CityRed 11 Extended

First Southampton have announced that from Sunday 24th January, they will be extending the CityRed 11 service to the north side of Southampton Central Station.

This was originally planned to run from this weekend, but for some reason was delayed by a week. Nevertheless, TravelineSW is showing it starting from today, First Southampton’s Twitter account says next week and First Southampton’s website says:

The service will still run every 10 minutes on a weekday, every 15 minutes on Saturday and Sunday. The new service coming towards West Quay will no longer turn towards the Bargate and Vincents Walk, but continue to ASDA and Central Station. On the way back the service will head via Above Bar to Pound Tree Road.

Your new timetable for the City Red 11 is already on the First Southampton website.

I must admit, that I would wonder if this will cause congestion around Central Station North at busy times of the day. First Southampton have allowed just 4 minutes layover at Central Station and more at Houndwell Park. In the current service levels vs passenger numbers, you would expect the bus to be sat at, or around Central Station for some time though.

Either way, I don’t think that any service can be assumed to run in it’s current form permanently. I am surprised that services use Central Station as a terminating point as it is generally busy with through services as it is. Obviously the U2B starts from the Mayflower Halls one stop down though.

It will be interesting to see the effect this has on services, whether there is an exodus of passengers off the 11 and onto other services to get to the station.