Z is for Z&S Transport

Saturday 2nd December 2023

And so to Z.

Z&S Transport is one of several small bus companies in the Buckinghamshire area around Aylesbury which have prospered from gaining bus tenders as well as contracts for school tansport and bus and coach hire. It’s typical of a whole genus of bus company that’s the backbone of many non commercial bus routes in counties across the country.

They may not be in the vanguard of innovation and investment nor up there with the high profile examples of best practice but they provide local authorities with a welcome low cost model to run tendered bus routes and contracts when finances are forever being tightened alongside competing claims on limited budgets.

The company’s website extols its values as “committed to being recognised as the best passenger transport provider in Buckinghamshire. Committed to ensuring a safe, friendly and flexible service in the most environmentally efficient manner; dedicated to meeting the needs of all our customers and employees.”

The company has been established for over 30 years and reckons it’s “one of the largest independently owned bus and coach operators in the UK” although obviously it’s not in the same ‘large’ league as, say, McGills, but I thought that was an interesting claim.

The company’s hire fleet has been involved in some high profile operations including being the sole provider of transport for the British Golf Masters in 2015 as well as supplying transport for the Rugby World Cup that same year.

It’s coach fleet presents a smart image and the company gets involved in a wide range of activity including corporate hires as well as day trips.

But it’s the company’s involvement in local bus routes this blog is more interested in which includes routes in the Aylesbury, MIlton Keynes and Thame areas of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Timetables for the eight daytime and six school routes are all available on the company’s website and are easily accessible from a hyperlinked menu, and can also be viewed simply by scrolling down albeit they’re not set out in numerical order.

The company used to operate tendered routes in Milton Keynes until that Council ceased these in April 2021 due to, in its wisdom, replacing them with the MK Connect DRT set up. I took a ride on these routes before they came to an end and recall enjoying travelling around some of the town’s lesser known suburbs as well as the surrounding area towards Bletchley and Newport Pagnell.

More recently I was in Milton Keynes again (autonomous bus riding) and took a ride on rural route 50 the company runs three/four times a day to Winslow and Great/Little Horwood along with eight other passengers…

… and in Thame the company runs the town bus network route 121 which provides half-hourly links to Warren Mead and hourly links to two other parts of the town on a virtually continual circuit. There weren’t many other passengers when I travelled in Thame, or when I saw the bus as it frequently crossed the town centre, but it’s obviously valued by those who use it, and I suspect it does well Hu taking school children to and from Lord Williams Upper School.

Another main offering is route K1 providing a half hourly local servcie in Aylesbury from the railway station to Armstrong Fields as well as route 165 linking Aylesbury/Stoke Mandeville Hospital with Leighton Buzzard every two hours via Wingrave, Aston Abbots and Cublington and route 110 running every two hours between Worminghall, Thame and Aylesbury.

There’s less frequent route 111 between Oakley, Thame and Aylesbury on Mondays and Fridays, route 112 providing one shopping return journey on Wednesdays and Fridays from Waddesdon to Thame and Aylesbury, route 113 does similar on Tuesdays and Thursdays between Oakley, Long Crendon and Thame and Prices Risborough and Wednesday shopping route 153 between Stewkley, Cublington, Aston Abbotts and Aylesbury.

Z&S Transport’s bus fleet includes eight ADL Enviro200s and one ADL Enviro 400 MMC together with four Dennis Tridents with Plaxton President bodies which are all former Metroline buses from London.

As you can see all the buses I saw and rode on in Milton Keynes and Thame were nicely presented and very clean too, which at this time of year isn’t always easy to achieve. The only thing that puzzled me was a cab door notice encouraging passengers to still keep 2 metres apart which can probably be ditched now.

That aside, Z&S Transport is a fitting way to end this series of fortnightly blogs over the last year in which I’ve tried to include a good number of smaller independently owned companies as well as some of the more well known publicly owned bus operators and a smattering of rail companies.

A new series with a different theme for 2024 begins next month.

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, Whippet, Xelabus. York Pullman.

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