I was waiting for more information to bring you – details, I was waiting to bring you details – but these are not yet confirmed and with of the usual sources not confident of the information that they have; let’s just get started.
The summer season of course is upon us and timetable uplifts are taking places in the places the tourists will want to visit in half-term. So here is what we know about First Hampshire and Dorset’s service changes coming up in May 2024. This post was last updated on Sunday 21st April.
“First Hoverbus”
As I previously noted on our roundup of Stagecoach South changes, Hovertravel have awarded the contract for the Hoverbus to First Solent from Wednesday 1st May.
Friends over at the Hants & Surrey Bus Blog believe that Stagecoach won the contract from Tellings Golden Miller in the first half of 2009. As a small bit of History, TGM took on some National Express contracts in Portsmouth back in 2005 and also experimented with the formerly Southampton City Bus X27 (or 727) between Portsmouth and Southampton.
Anyway – The Hoverbus heads to First Solent with the same half-hourly timetable as now. I still think it would be a coup to have a specially livered Electoliner running the service, but let’s see.
First Solent on 5th May
We posted not long ago about the fact that Hampshire County Council are throwing money at some services while consulting to remove others. Now while I have not seen the outcome of the consultation yet, whether services are cut or disabled bus pass holders lose their pre-0930 use,
First Solent will be making some of these funded changes on Sunday 5th May across Fareham, Gosport and Portsmouth.
Eclipsed
Now I was expecting something substantive Services E1 and E2 but frankly the new timetable was underwhelming. Remember when I posted “is the financial assistance to move to a bus on each of the E1 and E2 every 20 minutes (10 minute combined)?” back in March? Let’s have a Christmas HoHoHo as what is happening is:
- New Monday to Saturday departures from Fareham Bus Station at 2318, 2338 and 2358. These will not run via the Henry Cort Way busway, but via the A32 to Brockhurst.
- Revised Monday to Saturday departures from Gosport. The existing 2300 extended to Fareham, and then later trips up to 0020 between Gosport and Hoeford bus depot (again via the A32)
- …. and that is about it.
Around Rowner
There is also HCC investment in the 9 and 9A through Bridgemary, Rowner and Stoke Road. This has indeed brought in a new enhanced service in the more true sense of the word.
There are minor changes to the morning timetable, some trips that start mid-route in the mornings will start earlier in the route.
The big change though is that there is a new half-hourly service on service 9 (via St Nicolas Avenue and avoiding Nobes Avenue) seven days a week.
If you are going to be using the night time 9 service then do check the timetable; the departure times on weekdays are different to Saturday and Sunday. There is going to be a logic of doing this rather than having the same times every night.
| Last Service 9’s | Monday to Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| From Fareham | 2244 to Gosport 2314 to Rowner only | 2300 | 1757 [9a] to Gosport 1832 [9] to Alver Village |
| From Gosport | 2300 to Fareham 2330 to Hoeford only | 2244 to Fareham 2314 to Hoeford only | 1737 [9] to Fareham 1812 [9a] to Bridgemary only |
A quick note for the First Solent management team
I know, you might or might not be reading these occasional rants about bus services – but you might want to stick a new route map up for services 9 and 9A. It was not updated when the 9A was re-routed via Nobes Avenue.
The Highland to Broadcut
Yeah, I know…. rubbish heading.
Now it is a shame. I remember back when Fareham Highlands had a significant local bus service which over the years has seen reasonably high frequency routes cut to a small fraction of what was. Service F1 though has a small extension to it’s off-peak service. Between 1030 and 1600, the F1 will extend to Sainsburys via Quay Street and Lysses Court in both directions.
The current evening peak bus at 1730 from Fareham Bus Station is removed though was removed when I checked on the TravelineSW timetables at the weekend, but has appeared on the First Solent PDF.
The timetables for the early May changes are now on the First Solent website.
First Wessex Changes from Sunday 12th May
Except – I do not usually cover the Lyme Regis Park and Ride because…. where do I stop! The Lyme Regis Park and Ride restarts on a limited operation from Saturday 4th May and only operating certain dates prior to the summer holidays.
The start of the summer uplift at Weymouth takes place a week later. Apart from changes in the Wool area (like last year) as far as I am aware there are only timetable changes in most cases, so as a quick run down:
Weymouth Town Services
Frequencies will be shown for daytime timetables in minutes in the format (Monday to Friday | Saturday | Sunday) and as they take effect from Sunday 12th May:
- Service 1 to Portland will run similar to Summer 2023 (13-16 | 15-17 | 20)
- Service 2 to Littlemoor returns to a 15-minute weekday frequency (15-17 | 15 | 20)
- Dorset Council supported Service 3 will run every 50 minutes (50 | No Service | No Service)
- If you remember, this was planned to be cancelled 6 months ago, before Dorset Council extended funding
- Service 4 to Preston will increase to every 20 minutes (20 | 20 | 20)
- Service 8 to Chickerall will get a summer evening service (30 | 30 | 60)
- Last buses from Weymouth 2140 Monday to Thursday, 2230 Friday & Saturday, 1820 Sunday
- A revised timetable will run on service 10 to Dorchester and Poundbury, without a frequency increase (15 | 20 | 34)
- Sunseekers 12 to Haven Littlesea and 13 to Waterside will run hourly in low season and half-hourly in high season
Coaster Services
The Portland Coaster service to Portland Bill will return to Summer 2024 with a revised timetable which will see a daily 2-hourly service.
- Summer Jurassic Coaster X50 will have a change to last years service. It will run every 2 hours on a route of Weymouth – Lulworth – Wool and Swanage. The X50 will also serve Bovington and Monkeyworld.
- The X51 will have a revised timetable, but remain every 2 hours
- Open Top X52 will run every 2 hours Monday to Saturday only, interworking with a revised X53 which will also run every 2 hours
- Jurassic Coaster X54 will no longer head to Poole. The service will run Weymouth – Lulworth – Wool and Wareham, presumably every 2 hours and interworks with the revised X50
First Solent Changes from Sunday 26th May
The Solent Rangers will be getting their update at the end of May. I was hoping that there would have been a little more detail in the online timetables, but it looks like we are going to have to wait a little longer.
This is what we know though:
A Route and Timetable change is lodged for the X4 and X5. The main change as I understand it is that the only change is the X5 will divert to follow the X4 route via the M275 to Gunwharf Quays. Maybe we will see (and this is only an aspiration rather than based on solid information) that X4 and/or X5 might run to Clarence Pier in the school holidays?
To achieve this the X5 registration is being added to the X4’s service registration while the existing X5 registration is being amended to form a new service 5 between Fareham and Gosport.
From the detail on the service registration, I make an assumption that there is no route change for the Gosport section of the route. It would be nice to see this be a half-hourly service, or even hark back to the days of the 34 when it was half-hourly Fareham to Lee-on-the-Solent and then hourly on to Gosport. We will wait and see though.
Let’s just hope the AI does not stand for Ar$e-ificial Intelligence so that the X4 & X5 run at a decent regular frequency that can be remembered & not every 42.654 minutes or some other crazy interval as has been generated in their previous timetables.
I can understand (to an extent) why they would want to use AI to increase the accuracy of the timetable against actual running times – are there now sanctions from the Traffic Commissioner if consistently an operator doesn’t follow the published timetable? – but let’s be frank, it’s only needed because the skill of manual timetable design seems to be a lost art. What I don’t get is that how the odd minute here and there built into the timetable intervals can be justified when (as an example) if you miss the ‘green’ at a traffic light with a cycle time of 2 minutes, then that’s a 2-minute penalty on your journey. But the next day you’ll catch the green, what then, are you 2 minutes ahead? Surely a regular clockface timetable with memorable times is better than one every 42.654 minutes? Has any work been done to prove that this AI randomness benefits the bottom line with additional passengers or greater reliability?
A little more information to help you complete the puzzle.
The new 5 to Gosport is going to be every half an hour.
The additional change to the 9 is that it will run later into the evening. How much later, we don’t know yet.
And aside from the rerouted x5, which will provide an every 20 minute fast service between Fareham and Portsmouth, the X4 will run later into the evening – possible up until midnight. It does mean the return of later services to and from Southampton.
The timetable for the 9 is already available, albeit only on open bus data feeds. Every half hour until last arrival in Hoeford at around midnight.
Thank you though, for confirmation that the 5 is half-hourly.
That will be good although really need a departure from Soton on either of the X’s before 8am on a daytime weekday morning
Looking at the attached timetable, it appears that the X5 route between Sarisbury Green and Titchfield roundabout is effectively withdrawn since all X4 buses will be running via Park Gate. Is a replacement bus service for Warsash on the cards?
The timetable currently showing on BusTimes for the X4 and X5 are still only pre-25th May changeover at the moment.
So I would expect that to change at least in the next 10 days or so.
I am keeping an eye out, but I am not expecting much of a route change for either in that area.
I was following the link referring to the X5 registration being added to the X4 service registration. There is an amended timetable on there which implies that only the X4 route will continue to run between Southampton and Fareham.
Perhaps they are going to instate a Soton – Warsash – Park Gate – Whiteley – Segensworth – Fareham service sometime in the future.
I would not rely on that too much yet as the timetables on Bustimes only go to 14th May.
The X5 will run to Portsmouth rather than Gosport. Thus it gives an every 20 minutes fast service between Fareham and Portsmouth via the X4 and X5.
That is my understanding also.
What time will the last bus be from Southampton to Portsmouth and Portsmouth to Southampton
Furst Wessex cite low loads on X54 to Poole. Hardly surprising when the departure from Poole comes back immediately after it gets to Weymouth, There is then a long wait in the winter time for a bus that only comes as far as Wareham and gives a poor connection with Morebus 40.
Death by 1000 cuts. The Jurassic Coaster (formerly CoastLinx) ran all the way from Bournemouth to Exeter when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Very disappointed with the New X4/5 timetable. Again nothing to the west of Fareham in the evening with last bus leaving Southampton at 19:25 Mon-Fri and 18:37 on a Sat
Very disappointed with the new X4/5 timetable. Again no evening service west of Fareham
2nd May: The Summer Timetable Booklet covering First’s Weymouth services from 12 May has just appeared on their website under Planned Changes.