Thursday 31st March 2022 Bluewater's bus station is next to Marks& Spencer in the south east apex of the complex. Out-of-town shopping centres can be extremely difficult to serve by bus. Only the very large ones like Bluewater have anything like a decent service. But they're a mecca for car users. Bluewater opened its swanky... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 29th March 2022 It's not often a bus company opens a brand new travel shop these days. Many bus companies have been only too pleased to save costs and close down any ‘High Street’ vestiges they once had which provided helpful face to face contact with the travelling public. Arriva's former travel shop in... Continue Reading →
Sunday 27th March 2022 Photo published with kind permission of The Bus Archive. I finally got round to paying a long overdue visit to The Bus Archive on Thursday. What a treasure trove it is. The above atmospheric photograph is taken from The Bus Archive's Facebook update for March. It's one of over a million... Continue Reading →
Saturday 26th March 2022 Continuing my fortnightly alphabetical wander around Britain brings me to the south coast. Folkestone’s population is 47,000. A further 15,000 people live in neighbouring Hythe, while the total population of the Folkestone & Hythe District Council area (renamed from Shepway Borough Council in 2018) is 113,000. Being a coastal town, and... Continue Reading →
Thursday 24th March 2022 March is free bus travel month in Newport but shhh, don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. This latest month’s worth of free bus fares follows a similar arrangement in December last year up to Christmas Eve and arises following what’s known as the Burns Commission report (named after its chairman Lord... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Photo courtesy Network Rail Aside from the shiny new mega-size stations about to open in the Crossrail core there are quite a few other brand new stations currently under construction on the national network which are due to open during 2022. It’s a bit of a sweepstake to see which will... Continue Reading →
Sunday 20th March 2022 There was a time when jointly operated inter-urban bus routes were quite common not least between adjacent subsidiaries of the National Bus Company. It made for an efficient way to operate a route which linked towns many miles apart which were located in different bus companies’ territories’. One of the most... Continue Reading →
Saturday 19th March 2022 Kent County Council launched a consultation last month seeking views on a raft of cuts to bus services it funds across the county which will be introduced this summer. Notwithstanding Bus Recovery Grant 2 and Bus Back Better’s vision of a wonderful utopian future for bus provision the reality in Kent... Continue Reading →
Thursday 17th March 2022 TfL launched a"long-term plan for buses" last week. The press release headlined it "TfL sets out bold vision for buses in the capital" with the new Bus Action Plan aiming for a "modern bus network to attract more customers and help the capital become net zero by 2030". The 94-page Bus... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 15th March 2022 I’ve been ‘off the road’ for operational reasons since last Monday (otherwise known as testing positive for Covid) which has given me an opportunity to reflect on the rail industry’s policy on ticket refunds. It’s all very simple if you’re a Marks & Spencer customer. Famous for its no quibble policy,... Continue Reading →
Sunday 13th March 2022 Evesham is the smallest town I’ve visited so far in my fortnightly A to Z exploration of the state of public transport in small to mid size towns. It’s got a population around 26,000 so is about half the size of Andover and Durham and a third the size of Bracknell... Continue Reading →
Saturday 12th March 2022 I was in Harrogate last week. You can't help but notice the bus service operated by Transdev Blazefield in the town exudes quality. Harrogate Bus Company is definitely in the bus industry’s Premier League. It's not that all the initiatives highlighted below are revolutionary; indeed some are small fry in the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 10th March 2022 A new sister company for Stagecoach - Belgium's Hansea. Forget that proposed merger-come-takeover between Stagecoach and National Express. That was last week’s news. It turns out while those board room discussions had been going on including a deal with Comfort DelGro to offload Stagecoach's share of Citylink as well as handing... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 8th March 2022 I’ve been visiting friends in Dublin over a weekend in early March for many years and after missing out in 2021 due to Covid was back on the Emerald Isle once again on Saturday and Sunday. It’s a great city to visit and I always look forward to my annual trip... Continue Reading →
Sunday 6th March 2022 Following the demise of Maidstone's Park & Ride last month comes news part of Canterbury's scheme is under threat. Launched in 1990, the city's Park & Ride is currently being subsidised by more than £57,000 a month and has seen the number of users halve since the Covid hiatus. There are... Continue Reading →
Saturday 5th March 2022 Last autumn I took a ride across Aberdeenshire on most of Stagecoach's route 35 between Elgin and Aberdeen, and thought it was high time I told you about it. Elgin (which lies 38 miles east of Inverness) and Aberdeen ... .... are connected by ScotRail trains running eight times a day... Continue Reading →
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Looking south I was in Cambridge briefly over the weekend so took the opportunity to take a look at the interim safety measures now installed between the public footpath/bridleway and the northbound guided busway on the one-and-a-quarter mile stretch between Addenbrooke's Hospital and Cambridge railway station. It had... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 1st March 2022 It's just over ten weeks since Arriva pulled out of Surrey so I took a ride over to Guildford last Wednesday to see how things were going. Bus networks in Crawley and Burton-on-Trent as well as Cannock have prospered since Arriva gave up on those towns so I wondered if the... Continue Reading →
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