Seen Around

Tuesday 31st October 2023

It’s the end of another month so time for a recap of those things that caught my eye as I travelled around that may have made it into an X but didn’t make it into a full blown blog.

Travelcard reprieve

Let’s start with the excellent news that a compromise was indeed found in negotiations between TfL and the Train Operating Companies meaning Travelcard is saved albeit with a 3% price rise over the normal annual increase in the new year which is a small price to pay for the convenience of using the ticket as outlined in previous blogs. Let’s hope the same reprieve will be announced soon for all those busy ticket offices at railway stations including St Albans City where this photo of the queue (which stretched outside the door) was snapped at 09:35 last Thursday by John Crowhurst.

First Electrics in York

It was good to see the first of the soon to be all electric bus fleet for the city of York now on the road when I visited a couple of weeks ago. The full order includes 53 Wrightbus GB Kite Electroliner single deckers and StreetDeck Electroliner double deckers costing First Bus £13 million with a further £10.2 million funding secured by City of York Council from the Government’s ZEBRA scheme. It’s reckoned the city’s fully electric fleet will be completed by the end of the year.

And very smart they look to which is just as well as the rest of the fleet still hanging on comprises a Rag, Tag and Bobtail collection of liveries which does nothing to enhance the image with Park & Ride liveried buses on ordinary bus routes and ordinary liveried buses on Park & Ride.

Stagecoach electrics in Cambridge

Another city with the benefit of significant recent investment is Cambridge and I was impressed to see some of the 30 strong fleet of MCV-bodied Volvo BZL double deckers on Park & Ride and Citi route 2 when in the city earlier this month. The £17 million investment has been funded by the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, Greater Cambridge Partnership, Stagecoach East and the DfT’s ZEBRA fund. It means Stagecoach’s Cambridge fleet is now a third electric.

I quite liked the livery (as used on a pair of BYD/ADL Enviro400EVs since February 2020) with lots of plain white and hope it can be kept clean during the winter but it is a shame to lose the colour coding previously used for the different Park & Ride routes in the city which I thought was very helpful in identifying what bus went where.

I took a ride on one and it certainly is impressively smooth and quiet. Using them on the frequent Park & Ride routes means they really do make an impact in the city centre where the routes congregate.

More Seatfrog woes

I’ve given up on Seatfrog now. It’s the app which allows you to bid for a First Class upgrade on a number of train companies’ servcies but as previous blog reports have shown is marred in obtuseness and a lack of transparency. My latest experience was having a go at bidding to upgrade a journey on a Sunday lunch time a couple of weeks ago from Darlington to KIngs Cross. Bidding had already reached £28 when I logged on but with the invitation to “skip the auction and upgrade instantly for £95”. I didn’t; and was pleased I didn’t as when I boarded the train at Darlington the Train Manager invited any passengers wanting to upgrade to come down to First Class and take advantage of LNER’s Weekend Upgrade offer for £45. I stayed in Standard Class, and was pleased I hadn’t unnecessarily shelled out £50 more than I needed had I pursued an upgrade.

Yellow Buses lives on

A throwback to the good old days of Yellow Buses and Bournemouth Transport for nostalgia fans is available just up from Bournemouth Square where you’ll find the long standing Travel Shop still in situ and ready for business. Except it is of course no more; more now being the operative word as it’s the operator.

Also seen in York….

Nice to see the smart newly branded “York locals” operated by East Yorkshire following that company’s tender gain of cross city hourly route 12 between Foxwood and Monks Cross…

… but sad to see the (Nova 3) TransPennine Express (TPE) Class 68 locomotive on a journey to Scarborough which will soon be a thing of the past with the premature withdrawal of these deep throated sounding engines and the rather lovely Mark 5 coaches they pushed and pulled along. It’ll be interesting to see where they end up and a shame many busy TPE journeys will now revert back to three coaches instead of the welcome increase these trains offered to five. That’s progress for you.

Meanwhile I spotted this poster in a city centre bus shelter letting us all know why “there’s never been a better time to get the bus” in York. But I wonder how many passengers stop and read something like this.

Competition for Bus Shelter of the Year Award hots up

With Award season in full swing it’s not long to go to the BusAndTrainUser Awards for 2023 and already entries are flooding in including this lovely bus shelter sited in Hawkesden Road, St Neots. Sharp eyed regular readers will instantly recognise it as one I featured in a blog in October 2021 as I waited for my first ride on the newly introduced ‘ting’ branded DRT service in the town.

I made the observation then that the windows were so filthy you just couldn’t see out and two years later they’re in exactly the same state, except there are two improvements to report. Firstly, as you can see, a new timetable is on display, except sadly its for a shuttle bus for the St Neots Festival that was back in June…

… but in better news someone has punched a hole in the side of the shelter facing oncoming traffic so you can now see a bus approaching. Great stuff. Good to see all this public funding going into buses really making a difference where it matters.

Back street Burgess Hill

It’s always fascinating to see what you can find on pieces of waste land used as storage areas behind former town centre Post Office buildings … as with this spotted in Burgess Hill.

X time

Time for a quick look at what’s been seen on the X social media channel. First up this trumpeting email from the DfT boasting about redirecting HS2 funding so the £2 bus fare cap can be extended until the end of next year. Many respondents made the observation the former is capital expenditure and the latter is revenue expenditure, so much so that X added a contextual warning at the bottom of the post.

Over in Manchester the Bee Network is now putting out posts which haven’t yet quite got the hang of explaining the difference between a tram and a bus. I can’t believe all Bee Network bus routes were terminating at Rochdale Railway Station as stated below. Someone needs to remember they now run buses as well as trams.

Stop that rattle

I enjoyed my rattle free journeys with Whippet earlier this month, helped by the tried and tested technical solution of …

… stuffing an old timetable dated March 2023 between the side destination blind case and the window. Perfect peace.

Huntingdon’s bus station facilities

I had time to explore Huntingdon’s rather rudimentary bus station while passing through recently and it was good to see an electronic departure listing albeit displaying a mixture of real and scheduled timings (but see next item) …

… and a typical “caff” selling typical bus station “caff” food…

… and pleasingly unisex toilet cubicles which were in a very clean and presentable state inside.

Herts cracks the scheduled and real time confusion

Well done to Hertfordshire County Council which is rolling out new electronic departure signs which clearly show both scheduled departures and, where available, the expected real time departure too.

At last.

Welsh language takes off in St Neots

Meanwhile back in St Neots I wondered what Dews Coaches’ passengers make of the dual language posters and information still on display on its former Cardiff Buses Scania with Optare Olympus body.

Know your London terminals

As we all know, rail ticketing can be a quagmire of confusion not least when travelling to London on trains using the Thameslink core. Do you know the diffence between buying a ticket from a Ticket Vending Machine to London Terminals and London Thameslink? Thankfully a handy poster by the ticket office at St Neots explained all.

Plymouth Citybus cuts itself off

It’s never easy running a bus company and keeping on top of vehicle presentation out on the road, not least when panels with vinyls on them need replacing from time to time or someone goes and sticks an advert board over company branding as illustrated below on my recent visit to Plymouth.

Window pane pain

On the same theme, I see that Arriva are supporting the worthy charity in the north west – Zoë’s Place Baby Hospice with an overall painted bus giving the worthy charity some excellent promotion. But what a shame that lower deck window needed replacing. I hope not too many children are distressed at seeing the damaged teddy bear.

Busway blues

Why do I get the feeling the shine has come off the Cambridge Busway? It’s not helped by the northbound lane of the southern end of the Busway still being out of commission and growing weeds and foliage fast…

… but even the well used northern end from the city to St Ives can’t even muster a timetable in the bespoke branded case in Bay 12 of Drummer Street bus station.

Cornwall shows it can be done

It was good to see the new timetable book for the winter season available when I called into the Newquay travel office – open on Saturday when I visited at the beginning of the month (in the afternoon too – and it’s open Sundays – but bizarrely Truro isn’t) and great that it continues to be fully comprehensive with timetables and a network map showing every bus route including First Kernow’s commercial operations. But, I really think they’re missing a trick by not including detailed route maps of the various towns served rather than just a zonal boundary. Routes taken in some towns – Newquay for example – are a complete mystery if you don’t know.

Meanwhile, First Kernow’s route branding really needs updating with the U1 running between Falmouth and Newquay for some time whereas buses still show it only running as far as Truro…

… and the “daytripper” brand which only lasted a few weeks back in summer 2021 continues to promote …. well, nothing really.

GTR’s engineering works confusion

All credit to GTR for displaying posters at its stations listing upcoming engineering works (maybe we’ll even see timetables displayed again one day) but the language used can be very misleading. You’d be forgiven for thinking it best to avoid travelling on the Brighton Main Line over the weekend of 21/22 October when work was carried out between Gatwick Airport and Purley, except it just meant two of the four tracks were closed and a modified service via Redhill.

But, much worse was the situation on Sunday 8th October when engineering works closed the Brighton Main Line south of Three Bridges on the same day Brighton & Hove Albion were playing against Liverpool at home which always involves lots of buses on extra Park & Ride operations. Southern’s X feed had gone into overdrive in the days leading up to the Sunday pretty much advising passengers not to travel to intermediate stations between Three Bridges and Brighton (it erroneously stated those stations will have “no services” – see below) and pleading with passengers travelling to Brighton to stay on the diverted trains via Littlehampton and enjoy the full 2 hour mystery trip from Victoria.

Someone must have noticed the “no services” bit as it was clarified a bit later (below) they meant “no train service”.

But frankly a half hourly rail replacement bus service between Brighton and Three Bridges is hopelessly inadequately for the numbers travelling on a Sunday.

Chaos ensued. And guess what?

On Sunday just gone (29th) exactly the same thing happened again with no trains south of Three Bridges and the Seagulls playing Fulham at home. This time there were no dire warnings on X but a friend who was travelling kept me in touch with the carnage … “buses leaving Brighton full up, not calling at intermediate stations” …. “Hassocks left without a service for over an hour” … “buses seen full and standing passing through Cuckfield” … “a full and standing double deck turns up, some de-bus and enough for us to board forThree Bridges. Looks like even standing on top deck it’s that bad.” … “absolutely no signs at Three Bridges indicating where to queue for the few buses running” … and so it went on.

The next Albion home game on a Sunday is on Sunday week, 12th November, but I’m relived to see the Brighton Main Line is actually operating normally that day…. well, who knows, it might be “closed” between Gatwick Airport and Purley again!

What’s that glass screen for?

I called into MerseyTravel’s Queen Square Travel Shop while in Liverpool to see how it was coping now it didn’t have to display a comprehensive selection of timetable leaflets and maps for all the bus routes in the region – as we all know, passengers don’t want to be bothered with marketing and publicity gimmicks like that anymore – and saw the freed up space has been sublet to Greggs with some rather nice seats and tables to eat a sausage roll and drink a cup of tea.

But, as one commentator on X observed the difference between the counters and consequential approachability of the staff is now quite marked between Greggs…

… and MerseyTravel.

EXCLUSIVE: Avanti West Coast now operate the Brighton Main Line

Yes, it’s true. Staff at GTR’s Thameslink told me so. As readers will know, barely a month goes by without me reporting frustrations with Train Company Delay Repay teams who seem to have to qualify as complete incompetents to do the job while they continue to hide themselves away from passengers behind an impenetrable wall of non two-way communication. My latest frustration was claiming for a two-hour delay returning from the Young Bus Managers Conference in Liverpool with an hour’s delay on Avanti West Coast still recovering from an earlier incident which closed the line north of Euston only to be followed by another hour’s delay on Thameslink due to signalling problems that had gone on all day between Gatwick Airport and Haywards Heath.

I submitted two claims – one to Avanti West Coast for the hour’s delay into Euston – that got resolved within 48 hours and my Rail Travel Voucher arrived in yesterday’s post – well done Avanti – and the other to Thameslink which replied

I sent the following email to Thameslink’s Customer Service team on 26th October and at the time of writing await their reply. I’ll print it in next month’s round up.

Bring your own seat

And finally for this month, with Thameslink trains getting busier and busier and passengers frequently needing to stand on many journeys despite most trains on the main routes being 12 coaches who can blame this resourceful passenger spotted on a recent journey I made who travels with his very own seat.

Just don’t let Seatfrog know. They’ll want to charge for upgrading.

More next month.

Roger French

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