Quick News Round-Up

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A lot of the recent bus new over the last week has been money based at Hampshire County Council, but there are a few other things as well.

First EV’s for SV

Southern Vectis has launched its first fleet of battery‑electric buses on the Isle of Wight, using new Wrightbus StreetDeck Electroliners based at the Newport depot.

The project is part‑funded through the Department for Transport’s ZEBRA 2 scheme, alongside investment from Isle of Wight Council and Southern Vectis itself. In total, 31 vehicles are planned, representing more than £11 million of combined public and private funding.

The Electroliners are Wrightbus’s second‑generation battery‑electric double‑deckers, with the manufacturer highlighting improved efficiency, strong range and faster charging. Charging infrastructure has been installed at Newport to support the new fleet.

I must admit, when I visited Ryde and Newport to see how the Yutong demonstrator faired, I am glad to see that Go South Coast did not go through with them!

BSIP funding for Hampshire

Hampshire County Council is preparing to invest over £50 million in bus improvements across the county as part of its Bus Service Improvement Plan, with the aim of doubling bus journeys by 2035. The funding, spread over four years across both capital and revenue, is intended to make bus travel more attractive, reliable and usable for everyday trips.

Passengers can expect a package of measures rather than a single change. This includes upgraded bus stops, stations and interchanges, better real‑time information displays, and bus priority schemes designed to speed up journeys and improve reliability. Fare initiatives are also on the table, which could help to keep travel affordable at a time when household budgets are under pressure.

Cllr Lulu Bowerman, the council’s cabinet member for highways and passenger transport, was reported by the Andover Advertiser the initiatives are already making some services faster, more frequent and more reliable, with the intention that more people will choose the bus more often. She has also stressed that the investment is not just about convenience, but about supporting the local economy, improving access to jobs and essential services, cutting congestion and improving air quality, and helping more people to live independently.

…. but Home to School transport funding reduced

Following from our previous conversations about proposed changes to Hampshire’s school transport proposals, a meeting held last week confirmed that changes have been approved.

The council have closed the Spare Seats scheme which allowed for – among other things – parents of children who use Home to School transport because of their needs, to apply for siblings to use the spare seats on the contracted service. This was something that the parents would pay for, with the uncertainty of whether the seat would become unavailable if a new user required it.

From the next academic year, only exceptional circumstances would be considered for spare seats to be allowed.

Alongside scrapping the Spare Capacity Seats Scheme, councillors also signed off an updated Post‑16 Transport Policy for 2025/26, covering travel to further education and training for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).The service remains a discretionary offer rather than an entitlement, normally requiring an annual parental contribution, but the policy has been tightened to clarify who can receive support, how “nearest suitable provider” is defined, and how long help can continue, while placing more emphasis on personal travel budgets, independent travel training and use of mainstream public transport where this is safe and reasonable.

BSIP & The Bus Services Act

Although Hampshire County Couci have all these grand plans, I woul hope that some of the funding will indeed end up doing something towards replacing services that have been cancelled because of withdrawn funding.

With the likes of Liz Jarvis MP (Eastleigh) calling for the reinstatement of services such as the 61 Winchester to Eastleigh and the 46 down to North Baddesley (or even Southampton General?) – the Council do not appear to be enamoured to have interest in subsidised services.

The meeting which was held (at the time of writing) earlier today to formalise the BSIP funding does however acknowledge that HCC will soon have a responsibility to empower socially necessary bus services. I do have doubts however that the withdrawal of funding and cancellation of the routes were not connected with the possibility of this coming in. Hampshire County Council have previously been vocal that they do not want to franchise bus operations in the County like they have in Manchester and London.

New Milton vote against funding the 119

In the New Forest, the New Milton Town Council voted against funding the Saturday service 119 between New Milton and Lymington.

With the recent funding losses for rural services in Hampshire, this is not much of a surprise as Council budgets are stretched thin. I also doubt that the large funding injection from the Bus Service Improvement Plan will get much allocation to marginal rural services when the focus is on trying to double the passenger count.

Upcoming Timetable Changes (and an AI update)

So there are a few timetable changes in the pipeline that I have spotted while playing around with PDF timetable generators and the like. I have probably missed some in the fracas, especially when I had run four different test runs on various operators in a day during last week.

I am surprised the Bus Open Data Service did not reject my API keys!

Changes at morebus

So there is a (not surprising) service restarting from Sunday 29th March. I know, I know, it shows as a new service but I think that is just a blip of the Traffic Commissioners system or something about the way the internal database shows it.

Service 31 is the Lulworth Cove circular from Wool Railway Station. Now my timetable generator has not given the same results as the official timetable on the morebus website (click on the PDF timetables for it), so I will just quietly link what the automated timetable generator offered me about 10 days ago when. I am not sure why it specifically did that because other timetables appear more ‘properly’.

So anyway, more generally, the summer uplift has begun:

• The timetable for Breezer 50 is expected to change on 23 March – can not see the changes uploaded yet
• The hourly Sunday & Bank Hol service on Breezer 60 begins on 14 March
• I am not expecting changes to the 40 or re-introduction of the 70 until later in the year (usually the school May half-term)

… and as a vague idea of what I see as a report summary when it showed me the 31:

Changes at First Wessex

The summer season timetables are starting to appear and Weymouth’s services to the holiday parks are starting to appear. There are no great shakes reported to the usual format of the service as far as I can tell.

Service 11 (the old 501) to Portland Bill:

• Four round trips daily from 28 March to 12 April (ie The Easter Holidays)

Service 12 towards Haven’s Littlesea campsite is showing as:

• Hourly (with a gap for lunch) between 06 March to 22 May except:
• Half-Hourly (with two trips gap for lunch) in the Easter Holidays

Service 13 towards Waterside Holiday Park:

• Hourly (with a gap for lunch) between 13 March to 22 May except:
• Half-Hourly (with two trips gap for lunch) in the Easter Holidays

Changes at First Solent

Over the last few weeks I have made progress from the timetable you have been above and this next service change hopefully demonstrates that.

First Solent appears to have got the contract (or at least I am sure it was a Portsmouth City Council contract) to run the summer PR3 service.

From after the Easter school holidays (starting Sundy 12th April) the PR3 will run on Saturdays only with two buses maintaining the half-hourly service. So I am not sure whether there is an Easter school holidays service or not. This is one of the many flaws in my automated PDf timetable pipeline; that it only takes one timetable if there are multiple future date-frames uploaded. TravelineSW also does not have a PR3 timetable available yet (as far as I can tell).

I am questioning the accuracy as well, on the basis that the Portsmouth City Council pages on the Park and ride still show the PR3 as a summer-only service(?) – I have tried contacting PCC via their contact page but the contact page indicated there might be an issue sending messages at the moment.

Anyway…. Here is the demonstration of how my timetable automations have improved from the one above!

There are also other minor timing changes that are being flagged up by my automation program but some of them are ones that I am know are not accurate – like a timing change to the Hill head service 21…. I checked and there isn’t, I think it flagged a tweak I made to the interpretation of the timetable.

So anyway!

We are getting somewhere with the automation and the summer bus schedules are starting to appear. Now just to work out why I have 4 copies of the same timetable for some routes!