Wiltshire’s route 101 gets a fully flexible sibling

Sunday 13th August 2023

As explained in last Sunday’s blog about route 99 in West Sussex, the other stalwart of semi-flexible rural bus routes to succumb to a technology upgrade and expansion, including a fully flexible additional bus, is long standing route 101 between Pewsey and Devizes in Wiltshire. This was the original ‘Wiltshire Wigglybus’ from way back in 1999.

The new arrangements began on 31st July as the first step in a three stage introduction over the next three months of more DRT in the central part of east Wiltshire. The area covered will eventually stretch from Hungerford westwards to Marlborough in the north, Pewsey westwards to Devizes in the centre and Tidcombe, Aughton and Netheravon in the south.

Route 101 is now part of what’s called the Pewsey Vale zone which includes a new semi-flexible timetable reduced from 10 journeys a day to seven but now supplemented by a DRT Wiltshire Connect branded operation enabling the end to end journey time to be reduced from 55 minutes to just over 40 minutes. Some communities have been transferred to be served only by the fully flexible option.

Wiltshire Connect is operated by Salisbury Reds, part of Go South Coast, which has long operated route 101 back to Wilts & Dorset days.

The map of the area covered also shows Salisbury Reds route X5 which runs north/south between Swindon and Salisbury through the zone and in particular, as shown on the above (left hand) map in blue, connects some of the villages. However, rides cannot be booked between these stops when the X5 is running to ensure there’s no abstraction, although there are work arounds by choosing a location just a short distance from a recognised bus stop.

When the third and final zone (Marlborough and Bedwyn Service Area) comes on stream at the end of October there’ll be two new semi-fixed routes – the 100 between Marlborough and Devizes and the 110 between Marlborough, Great Bedwyn and Hungerford. Although timetables haven’t yet been released one can assume the County Council are building on their long experience of running the semi-flexible route between Pewsey and Devizes and building on that success.

Wiltshire Council has run shared taxi type services for a number of years with fixed times for arrival and departure at the main attraction/destination but with full flexible routing to reach there (for example as below with Bradies Connect).

However, I can no longer find details on the new Connecting Wiltshire website so wonder if they’ve now been withdrawn pending the new Wiltshire Connect zones mentioned above,

As with route 99 in West Sussex, my concern is whether passengers will adapt from the old way of booking by telephone to the new app way of working, although thankfully the telephone facility is still available. For example, here’s an old timetable from 2018 for the 101/102/103 routes making it clear what to do if you live in one of the villages with a telephone symbol showing….

… and here’s the pre 31st July 2023 timetable, by which time green dots acted as the ‘by phone’ symbol…

… and here’s the new timetable.

I went to Pewsey on Tuesday for a ride over to Devizes and back again to see how the new arrangements were settling in. I decided to try out the app booking, which is from a company called ioki, which also does the Stagecoach Connect app in Kent.

It’s so frustrating when the app doesn’t recognise obvious origins and destinations when you type them in, for example Pewsey rail station. After typing Pewsey, up comes the first option as “Pewsey Station – Car Park 2 – Pewsey APCOA” which isn’t particularly user friendly, not knowing where Car Park 2 is and not understanding the relevance of the car park operator.

After I continued to type the word ‘rail’ it defaulted to the National Rail three letter station code (PEW) which I’m sure foxes some not in the know, and goodness knows why Pewsey Vale Railway Society in Smithy Lane takes precedence over the more user friendly “Railway Station”. It all adds to the clunkiness of using the app.

Anyway, I got a ride booked on Friday morning of last week (4th) in advance of my intended visit on Tuesday (8th) at 12:00 although, again it’s unnecessarily clunky telling me I have to walk for a minute from the “Railway Station” to “Pewsey, Railway Station” then use the “Shuttle: Pewsey Vale Wiltshire Connect” to Devizes for a journey that can take anything from 24 minutes to 43 minutes.

I was pleased to get a 12:00 departure from Pewsey as that was exactly in between the fixed departures shown in the timetable above of 10:50 and 13:20 so it was going to be interesting to see how many other passengers joined me, not least because the previous timetable had a journey at 12:00 (to Upavon) and one at 12:40 to Devizes (see red timetable above).

I arrived on a train in good time at 11:41, slightly later than the scheduled 11:37, and met Simon the brilliant ticket office/customer host member of staff who is obviously Mr Pewsey and makes sure the station’s limited facilities are kept clean and shipshape.

He was helping a woman with two children confirm their taxi ride to Woodborough and it occurred to me they could reach that village on Wiltshire Connect just as Simon handed them a leaflet about the service and suggested they give it a try during their stay in the area.

It was excellent to see stocks of the leaflet in the station waiting room …

… and commendably it includes mention of connecting with trains at Bedwyn and Hungerford (when later phases begin) as well as Pewsey.

There’s also a poster promoting the service by the station exits …

… and a wonky smaller version in the timetable case on the bus stop.

While waiting for my midday pick up I was using the app to track the bus on its way to me and noticed it seemed to be going off route, I assumed to drop passengers off…

… and the expected pick up time kept moving back …

… until it reached 12:09 …

… and then came a text message to explain and apologise for the delay, which was good to be informed about.

Chris eventually arrived at 12:12 and after a quick turn around in the station car park, we were on our way to Devizes.

It was a direct run taking just 25 minutes with no other passengers to pick up. Chris said he’d picked a few up earlier in the morning but was finishing his shift after dropping me off.

He’s normally based at Salisbury but is helping out some days by driving one of the Wiltshire Connect vehicles based in Pewsey.

The Mercedes is comfortable to ride in but the interior is a little on the dark side and not as roomy as the larger Sprinter version.

It was configured with seven seats and can take a wheelchair at the rear but it didn’t look very welcoming with a metal like grill which I assume is the tail lift.

The rear is a bit ‘van like’.

The side passenger door is automatically opened and closed by the driver and has a three step arrangement with the lower one sliding out.

GWR are using the Rail Link branding in a number of locations where efforts are being made to improve links between trains and buses (see Okehampton, for example) and the brand is used on the side of the Wilsthire Connect buses emphasising the connections at Bedwyn, Hungerford (both to come in later phases) and Pewsey.

The County Council has put up explanatory notices about the changes to route 101 at the bus stop in Devizes …

… but, like the new arrangements on the 99 in West Sussex it is complicated to explain the difference between the fully flexible bus on the route and the semi-flexible one. I saw a passenger puzzling as she read it.

I planned to catch the 14:05 fixed timed departure from Devizes back to Pewsey and although I didn’t have to, decided to try and book a journey with a desired leaving time of 13:20 and used the app just to see what would happen.

Sure enough it booked me on the 14:05 so that worked well.

Go South Coast’s Salisbury Reds division which is operating Wiltshire Connect have two 16 seat Mercedes Sprinters for the semi-flexible route 101 (one currently a spare) and one of these arrived and five passengers boarded as well as myself.

The driver was the wonderful Andy who I last met in 2019 when I rode the 101 in its previous guise and true to form Andy recognised and remembered me.

One of the five passengers wanted dropping off in Little Horton – one of the villages served on request on the flexible part of route 101 – so we deviated to drop her off and another passenger alighted at Alton Barnes, after we’d served the fixed point of All Cannings. The other three travelled through to Pewsey with no other takers.

Andy said he’s never got above 15 passengers on the route, which is just as well as it’s now being operated by a 16 seater.

He was aware that on Thursday a booking by a passenger using a wheelchair had been taken for the fully flexible route and explained the 16 seater will be used as it’s easier and much better for the passenger to board than the seven seater with its tail lift. It sounds like there was funding criteria bureaucracy that meant the smaller vehicle was acquired, as I would have thought it would have been better to have an all 16-seat Sprinter fleet.

During the journey Andy treated us all to a history lesson about the Vale of Pewsey including a guided commentary pointing out, for example, one section of road on which we travelled being an RAF runway in the Second World War where three obscured huts at the side of the road used by people who kept the runway clear could still be seen albeit partly hidden by undergrowth.

It is a lovely part of Wiltshire with some great views as one travels through the Vale.

Andy was excited about future plans for Wiltshire Connect particularly the new semi-flexible route 100 between Devizes and Marlborough which he reckons will be very popular as passengers often ask him about such a link.

Andy offered me a copy of the leaflet explaining the changes and I said I’d picked one up from supplies I’d seen at the station, and characteristically Andy explained he had put them there to promote the service and while he had been on the fully flexible bus with no bookings last week had handed them out to passengers at the station.

That doesn’t surprise me knowing Andy’s dedication and commitment. He really is a star and along with Simon I reckon the residents of Pewsey and the surrounding area are very lucky to have them both.

It’ll be interesting to see how the two further zones bed in and whether they’ll become as established as route 101 has over many years and now approaching its 25th anniversary in semi-flexible mode. If anyone can make semi-flexible DRT work, I’m sure it will be Wiltshire Council with that long experience behind them.

This current weekly blogging during August highlighting successful semi-flexible on-demand schemes continues next Sunday, when I’ll report on a visit last week to Sevenoaks.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and Su DRT extras.