
- Service X4 & X5 will return to a half-hourly bus on each route (4 buses an hour Fareham to Southampton) with additional schools duplicates
There are also changes to some Portsmouth City bus services:
- Service 13 will have an extra bus for Portsmouth College students on schooldays only
- Schools services 7A and 7C will resume for Oaklands and South Downs. There will also be a schools duplicate service on The Star 7 from Wecock Farm to Cosham.
The schools contracts for South Downs College and the Havant College campus will also resume on the same day.
From Monday 15th March
Due to a request from Hampshire County Council, presumably as the railway bridge has now been strengthened, service 20 will resume it’s old route; Fareham – Funtley – Knowle Village.