Yellow Buses to Cease Trading

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Updated: Andrew Wickham (MD, morebus) confirmed that routes 18, 33 and 36 will also start running this weekend under contract to BCP Council.

Updated: at around 4pm today (Thursday) Yellow Buses confirm the last buses in service will depart before 6pm.

Following a week of speculation and talks, rumours and more; the announcement has come that Yellow Buses is to cease trading with immediate effect.

Yellow Buses had previously announced, as part of it’s notice from the administrators, that it was in talks with a larger bus group which have taken longer than planned. Although a name has been rumoured, a deal is not yet done and it is understood they are only interested in the coaching and engineering elements of the Yellow Buses business,

So it is with great sadness that Yellow Buses will cease as a bus network in Bournemouth as of 23:59 hours on Thursday 4th August.

morebus takes on some routes

With this announcement, Andrew Wickham has confirmed that morebus will start running replacement routes on some services from Saturday.

…for us, as the new routes mean we have vacancies for a number of different roles. Full details will be on the morebus website shortly.

— Andrew Wickham (@AndrewWickhamGo) August 3, 2022

The services that will be run are:

Routes 1/1b – Bournemouth to Christchurch ONLY
No longer serving Westbourne, Branksome and Poole

Route 1a – Bournemouth to Somerford ONLY
No longer serving Highcliffe and New Milton

Route 2 – Bournemouth to Castlepoint (now connects with route 4 as a through service)
No longer serving Castlepoint to Moordown

Route 4 – Bournemouth to Castlepoint (now connects with route 2 as a through service)
No longer serving Christchurch

Routes 5/5a – Bournemouth to Kinson

Routes 6/6a – Bournemouth to Kinson and the to Wimbourne or Bearwood

Route 737 – Bournemouth to Airport via Station, Winton, Moordown, Parley & Aviation Park. 

Route 18 – Bournemouth to Broadstone via Parkstone, Canford Heath & Waterloo

Route 33 – Bournemouth to Christchurch via East Cliff, Boscombe, Harewood Avenue, RB Hospital, Fishermans Walk, Broadway & Kings Avenue

Route 36 – Kinson to Talbot View via Anstey Road, Turbary Park Avenue, Wallisdown, University, Glenferness Avenue, Bournemouth & Bourne Valley

The following services will NOT run at this time, however contracted services 18, 33 and 36 may run in the future.

• 3/3x Bournemouth to Castlepoint/RH Hospital 
• 6h – RB Hospital to Wimborne via Castlepoint, Moordown & Ferndown
• 18 – Bournemouth to Broadstone via Parkstone, Canford Heath & Waterloo
• 33 – Bournemouth to Christchurch via East Cliff, Boscombe, Harewood Avenue, RB Hospital, Fishermans Walk, Broadway & Kings Avenue
• 36 – Kinson to Talbot View via Anstey Road, Turbary Park Avenue, Wallisdown, University, Glenferness Avenue, Bournemouth & Bourne Valley
• 727 – Boscombe to Airport via Southbourne, Christchurch & Fairmile

Yellow Buses tickets

morebus will offer some ticket acceptance. As it is quite important, this is copy and paste from their news item:

For the first seven days of us running these routes, as a good will gesture we will accept any valid yellow bus period pass tickets on all of our services within zone A until Saturday 13 August.  Please make sure you show our drivers your pass with the expiry date clearly displayed.

At more bus we have three simple fare zones, zone A, zone B and Zone C.  See our map which clearly marks the boundary points.  You can of course use all existing morebus routes that fall into each area as well.

Source: morebus website

It is truly a shame….

…. that a company with it’s founding in Bournemouth Council as the Corporation, 120 years of background and all the way through trolley buses to the modern day of apps and contactless.

I hope many of the Yellow Buses drivers remain in the industry. Andrew Wickham has extended his £2000 golden hello to them for a few weeks and I hope many of them move across.

A stalwart of the bus operators, albeit via Transdev, RAPT and a management buyout, is now gone.