First Autumn Timetable

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UPDATED: It is now understood that First Solent are reviewing their decision to cancel the F1 and F2. This is reflected below and may be updated when we hear more.

In line with the rest of the bus operators, First Group have changes to services coming up in September and are mostly in line with school needs and ending the summer open top bus season.

FHDB is Dead! Long Live FSSW(?)

First-ly a quick announcement about business units.

The First Hampshire, Dorset & Berkshire team are going to be merged with the First South West (which includes Buses of Somerset, but not (as I understand it) Bristol and Bath) to become First South and South West. Marc Reddy is not going to be Managing Director for the new unit, and is looking for a new role within FirstGroup. This change happens on 1st October.

Now, I am not a bus company manager (nor want to be) so I won’t understand the business decision behind it. I hope though for two things:

• That they don’t centralise the whole management team in Taunton or somewhere
• That they devolve the centralised First Twitter Team back to the individual business units – I have resisted going off on a rant about people in Central England not knowing the local business.

First Wessex

Timetables in Weymouth and the surrounds will change on Sunday 18th September with most services appearing to go back to their low season timetables.

Service 1 to Chesil Beach and Portland appears to simply be a timetable change reflecting summer traffic levels. Journey times have contracted during the day shaving off up to 5 minutes on trips. It is not entirely unexpected as we move into the cooler season.

Service 2 to the Park & Ride and Littlemoor gets a service reduction which I recall is normal for the seasonal change. It will drop back to every 20 minutes Monday to Saturday and every half hour on Sundays.

Service 10 to Dorchester sees timetable changes to all days of the week. In terms of the weekday and Sunday service, the frequency of the timetables will remain the same, however the Saturday service will be reduced from every 20 minutes to every half hour.

Service 501 to Portland Bill will lose it’s weekday timetable from Sunday 4th September.

Service X52 to Wool and Monkey World will be suspended for the winter.

Service X53 has a change lodged. At the time of writing though, the new timetable lodged in the TravelineSW database simply comes back to the existing service. So I can not tell you what the changes are.

Service X54 will revert to it’s 4 round trips a day, with the summer enhanced service withdrawn. The Saturday and Sunday timetables are also withdrawn. Now I thought there was an all year Saturday service normally? This could of course, simply be a timetable waiting to be fully uploaded!

First Solent

Although there does not appear to be many changes in September (save for the X5 and 28A temporary diversions ceasing) there are cancellations listed for the F1, F2 and F3 local Fareham services from Sunday 18th October.

UPDATED: An amended timetable has now been issued for the F1 and F2 following “confirmation that further funding from the UK Government has been extended.”

Some Portsmouth based services will also change on Sunday 4th September:

Service 7 & 7a will have changes relating to schools and college work. The diversions to South Downs College as the 7c will now be merged into the standard Star 7 timetable with a small number of journeys avoiding Crookhorn Precinct. [I used to live a stones throw from the college and it was always busy.]

Service 2 between Paulsgrove, Eastney and Central Portsmouth will now run every 10 minutes in the weekday daytime.

I can not remember when the open top service 50 and the summer Park and Ride PR3 services are due to end, I would imagine that it will be in September or October though (do you know? leave a comment below!)

First Southampton

There is only one service change listed for Southampton which sees City Red 8 gain a new timetable for reliability. The Southampton Terminus will move around Houndwell Park from stop CE on Pound Tree Road to stop CG in Vincent’s Walk: