It’s been a month since I have wanted to tell you something. I don’t know where the month went, between Easter, home-schooling (again) and not being able to go out much. Something brand new has been announced from Megabus though that might give you the urge to go exploring this Summer.
Teaming up with Yellow Buses, Megabus will be running a new service from the South Coast to London from Friday 21 May. This adds to their south coast services which already go between London and Portsmouth, and from Portsmouth to Oxford and the North.
Five Times a Day – Seven Days a Week
Looking at the Megabus website can be a laborious task. A bit like National Express, Flixbus and others, there is no actual timetable published. A look at the services that you can book though would suggest that there are 5 round trips a day:
- One service starting in Weymouth
- All services calling at Poole, Bournemouth, Heathrow and London
- Some services calling in Southampton
Although the target market is for those in the Dorset area travelling to London, with timings for both commuters and evening West End patrons alike; there is a good chance of some contra-flow summer traffic for Londoners to hit Bournemouth Beach for the day and still have time to get home!
You also get local connections
As part of the arrangement for Yellow Buses, through travel on to local services is also possible. It will be interesting how they will achieve this, is it the case that displaying your Megabus ticket will get you a free connection to the Interchange or Poole Bus Station?
Not the National Express
With National Express buying Fareham based operator Lucketts Travel, and then taking the Go South Coast (morebus and Bluestar) operations of National Express contracts back in house; Yellow Buses might see this an opportunity of having local drivers running London coaches.
Indeed with the summer uplift of services and holidaymakers coming out of the proverbial woodwork, Yellow Buses announced in March that they lost £2.65million (pre-tax) in 15 months – maybe this is a way to at least claw some money back without resorting to being a standby operator for rail replacement work. It is worth pointing out though that for the financial year 20-21 they are planning to break even.
Megabus – Going further.
Timing the coaches just right though, the introduction of Megabus to Bournemouth might help some beat the cost of the train further afield.
While CrossCountry Trains have only a limited timetable from Bournemouth, even in the new May timetable; this pre-booked service might help those going to Oxford or beyond, connecting with the daily service from Portsmouth to Oxford, Coventry and Manchester.
Only time will tell though, whether the service will survive beyond the end of the Summer Holidays.