There have been a few stories that have been appearing across the local press this week as well as from the bus operators themselves. Me, I have been busy on a few projects including getting a live service updates page in place, albeit trying to get the licencing, DVSA and BODS portals talking to each other through the HantsBus website has been a pain in the exhaust pipe!
New Forest Breezers – The Next Phase
If I did not say it out loud, I was expecting the announcement of the New Forest Breezer brand from morebus to come with a small number of changes ready for the summer season.
It is not a huge announcement really; the X1 and X2 become the 81 and 82, the Bluestar 6 becomes the 86. There are a few “timing improvements” for the Bournemouth to Lymington service included with the package, which is all planned to take effect on Saturday 23rd May at the start of the school half term break. Sundays will see a new timetable with more buses, and trips now included on the X2 / 82.
You can pick up the new 81 & 82 timetable and 86 timetable from the morebus website but there was a cautionary note that bus stop flags have already started to be replaced, so do not get confused(!)
Breezing through to Hythe
The latest round of Bus Service Improvement Plan funding has been allocated to Bluestar for improvements. The Daily Echo reports that nearly half a million pounds has been allocated to maintain the 20-minute frequency on Bluestar 9 between Southampton City Centre and the Waterside area. There is also funding for improvements to weekend late night bus services, would make me wonder if there is an N9 in the works?
Competing with Marchwood Railways
Don’t shoot the messenger, or the Daily Echo for reporting it, but apparently there has been some movement on Alliance Rail’s application to the Office of Road and Rail to run a service between Marchwood, Southampton and London Waterloo.
The movement is that a decision is due in the next two months, to a plan with will create 80 full-time jobs.
The plan is to use the Class 769/9 tri-mode units which were previously discarded by Great Western Railway. Wikipedia is probably the best source of information for those that are interested. Trains from the same class are also speculatively tied to a community service between Taunton and Swindon – albeit I am not sure if they ever made their funding commitment to the ORR.
If the service is approved by the ORR, the class 769’s are ready for testing with their owner Porterbrook…. although I am not sure that Marchwood Station is yet?
You may remember that South Western Railway ran a press and dignitaries service down the Marchwood branch not long ago, and have objected to the latest ORR application. Maybe they have seen how long it will take for a 769 to get to 100mph?
Southern Vectis abandon trial
The Sea Breezer was a service run by Southern Vectis last year between Ryde Esplanade and parts of the area to the east of the town and a holiday park.
It appears that the service will not be operated this year as there is a cancellation notice now showing for the route.
new Service Updates trial
Speaking of services showing, I am still working on the background systems but a regularly (and autonomously) updated service updates page is now available.
It’s still not 100% there and I do keep tinkering in the background. There is more reliance on the VOSA weekly spreadsheets than I would like so I am trying to work my way around it. In theory though, when a service update is spotted, the autonomy of the system will pull the PDF timetables that I already have running (and you have seen a few times on here) and connect it directly.
There are a few gremlins – on a test run the recent First Solent service 2 timetable change connected to the First Wessex 2 timetable – but we are getting there.
Service Changes: morebus
EDIT: It appears I missed a lot of changes. When I published this it took morebus less than 24 hours to announce things formally and yeah… my automated summaries need work! This list should now be complete.
Along with the changes we already noted with the 81 and 82 – the next round of the Summer Uplift for morebus is expected to take effect for the Half Term break. There are also major changes to the routes and stops within the centre of Bournemouth.
From Saturday 23 May, Gervis Place between Bournemouth Square and the Westover Road traffic lights (by the entrance to The Arcade) and this affects almost all bus routes in the area. Lots of changes specific this this one element which will be until around Christmas, so check your new bus stops here.
Using the new system, I am getting lots of flags for the stops around Bournemouth Square changing, so I may miss some other changes in the middle of it all but:
Breezer Uplifts
Running between Swanage and Weymouth (with some trips extending to/from Dorchester) the Jurassic Breezer 30 returns. No timetable yet as the delights of bus registration rules means that the timetable I have here is only showing Swanage to Lulworth Cove! Apparently the fact that Swanage to Lulworth Cove is technically a morebus registration and Lulworth Cove to Weymouth / Dorchester is a Damory one…. it confuses my back-end (ou err misses) and was not something I considered in the code.
Jurassic Breezer 31 and Purbeck Breezer 40 start their enhanced summer timetables.
Campsite Connect 35 is back with 4 trips a day (3 in term time) between Swanage and the Wareham Forest campsites.
Harbour Breezer 60 once again diverts away from Canford Cliffs for the season, and returns to running hourly between Rockley Park and Poole, half-hourly(-ish) between Poole and Sandbanks.
Breezer 70 also returns with it’s full summer runs between Rockley Park, Hengistbury Head and Hobourne Holiday Park. It is interesting to note that the change that was made to remove Boscombe Pier from the timetable last year has apparently been reversed, and the hourly service will once again serve the Pier.
In Sandbanks services 60 and 70 will be diverted to use Sandbanks Road this year, instead of Pottery Road.
Funding Removals
- Following the withdrawal of funding from BCP Council; some evening services will be altered or withdrawn on:
- Services 8 and 9 between Poole and Upton
- Service 14 between Poole and Kinson
- Services 16 and 17 between Bournemouth & Poole
- Services 11 and 21 will both be reduced to run hourly Monday to Saturday daytimes.
Other Changes
New earlier trips will run on services 16 and 17 between Bournemouth & Poole at the weekends, to better help staff heading to Poole Hospital.
Service 20 will be extended and the Poole to Castlepoint service will now run through to Royal Bournemouth Hospital, Southbourne and Christchurch. The new service will still run hourly Monday to Saturday. In reaction service 33 is rerouted away from Christchurch – it will now run as normal from Alum Chine to RBH and then divert to Castlepoint.
Services 25 and 26 between Poole and Tower Park will reduce from every 10 minutes to every 15 minutes – apparently because so many customers now use the 18 instead!
Reliability and general timetable fiddles also take place on the X6, X8
Of course. Timetables for almost all services across Bournemouth will change due to the road works.
Service Changes: First Wessex
So some of you will have already noticed on the “service changes” page with the Lyme Regis Park and Ride is showing as withdrawn. This is of course not the case as other summaries I receive say it is indeed still running.
Confused? Take a look at this “summary” that my still being worked on system is producing:
I will keep working on it! There are changes from that weekend, but I am going to have to go back to basics.
Service Changes: Southern Vectis
The Downs Breezer will resume it’s 4 trips a day from 23rd May on a route of Ryde – Wooton – Sandown – Bembridge – Ryde.
The Shanklin Shuttle will also restart a half hourly service around Shanklin from the same date.
The Needles Breezer will run later in the evening.
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