Bank Holiday Monday

With the imminence of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the second; these are the bus services that have already been announced by local bus operators to run on Bank Holiday Monday 19th September:

First Bus

Across First Solent, City Red and First Wessex; there will be a full Sunday timetable. First Southampton’s copy of the new item is here.

GoAhead Group

Bluestar, more, Salisbury Reds and Southern Vectis will all be running a Sunday service, except no service between 10am and 1pm to allow bus drivers the chance to view the funeral.

NOW

At the time of writing, (14:30 15/09/2022) the online planners, despite the news articles at Bluestar, morebus promoting that online planners are available, it appears that they are advertising a normal Sunday service; uploaded to the system.

I would presume that this is a GoAhead back-end error, as bus services can be searched by day on the online planners.

I expect no-one has remembered to take cancelled services out of the loop.

I have been contacted by email and asked to clarify that the Sunday timetable (without any amendments) was uploaded to the GoAhead website back-end with the intention of removing  cancelled services at a later juncture.

I am happy to point out that we are now 2 days away from the Bank Holiday and many mourners may now have made plans using the specially advertised planners. The online planners still show a full Sunday service.

• Southern Vectis now have a long list of alterations listed as a service update but do not appear in the planners or on the news article. It also points out that the Breezer services and Shanklin Shuttle also will not run any services on Monday.
• Bluestar now have a generic message which reads:
  “All services should reach their terminus point (or the city centre/Eastleigh bus station/Highfield Interchange, if they are through-services) between 10-10:30am. With services beginning again at 1pm. Please note there may be some disruption for up to an hour as we position buses where they need to be. Apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.“
  

Although I applaud GoAhead’s service decision, a decision maker should have executed it better. Even now, people can go online and still expect a full Sunday service in two days time.

Stagecoach South

Stagecoach South have announced they will be running a Sunday service across the whole of the network, with the exception of Hoverbus which will be a Monday service.

Southampton Mini Link

Although it is not mentioned on their website, Southampton Mini Link have announced that they will run the full Sunday 13a on the Bank Holiday, driven by the management team. Service C will therefore not be running.

XelaGroup

Xelabus and Yellow Coaches have not announced anything yet. I assume that they will be running a Bank Holiday service, which I think is nothing.

Of course, it would be useful to actually say something. Especially as people may want to be heading somewhere to join with others to watch the event.