Bus service registrations are starting to appear for April and May at First Wessex, now heading back to the 56 (or is it 70) day service registration requirements. Now, further to a tweet I put out a week ago, some registration chages are being made in an effort to ‘tidy up’ company balance sheets; so these changes might be changes, or just changes to the changes that were not changed.
For the avoidance of doubt – No, the 22 running between Farlington Sainsburys and Cosham is not cancelled, just a previous registration for it from a time gone by.
Coasters in April
There is a change advertised for 10 April in respect of the X53.
Over the winter period, Sunday services were reduced to two round trips between Weymouth, and Lyme Regis. This is being extended to three round trips from Weymouth to Axminster, and an evening trip from Weymouth to Bridport. The new timetable can be found here.
Although not entirely familiar with the Weymouth depot and Bridport outstation workings, that would suggest to me that this allows vehicle rotation to bring buses back to Weymouth for maintenance. the direct route is not overly long for a quick run out of service though… except the price of fuel.
There is also a change registered for 22nd April in respect to the X52 and X54.
The route on the registration specifically shows Weymouth to Lulworth, Wool Railway Station and Monkey World. This would suggest that this will be the seasonal uplift and the start of the X52 and/or X54 low summer season.
Update: High Season starts 29th May
There were further registrations for the X52 and the X54 for 29 May with remarks that the summer frequency will be introduced. So it may even be that this is the date of the X52 altogether.
Town Services in May
There are also changes registered for 29th May for routes 1 and 4.
You would hope, that this is a glimmer of hope, to suggest staff numbers might be starting to look better. The timetable for the route to Preston was cut back to every half an hour in January, although it could also be the introduction of a Sunday service for the summer.