Quite a few updates this time around as I catch up on summer service changes thanks to Tony, Southampton services thanks to Clive, Facebook and others, and hopefully a few new timetables! While I SSH into the Bus Open Data Server, and investigate why it thinks Bluestar’s 24 does not start at Eastleigh Bus Station during the week (anyone have a brick wall to bang my head against?), let’s get underway.
New EV’s for Falcon
Slightly out of our area, but may be of interest to the enthusiasts among us, Falcon Buses have been updating their Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 fleet with 13 new Enviro 200EV single deck vehicles. reading the press release from Alexander Dennis, think USB, wood effect floor, etc, etc. The buses will run from Woking on the 436 service if you need to go take a look.
NHS Heroes Competition
Stagecoach South have a competition open where members of the public (and presumably other NHS staff) can nominate their NHS Heroes for a chance to win a month’s worth of free Stagecoach South travel. Celebrations for the NHS and it’s 78th birthday will have a one winner winning a “full month of bus travel” which sounds like it will be a Stagecoach Gold one month ticket?
Now, the article in the Hampshire Chronicle says:
People can nominate their NHS hero by commenting on Stagecoach’s dedicated ‘NHS Heroes’ competition post across its official social media channels, sharing the nominee’s first name and the story of why they deserve recognition. There is no limit to the number of nominations that can be submitted.
The problem is that I can not see any reference to the competition on X (formerly Twitter) on the Stagecoach South feed, I can not actually find a Stagecoach South Facebook page, and the most sensible answer I can fine is to use this nomination form. Entries are open until 31st July and you can nominate as many times as you wish…. apparently.
I think it is a great competition and with their usual 10% NHS discount on tickets, I would have hoped this had a bit more visibility!
Weymouth Summer Timetables
It’s not showing on the First Wessex news page, but the summer timetable uplift in Weymouth kicks off on 26th July. I say it is not on the news page, I also can not see it on the Traffic Commissioner’s registrations. That is probably why I have not seen it – but there are BODS timetables which were generated on the server last week.
So thank you to Tony for the reminder last week!
Open top buses are planned again for the X50 on a meandering route between Weymouth, Wool, Wareham and Swanage interworking with the X54. Once the BODS timetables are actually properly created by the back end they will appear on the service changes page!
Bluestar 26 Timetable released
Also on the Bluestar website, before hitting my BODS monitor, the timetable for new service 26 has hit the Go south Coast news feed. Whiteley will see it’s first direct service into Southampton with a route number that I think was more than just randomly allocated.
Those with a long memory will remember that Solent Blue Line and People’s Provincial used to jointly run a service 26 between Southampton – Hedge End – Botley – Segensworth – Fareham. A quick Google brings up this 2010 post from South England Bus Scene shows that my memory was longer than I thought, with the full through service being withdrawn as far back as 2005!
The new timetable for Bluestar 26, along with a helpful route map is available on the Bluestar website.
Connections are not Guaranteed
So looking at the current timetable offerings, and without seeing any First Solent changes in the pipeline, I would not be trusting the timings to make a connection between the 26 and the 28 or 28a.
During the daytime, we have the incoming 26 arriving into North Whiteley a few minutes after the 28a departs, and being 1 minute behind at Whiteley Primary School. Likewise in the other direction the 28a arrives at the Primary School 3 minutes after the 26 departs towards Southampton.
Now do not get me wrong, I know that connections between the 26 and the 28a are not the rasion d’etre for the 26 service, but I am hopeful that at the same time the 28 and 28a has a small adjustment coming to at least give it a try! IF I get a chance over the coming days I will try and build a table with it all… but I have a few bits going on right now.
Stagecoach in Portsmouth changes
As I previously suggested, Stagecoach South are amending timetables for punctuality in Portsmouth from 2nd August.
You can find the changes on their website.
Now… two days after I started typing all this out… I will just hit publish and reconnect to the server’s SSH!