Bluestar have announced that from next weekend, Saturday 21st September, new Park & Ride services for Southampton.
The services will be based out of the Adanac Park NHS Park & Ride site, which is used during the week to cater for the large staffing base that work at Southampton General Hospital. While the hospital closes most of it’s clinics and planned work over the weekend, Southampton City Council funding has been allocated to a pair of new services.
These services have been in the pipeline since the original planning of the West Quay Bus Station a few years back, using Bus Service Improvement Plan money and if I remember correctly there was a small P&R service in the weekends leading up to Christmas 2024 – someone may correct me.
These new services cater for shoppers and football fans respectively across the following routes:
- Service PR1 will run from the Park & Ride direct to Western Esplanade and West Quay. It will drop off outside the Bluestar Travel Shop (stop BG) and pick up inside the new bus station (stop BE)
It will run Saturdays from 0700 (from Adanac Park) until 2030 (from West Quay) and Sundays & Bank Holidays from 0900 to 1810. Each day will run every 20 minutes until the last hour or so of the service when it will tail off. - Service PR2 will from the Park & Ride to St Mary’s Place / Kingsway (Stop IG) for Southampton FC home games.
It will run for Saturday home games ONLY with buses leaving Adanac Park every 20 minutes for 3 hours before 1230 & 1500 kick-offs and returning for 2 hours after the final whistle.
Well – I assume that – if there is extra time and penalties you would hope the buses will run later.
The West Quay Park & Ride service will start on Saturday 21st September and the PR2 will start on Saturday 27th September.
Thanks for this update. Southampton would benefit from fewer cars entering the city centre and hopefully this P and R service will help. To be successful, it needs to be significantly cheaper to use than parking in city centre car parks.
I wish it well but I do wonder the likelihood of success. Portsmouth’s P&R works because often the queue from the City Centre back on the M275 reaches the site of the P&R, at which point I imagine many people decide to peel off and use it. What is the congestion like on the M271 into Southampton? What’s the trigger to use P&R?