I am still tinkering with many of the different bits and pieces around me. There have been a few news stories floating around with some mentioning the funded improvements to services in the Gosport and Fareham area. There also appear to be a few service changes registered for July, which for First Solent in Portsmouth signify the end of the Lake Road roadworks and for the H1 is the summer Hovercraft timetable.
As you may have noticed there have not been as many new pictures of buses as there would have been around this time in previous years. I am sorry, I have not been able to get out as much as I would usually and because of family-bourne difficulties I spend a lot of time commuting between generations of them! I have promised myself to get over to the Isle of Wight to check out the new electrics – albeit I am not sure when the additional Needles Breezer units are expected(? or is it even this year?) so it would just be the standard ones.
So with that, the featured image is something that I tasked one of the brand new mainstream AI chat models to create.
Maybe I should go whole hog, grab a Travelodge or Premier Inn (other brands are available) and see how popular the Nx services are one weekend. Like blimey, I have not even been out much to the east of the Island in all the visits I have made over recent years (another family-bourne commute) compared to Newport, Ryde and the West.
Anyway I digress:
Shelter or Not to Shelter?
In a number of the local press publications, there has been confirmation of Bus Service Improvement Plan funding for improved bus shelters across Hampshire.
According to the Andover Advertiser, 41 parish councils will be getting cash towards 137 bus stops and comes alongside more obvious service and vehicle improvements. It does not make everyone happy though as the un-specified amount of money being allocated has been criticised by Eastleigh MP, Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat) has pointed out in the Hampshire Chronicle that there is no point putting them on the 61, 46, or 461 bus routes.
She also indirectly criticised that the money has not been allocated to restoring the additional enhancements recently removed from the Disabled National Concessionary Bus Pass.
Free Bus Travel for Clean Air Day
To celebrate Clean Air Day on Thursday 18th June – Stagecoach in Portsmouth, First Solent and Pompey Link will be offering free travel on all journeys in the City of Portsmouth. This is something that has been going on for a while and is arranged by Portsmouth City Council using funding from the Bus Service Improvement Plan.
You can also use this to travel to outside of the Portsmouth City boundary, however all trips must start and the bus boarded inside the Portsmouth City Boundary – so don’t go saying “but HBU SAID to get into the boundary too”.
Take The Bus for Free on Thursday 18th Januaryuly….. Why could they not make it rhyme?
Peter Symonds College loses connections
At the end of the college summer term, Stagecoach will be withdrawing two college routes for Peter Symonds (and Sparsholt) students.
Services 68 and 77 are being withdrawn by Stagecoach South due to a decline in customer demand which makes the routes unsustainable to continue in the 2026/27 academic year. Now, I am not sure whether this means the daytime service 77 trips between Winchester City Centre and Sparsholt College are also affected, but I am sure that if they are the Sparsholt students will be made aware soon.
Some students may be able to move to Stagecoach’s service 73 between Charlton, Andover and both Sparsholt and Peter Symonds. Students from Salisbury are advised at the moment to use rail services to reach the city.
South Western Railway Consultation
Ahead of a more formal (and nearly half a million quids worth) or external consumer and customer engagement consultations, South Western Railway are seeking view on their next major timetable recast.
With no obvious link or promotion on the South Western Railway website, the Building a Timetable Fit for the Future website is asking for views on what works and does not work at the moment so that they can use that feedback and their own plans to put forward a more formal proposal in the Autumn.
The video accompanying the webform inviting ideas talks about making the timetable simpler and more reliable. Presumably with the eventual introduction of all 90 of their new class 701 units the idea will be to bring the Desiro units out from the suburban area a bit more to expand availability in the South…. we can hope!
With the recent and near future signalling projects, I wonder if we will see:
- the Portsmouth Direct Line through Petersfield and Havant will see a fourth train an hour with the extension of the current London Waterloo – Guildford – Haslemere stopping service
- the return of a regular London Waterloo – Southampton – Bournemouth stopping service (most of them only run to/from Winchester or Basingstoke now from memory)
- a proposal for something to run to Marchwood? Surely Salisbury – Eastleigh – Southampton – Totton – Marchwood (stopping most / all stations obviously)
One thing I did see in a communication from Laurence Bowman (the SWR MD) to one of the passenger groups was a mention of returning to “full crew working” where a driver and guard stick together all day rather than the current situation where drivers and guards have entirely different working days. I think that will be far better in disruption!
The Service Updates page
You will hopefully find the Service Updates page a bit more reliable than when it first started. I am trying to get various services to marry up automatically when a new timetable is published (think X4/X5, E1/E2, 28/a in Fareham, or 1/N1 and 17/N17 in Southampton)
Some timetable that the system struggles to match (I can see First Wessex has the 52 lingering at the moment) lead to me having to manually adjust a few bits…. but we are getting there. I wonder if I can get access to Mythos for it?
The Isle of Wight Festival Service Update
Just a reminder that the Isle of Wight Festival is coming up. Southern Vectis run an intensive festival bus service so many services across the Island are affected for the whole weekend, paper copy bus timetable booklets carry the alterations, so the website should too!
That is it for now! Thank you ….
…. for continuing to put up with my nonsense. Especially if (like I am seeing now) the font has reset again following the websites move across web hosts (must remember to cancel the now truly terrible EcoWebHosting) and I apologise again for the horrific AI generated bus picture that I have not even seen yet…. I will just drag and drop to the top of the article blindly.