There are a number of changes coming up in March with I have already talked about in previous posts. Timetables are now live though, for the The Star 7 and the improving Gosport 9 & 9A, along with other changes registered from Sunday 5th March.
Changes in Gosport
The 9A despite my previous assumptions, does appear to be having a route change. I must admit I had not spotted it at first as the PDF version of TravelineSW maps was showing a gap between a few of the Bridgemary stops as shown below (hopefully not full width of the page… I did ask nicely while testing the new feature)
The 9A it turns out is being diverted to serve an old First Provincial and Peoples Provincial stomping ground at Nobes Avenue Shops.
Now back when the Eclipse first started running, I can see the logic that it would be assumed people in the Nobes Avenue part of Bridgemary would simply migrate to the E1 and E2, but it appears that some of the internal commuting in the Bridgemary and Rowner area might have been cut off.
The timetable is definitely getting better though. The current frequency of a bus every 25 minutes becomes three buses an hour on a “proper” (aka clock-face) timetable. There are two buses on the route 9 per hour and one on the 9A. It does mean that the 9 variation has a skewed 40 minute gap in that from both Gosport and Fareham bus stations departures are xx:15 (9A), xx:35 (9) and xx:55 (9).
Sunday timetables are also changing, albeit with an hourly service on each route. It does not appear though, that there is an evening demand for the service though. I don’t think the 9 and 9A has ever had much of a service, unlike the 88 (/A?) and 8 (/A?) that preceded it.
The New 9 and 9a timetable is here.
Changes on The Star
There are timetable changes on The Star 7 to Waterlooville and Wecock Farm, which means that there are to the untrained eye a few more buses in the morning peak to give a bus every 15 minutes, extra running time on Fridays in the evening peak, and slightly longer running times on the Friday and Saturday “night taxi” services.
That means that almost every bit of the Monday to Saturday timetable changes, but the core frequency is still every 20 minutes.
What surprises me though is that the rush hour services are getting an extra six or seven minutes running time. Has there been a significant road change somewhere that is causing that? or is it simply more traffic on the roads?
The new The Star 7 timetable is here.
Changes on the Solent Rangers
Minor changes are also occurring on the Solent Ranger X5.
- The 0819 from Fareham to Gosport will now start from Warsash at 0740 and run 9 minutes earlier than now from Fareham to Gosport.
That’s it…. as far as I can see.
Changes in April
There is a little thing coming up on Sunday 2nd April.
Along with other operators, First Solent have started to register their cancellations for tendered / supported services in the area. On the basis that Xelabus are doing the same with their X10 (although the X9 might have been resurrected) and Stagecoach are doing the same on the Surrey border; I can only imagine that this is because of the tendering exercise by councils.
Cancelled (in VOSA’s eyes) at First Solent are:
- 13 Portsmouth City Centre to Baffins and Portsmouth College
- 18 Paulsgrove to Fratton and Southsea
- 22 Farlington and Lower Drayton to Farlington
Big – Bold – Stressed Reminder that the tenders may simply mean a changed timetable in the end, or a new operator, or a whole new service. So do not worry that your local road will not have a bus just yet.
Regarding Nobes Avenue shops. In the good old days of 85 & 86 they’d get a bus virtually every 10 mins daytime running through to places like The Green Dragon at Rowner. I used to use it! Not everybody wants to walk to the Eclipse bus stop to travel – many OAP’s/disabled persons may be able to walk a bit but not enough to warrant a traipse to the bus link or back to the current 9/9A route. That is the one drawback to the Eclipse. Plus some of those bus stops are rather isolated on the route whereby Nobes Avenue you can see houses/shops etc & feel somewhat safer.
I remember much further back to when the 4, 5 and 6 ran though (along with A variants) and one of them used to run only between Gosport and Bridgemary. We are now back to the harked days of when the 1X was limited stop and various other very old services though (and the 7 and 37 ran through where the 9 and 9A also pass)
I wish they would make X4/X5 back to precovid times plus run a bit later
Yes…agree. To have the initial bus of the day starting from Southampton at after 0800 is crazy!
Definitely need earlier and later X4/X5 and back to precovid frequency. Need some evening buses to serve Locks Heath