Changes at Bluestar in September

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There are a few timetable changes coming in at Bluestar from 3rd September. Of course, this should be tied in with the schools restarting so you should check times of school buses and any that may divert on a schoolday where they did not previously.

Additional details were added 21:30 – 29 July.

Eastleigh

The Bus Station in Eastleigh town centre is due to be closed for cycleway works and buses will depart during most of September from alternative stops.

Now – this was put off from July, when Bluestar put out this alternative stop map for services. This may still be the case and I have not seen any announcement yet to whether this will change. We also have services 23 and 24 to consider, which are being advertised as running from “Eastleigh, Coach Stop” but I am not 100% sure where that is which is between the bus station and the Romsey Road Car Park.

So I won’t mention these temporary diversions below, but follow Bluestar on Twitter ( or is it ElonX now ? ) as they are pretty good at publicising these things nearer the time.

Bluestar 2 for Eastleigh & Fair Oak

Additional schools trips are being introduced between Southampton and Eastleigh in the mornings, presumably for Barton Peveril College and to back-up the dedicated college service changes from September.

Other minor changes, such as the last 0020 out of Southampton will be 0030, and the 1950 Southampton to Eastleigh now runs to Fair Oak (but then goes out of service rather than comes back to Eastleigh).

Bluestar 5 for Romsey & Boyatt Wood

Apart from minor changes up to five minutes:

• Some Barton Peveril College services are retimed; and additional 605 bus will run from Romsey in the mornings. The 1415 Eastleigh to Romsey College Day service will be replaced by a service 624.
• An additional bus will duplicate the 1605 from Eastleigh as well.
• The 00:10 from Romsey to Eastleigh will be withdrawn due to low patronage.

Cross-City 7 Lordshill – City – Sholing

Updated to include new Route Change: buses through Shirley towards Sholing will run directly via Shirley, calling near to the Wilko store rather than outside The Windsor Castle.

Some minor changes to the timetable in the mornings and evenings, but also:

• The 1815 (1805 Saturdays) Lordshill to City will now run through to Sholing (and terminate there)
• The 1905 (Monday to Saturday) which terminates at Sholing will now run back in service to the City as well (there is currently a two hour gap)
• An additional Sunday evening trip from Aldermoor and General Hospital.

Bluestar 11 & 12 for Totton and Calmore

There are new earlier to and from Totton and Calmore:

• 0520 from Calmore (0555 from Southampton) – Service 12
• 0604 from West Totton – Service 11
• 2155 from Southampton – Service 11

There is a new Saturday roundtrip as well, leaving Calmore at 0524 and Southampton 0600

Thanks to Claudio for the additional eagle eyed spotting: new 2155 to West Totton on the 11

Bluestar 14 for Hedge End

There is a route change for the former City Red 8, forming a loop around the Hedge End estate. Now my knowledge at the time of writing is a bit hazy as it is family holiday week; but did the First Southampton 8 not previously go on a bit of a loop around Hedge End?

Well the 14 will now do a loop of Hedge End and Grange Park, via the Drummond Community Centre to Hedge End Station, and then return as it does now via Tollbar Way.

This means that there are timetable changes, with buses previously starting or ending their day at Hedge End Station doing the loop from the Superstores, or to the Bradbeers Retail Park.

Minor Tweaks

Minor timetable tweaks also affect some trips on other services. This may include the odd additional bus during daytime and rush hours:

• Bluestar 9 for Hythe, Fawley and Calshot
• Bluestar 17 will see the frequency reduction start a little later
• Bluestar 18 will also see more buses running before a later reduction
  • Additional 0515 from Thornhill on Sundays.
• Bluestar 19 has additional peak trips for General Hospital workers
• Bluestar 20 will gain an extra bus to allow additional running time
  • The half-hourly Sunday service will now start at 0810 and run later into the evening.

UniLink

The timetable has appeared for the new Unilink U8 service to Southampton Science Park.

Replacing Xelabus’ X21, there are significant changes that users need to be aware of!

Southampton City Centre and Portswood will no longer be directly served from Monday 03 September. It is not all bad news though because UniLink and Bluestar already have an extensive service which will connect in and for regular commuters it would not surprise me if they have season ticket potential.

The new route, running as a circular service is basically:

• Science Park ->
• Glen Eyre Halls ->
• Highfield Campus ->
• Southampton Airport Parkway Station (On the Stoneham / “Up” side)->
• Bassett Green Road ->
• Science Park

So where I was saying about the lack of direct service to Southampton City Centre, but the service will be running a loop all day from 0625 (from Highfield) until 1840 (at Southampton Airport Parkway Station). There is a largely hourly service during the day, although longer running times mean that it is slightly obscured in the rush hour.

Services are timed to assume that people start or finish work on the hour, with daytime services arriving between xx45 and xx50, and the evening ones leaving Chilworth at 1615, 1715 and 1815.

Do TravelineSW have fixed link PDF timetables now? Will this work?