I is for Ipswich Buses

Saturday 22nd April 2023

Ipswich Buses is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. Founded in 1903, it’s one of just five municipally owned bus companies left in England (along with Blackpool, Nottingham, Reading and Warrington) with two more in Wales (Cardiff and Newport) and not forgetting Lothian in Scotland.

The company’s head office and bus garage are located close to the town centre, just to the west of the football stadium – about a ten minute walk from the railway station and slightly less to walk to the town centre.

It’s a rather traditional looking workshop area fronting directly on to Constantine Road but there’s a large open air parking area to the rear with access from Sir Alf Ramsey Way.

Not surprisingly post pandemic the company’s finances are struggling with annual accounts for the year ended March 2022 showing a profit after tax of just £53K on a turnover of £8,936K. Accounts for year ended March 2020 showing turnover of £10,118K indicate the extent of post Covid recovery although that year also posted a loss after tax of £19K.

Most single decks are Enviro200s (20 in the fleet) although the company bought 13 eleven year old Optare Tempos from TrentBarton in 2019.

Scania OmniCitys dominate the double deck fleet with some 23 acquired second hand from First Bus and Metroline.

There are also seven Scania OmniDekkas and four VDL/DAF East Lancs double decks and three Mercedes Ciatro single decks. The various acquisitions make for a variety of seat moquettes…

…. including these rather uncomfortable ones First Bus used to like so much.

With a fleet total of around 75 vehicles Ipswich Buses is the smallest of the municipal octet but what it might lack in size it certainly makes up for in other areas, not least information provision.

When I began researching my visit to have a ride around the company’s network a couple of weeks ago on clicking open its website I was immediately struck by the ease to access colourful maps of the network(s) as well as timetables for each route along with information about tickets and fares – probably the three key pieces of information anyone wants to easily access.

I know it sounds odd to highlight such a basic attribute but it’s incredible how many operators hide their network map(s) deep into their websites, even if they deign to produce one at all, which, as we know, many don’t.

Ipswich has two maps available, both colour coded by route. One shows the town network and the other the small longer distance network the company operates south of Ipswich into Essex.

There are also two diagrams showing the departure stands and layouts of both bus stations in the town – Tower Ramparts for town routes and the Old Cattle Market for longer routes, historically the preserve of Eastern Counties then First Bus. These diagrams also show departure stands for other bus companies (First Bus and Beestons) as well as the one (tendered) town route from Tower Ramparts which First Bus operate – route 14, although the timetable isn’t shown.

Each of Ipswich’s town routes has a brand name – some of which are a bit cheesy – along with a route number and a colour coding which is carried through on the map, the timetables and, for those routes which are single deck operated, on the buses themselves.

I was very impressed to see every branded bus was operating on the correct route during my visit.

The timetables displayed on the website …

… are pdfs of what look like printed timetable leaflets with each containing a full colour map showing the featured route.

I was even more impressed when calling into the Travel Shop at Tower Ramparts bus station (it’s even open for four hours on Saturdays) to find a display of printed timetable leaflets available.

How good is that?

They’re great leaflets too, although there’s no ticket information which might be because while many leaflets are dated as from January the price of tickets increased in February.

There are three fares for journeys within the town with a £2.30 maximum, currently capped at £2. Returns offer a discount and a day ticket is £4.70.

Mobile tickets are available on the Ipswich Buses app (which also shows vehicle tracking) and the company also accepts contactless bank cards. Interestingly the day ticket isn’t available on the app, nor is there a version of its ticket for under 19s.

As is traditional with municipally owned companies cash is collected into a farebox/vault which avoids drivers needing to handle it but means no change is given to those who are cash dependent.

The notice states bank notes must be handed to the driver but on one of my journeys there was a £5 note in the glass section (see below) so maybe the driver checks the note isn’t a forgery before popping it through the slot. The positioning of the boxes is a bit intrusive and now most passengers presumably pay by contactless or use a concessionary pass on the Ticketer machine, the location is now far from ideal as you have to lean round it.

As befits its owner’s wider remit the bus network provides extensive coverage across the town with routes running at good frequencies, although evening frequencies seem a bit sparse (see route 13 in the table below, for example).

The most frequent routes are the 9/10 (yellow) both running every 20 minutes to make for a sort of 10 minute frequency although it depends whereabouts on the circular section of route you’re waiting as route 9 goes clockwise and route 10 anti-clockwise. Route 13 (pink) is also every 10 minutes with routes 3 (blue) and 8 (red) every 12 minutes.

As you can see from the map shown earlier the network falls into four distinct quadrants around the town centre. Routes 1, 2, and 3 are in the south east; routes 4, 5 and 6 in the north east; 7, 8, 9 and 10 in the north west; and 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 in the south west. Each quadrant has a mixture of circular routes and out-and-back ones with frequencies varying depending on the density of housing served and consequential demand. For a population of around 140,000 I reckon the Borough of Ipswich enjoys a good service.

On my visit I took a ride on one or two of the key routes in each quadrant and each area had reasonably well loaded buses throughout the routes, helped by key retail destinations at the outer ends of each route.

There’s a large Sainsbury’s as well as other retail units including Waitrose/John Lewis in the south east; Ipswich Hospital is in the north east; Asda and the Anglia Retail Park in the north west; and a Tesco Extra in the south west.

It’s unusual for these ‘out-of-town’ retail parks to be so well served by buses but in Ipswich at least one of the key routes terminates with others passing through making for a traffic objective at the outer end of the route and making the buses better used throughout the routes as a consequence.

Ipswich Buses has also been running longer distance out of town routes for some years following previous retrenchments by First Bus. Routes 118/119 head north to Framlingham (20 miles north of Ipswich) taking 50 minutes and running 2 hourly while routes 97 and 98 link Ipswich with Shotley every 90 minutes and route 93 runs two hourly taking 80 minutes for the 18 mile run south to Colchester.

On a previous visit to the area I took a ride on the route 94 variant between Ipswich and Colchester, but this route has now been cut back to one school journey to serve East Bergholf High School (see map above).

All the journeys I travelled on ran perfectly to time and I didn’t see any evidence of cancellations for lack of staff so hopefully the extensive advertising for new recruits has eased the previous shortage.

One minor niggle I noticed was the clocks on the Optare Tempos were still showing Greenwich Mean Time – not a good look for a time conscious bus company.

As I travelled around I noticed there didn’t seem to be an abundance of bus priority measures although those I did see were proving effective. This one is on the Princess Street bridge over the River Orwell just south of the railway station on the route into the town centre is in the centre of the road.

It was also noteworthy to see a bus only section of road has been incorporated into a new residential development in Ravenswood the south east corner of the town served by routes 1 and 2.

Bus shelters, presumably provided by the Borough Council, varied in quality around the town. Here’s one of the better ones….

…. and bus stop plates looked as though they had all been updated recently to a new Suffolk County Council standard and created a good impression.

There are real time signs in rather large boxes at a number of locations around the town.

Back to Ipswich Buses and its information provision and the Tower Ramparts bus station has some excellent displays making it very easy to find out where to wait and what time to expect a bus.

Many of the bus shelters around the town also displayed the network map.

I asked in the Travel Shop if there was a printed copy of the map, but was advised it’s only online, which is a pity as that really would have been the cherry on top of a tasty cake of information provision. Well done Ipswich Buses for providing a high standard of service and best wishes to the shortly to retire managing director Heath Williams and good luck to Dan Bassett who is taking over.

Roger French

Previous AtoZ blogs: Avanti West Coast, Blackpool Transport, Chiltern Railways, Delaine Buses, Ensignbus, Faresaver, Grand Central, Hull Trains.

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