W is for Whippet

Saturday 21st October 2023

My fortnightly A to Z of bus and train companies is now in the home straight (just three more after today’s blog) and once again I had a dilemma of what to feature for W. White Bus was my plan but then I heard from Richard Wood, Secretary of the Cambridge Area Bus Users who recommended I feature Whippet.

So always happy to oblige: Whippet it is. The company proudly displays its “Est 1919” origins on its logo so is not long into its second century but in more recent years has seen a couple of ownership changes.

Bicycle salesman Henry Lee formed the company in the Huntingdonshire village of Hilton with the company’s depot moving to Fenstanton in 1977 and it’s current base established in Swabesey in 2009.

Go Whippet, as it was called from 1983, was then sold by the Lee family to Tower Systems (owners of Tower Transit) in 2014 but four years later, Tower Transit’s CEO, Adam Leishman, bought out the company for himself making it part of the Ascendal Group which has since also taken on interests in bus companies in Hong Kong, Chile and just recently in Florida. Current CEO of Ascendal Group is Tony Williamson who reckons “Ascendal Group, Whippet’s parent company since 2018, has the vision of bringing cities to life through public transport. It seeks to achieve this through implementing world class solutions that deliver step changes in how public transport is perceived, accepted and delivered.”

The websitre explains the “group currently transports more than 1 million passengers daily across its bus operations contracts in Hong Kong, Chile and the UK.”

Flagship route in Whippet’s portfolio is the Universal branded route running between Eddington as well as West Cambridge via the city centre and railway station to the Biomedical Campus and Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

The southern end of the route from the station takes advantage of the Busway heading towards Addenbrooke’s but not on the return since the Busway’s enforced northbound closure last year following safety concerns. This causes delays to buses from the Hospital into the city centre in the busy morning peak.

Four buses an hour are provided (a half hourly U1 and a slight variation half hourly U2) on Universal subsidised by the University of Cambridge. Introduced in 2016 it replaced the Uni4 service operated by Stagecoach and notably, the route has just been upgraded with a fleet of nine Mellor Sigma 12 electric buses, launched at the end of last month, in conjunction with a new eight year contract awarded to Whippet by the University.

I was in Cambridge on Tuesday so gave these new buses a try out. Traffic had been its usual congested self earlier in the morning and by 11:30 reliability on Universal was still suffering with half hour gaps between buses. Eventually a bus arrived and about a dozen passengers boarded to travel along the Busway to Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

The Mellor Sigma 12 buses are impressively roomy inside and come fitted with smart looking seats and good to see ten accessible seats with no steps apart from six tip ups in the nearside wheelchair and offside buggy areas (three either side).

The buses have seat back usb, stop buttons and wire free mobile phone holders although I noticed one has already snapped off.

A route map is displayed on the cove panels….

… but the next stop display wasn’t working on the bus I travelled on and I understand there have been some technical teething problems.

At one time Go Whippet operated a number of routes across Cambridgeshire as well as on the Busway (alongside Stagecoach’s route A and B, it operated route C from St Ives to Cambridge), but in more recent times, apart from Universal U1/U2 and other contracts for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, the company now runs three routes in Cambridgeshire to a right angled triangle shape.

The X3 (with a companion X2) between Cambridge and Huntingdon is the hypotenuse; the 18 between Cambridge and St Neots the base; and the 66 between St Neots and Huntingdon the upright side.

It makes for a nice round trip taking in all three routes which I attempted on another visit to Cambridge on Wednesday last week.

Except my plan to travel clockwise 18-66-X3 around the triangle was thwarted when I arrived in Cambridge at 11:30 to be met by a rash of cancellations “for operational reasons” including my intended 11:45 route 18 to St Neots.

But at least the Company’s social media was keeping passengers updated and as a seasoned traveller I’m used to changing plans at a few minutes notice, especially these days with unreliability being what it is, so decided to take the 12:00 X3 departure from Drummer Street bus station instead, having checked the connecting 66/18 (which are operationally linked in St Neots) was running – it was.

These buses and almost all the other buses I saw were the cascaded Volvo/Wright Eclipse vehicles which used to run on Universal and confusingly still carry the branding for that route both on the exterior…

…. and inside too.

Although in St Neots I came across one of the company’s 15 year old Scania OmniCity double deck buses in Whippet Express branding.

This seems to be for journeys numbered X2 between Cambridge and Huntingdon but was not being used on that route that Wednesday. indeed I saw an ex London red liveried OmniCity in service on the X2 but displaying X3 in the destination blind. So it came over as a bit muddled.

Nevertheless the X3 I travelled on carried a good number of passengers including some who alighted in Cambourne famous for all sorts of exciting plans for different transport links into Cambridge including a light rail/metro.

The 66, which has a few journeys extended beyound Huntingdon/Godmanchester to Fenstanton…

… does a fair bit of meandering as it leaves Huntingdon during which we dropped around eight passengers off with just a few on board for the rest of the journey down to St Neots.

The company’s fleet totals around 40 and in addition to the just acquired nine electric Mellor ‘Sigma 12’ electrics, the mainstay are 11 Wright Eclipse and two Plaxton bodied Volvo B7RLE buses many of which used to be on the Universal route. There are five Scanias, a couple of ADL Enviro200s and a Mellor ‘Sigma 10’.

Bus stop displays looked good as I travelled around with timetables for routes X2/X3 and a network map posted at Huntingdon bus station…

… and at Drummer Street bus station’s Bay 3 in Cambridge

… but I couldn’t see details of route 18 displayed at its departure bay (Bay 5) at Drummer Street….

… and this display looked a bit messy in Godmanchester incuding reference to route 478 which I think has been withdrawn and replaced.

Impressive of all during my route sampling was finding the company’s Cambridgeshire timetable book, complete with network map, available to pick up from dispensers on board buses.

It’s a straightforward publication, easy to follow and good to see.

The company’s website is functional with bus timetables (including vehicle tracking for each route), fares and maps together with a page showing bus tracking for all routes across the network as well as ideas for days out by bus in the area.

The tracking looks good but in reality is not as useful as you might at first think as I found on Tuesday when the Universal service was disrupted.

At one point only one vehicle was showing on the route whereas the network map showed more icons, but you have to interrogate each one to find out what route it’s on.

Whippet offers a range of rover tickets covering Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Neots and an All Zones version which costs £7 for a day, £26 for seven days and £85 for 28 days. The company is participating in the DfT funded £2 maximum single fare.

At one time Whippet’s routes covered more of Cambridgeshire including some journeys on route X3 extending beyond Huntingdon to Corby as captured here in October 2021 when I was in Thrapston having tried out the (at that time) newly introduced ‘ting’ DRT. I recall it didn’t carry many passengers into Huntingdon so I’m not surprised that section of route was withdrawn.

Then in March this year when I was trying out the new look ‘ting’ operated by Vectare I came across a Whippet Puppy operating route X3 through Papworth Everard. I suspect this bus may be on the way out following the delivery of the new Sigma electric buses.

Back in the Lee family ownership era and Whippet ran coaches to many destinations and more recently the company has become a substantial contractor for FlixBus increasing its commitment this year to 14 coaches with an announcement in February the fleet would all be replaced with new MAN Neoplan P20s vehicles. Whippet and Flixbus launched the first direct Manchester, Birmingham, Cambridge and London to Paris express service back in summer 2022.

Whippet has a long pedigree (!) and a deserved good reputation. Aside from current ‘operational issues’ and the impact of Cambridge’s traffic congestions it continues to do a good job serving this area of Cambridgeshire.

Roger French

Previous AtoZ blogs: Avanti West Coast, Blackpool Transport, Chiltern Railways, Delaine Buses, Ensignbus, Faresaver, Grand Central, Hull Trains, Ipswich Buses, JMB Travel, Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire, Lynx, Isle of Man Transport Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Nottingham City Transport, (London) Overground, Preston Bus, Reading Buses, Southern Vectis, trentbarton, unō, Volks Railway.

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and a bonus Book Review blog coming tomorrow, Su.

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