Sunday 31st October 2021 While I was in Scotland on Monday and Tuesday after my Lumo journey north to Edinburgh I took a ride over to Glasgow to see how preparations for COP26 were impacting the city. Unsurprisingly, it was huge. And this was still a few days away from today's start of the summit's... Continue Reading →
Friday 29th October 2021 This week’s DRT bus service launch is Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s trial in that rural part of ‘West Huntingdonshire’ lying west of Huntingdon and St Neots. It’s got the same features and challenges I’ve covered in other blogs about rural DRT operations so I won’t repeat the same old stuff... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 27th October 2021 If you've been wanting your train company to "conceptualise its commitment to its customers individual well being combining all elements of physical, spiritual, corporal, emotional and social being to ensure that any journey leaves you positively ready" .... then Lumo’s the train company for you. When you travel with Lumo, as... Continue Reading →
Monday 25th October 2021 Following my recent outing to Sheppey and Grain on the north Kent coast, it's time to replicate similar island exploring on the north side of the Thames Estuary along the Essex coastline - said surprisingly to be the English county with the longest coastline, mainly because of all its inlets and... Continue Reading →
Saturday 23rd October 2021 It’s been a long time since you could catch a bus from the Debden and Loughton area of Essex, on the fringe of Greater London, and travel to the county town of Chelmsford. A locally based correspondent Chris reckons it was pre war when an early Green Line lettered route provided... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st October 2021 Eighty-five enthusiastic and energised young managers from across the bus industry gathered in the Royal Beach Hotel on Southsea’s sunny seafront for around 24 hours last week and among a packed programme of speakers and site visits found time to draw up a comprehensive Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) which local... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th October 2021 As regular readers will know I’m very partial to a lovely rural bus ride. The more infrequent and quirky the better. I always feel a sense of achievement by visiting picturesque isolated villages by bus so I thoroughly enjoyed an outing on Tuesday last week when I managed a trio of... Continue Reading →
Sunday 17th October 2021 A surprise ending And so to the fourth and final quadrant of our London encirclement commemorating last year's fiftieth anniversary of the much missed London Country Bus Services. We'd journeyed from Gravesend to Dorking; Dorking to Amersham and Amersham to Bishops Stortford and Friday saw the circle completed by travelling from... Continue Reading →
Friday 15th October 2021 Rail. Replacement. Bus. October 2021: warning for February 2022 already As you can see down here in Sussex Rail Replacement Buses are front page news again as GTR and Network Rail's media machine begins the warm up warning to give rail passengers plenty of advance notice of next February’s nine day... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 13th October 2021 As promised last month, a further quick update on my recent experiences with customer service teams in the public transport sector. In my Sunday 19th September blogpost I explained how I’d encountered a problem at Tottenham Hale Underground Station on Friday 17th when the ticket gate ate my rail ticket and... Continue Reading →
Monday 11th October 2021 Following the success of the Route 65 Running Day in April, the London Bus Museum held a similar nostalgia fest on Saturday recreating London bus route 93 between Putney Heath and it's original most southerly terminus of Dorking (reached on Summer Sundays between 1939 and 1960) . RT 1431 was one... Continue Reading →
Saturday 9th October 2021 A couple of exciting zero emission developments were added to the Leeds bus scene in September. I caught up with both during a visit on Thursday. First up is another DRT operation using electric Fiat minibuses with Mellor bodies. I know, I know, you must be tiring of reading write ups... Continue Reading →
Thursday 7th October 2021 While down in Cornwall last weekend I took the opportunity to take a ride on First Kernow’s new-for-the-2021-summer-season Falmouth Coaster branded open top bus tour of the town. It’s part of FK’s Adventures By Bus over arching brand of initiatives introduced this summer to attract the leisure travel market. Regular readers... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 5th October 2021 First the good news. Go-Ahead’s Go Cornwall Bus website which acts on behalf of Transport for Cornwall (TfC) now includes a comprehensive map of the combined county bus network showing both First Kernow’s commercial and TfC’s tendered networks. Fantastic. An integrated bus map. At last. And as I found when I... Continue Reading →
Sunday 3rd October 2021 I wrote about TfL's new route 497 on its first day of operation back on 25th January 2020. Here's a quick recap: the 497 links Harold Wood station with new housing in Kings Park (the former Harold Wood Hospital site) passing a Polyclinic and London South Bank University's Havering Campus as... Continue Reading →
Friday 1st October 2021 The DRT craze reached Aberdeenshire on 16th August when the snazzily named Ready2Go five vehicle operation hit the road. Six weeks on it was time for a ‘BusAndTrainUser’ visit to give it the once over which I managed to do on Tuesday morning to add to my collection of DRT travel... Continue Reading →
BusAndTrainUser 