Every route 100. 5 of 26.

Saturday 2nd March

I’m back in Scotland for this fifth journey exploring all Britain’s 26 bus routes numbered 100, and it’s another short one

Or should I use the plural, as it’s really two mini town routes for the price of one, and in my case just £1.65 for a complete five mile rounder covering both legs in 28 minutes.

This route 100 can be found in Campbeltown in wonderful Argyle & Bute country. It’s 136 miles by coach from Glasgow and located almost at the end of the long and scenic Kintyre peninsular immortalised by Paul McCartney & Wings and indeed, a memorial to Linda can be found in the town.

I’d visited Campbeltown before when I took a ride down to Southend at the southern tip of the peninsula right on the Mull of Kintyre but this time the priority was to take a round trip on the two legged route 100 which, aside from school journeys, runs half hourly between 09:00 and 17:00 linking the residential area of Meadows in the south of the town and Calton in the north with the town centre, a Co-op and a smallish Tesco.

The route involves a clockwise loop around both residential areas but the oddball thing is the 11:00 and 11:30 departures from Campbeltown’s bus terminal (aka two rather down at heel, with two missing panels, bus shelters) are numbered 440 rather than 100 as they’re subsidised by Argyll & Bute Council whereas the rest of the journeys are run commercially by West Coast Motors.

It seems a very unnecessary complication as it means bus stop specific departure lists show an hour’s gap under route 100 and just two departures under route 440….

… and the real time departure screen at Campbeltown’s bus terminus purports to show two different routes (ironically to Campbeltown) whereas there’s just the one.

My guess is this arises because to make the route commercial for West Coast Motors it needs to give the driver a meal break and have a one shift operation but the Council are willing to pay for the two infill journeys to make the timetable convenient for passengers without a long gap late morning. It looks like other subsidised routes are all numbered 4xx so I guess it wanted these two round trips similarly numbered. It’s a ridiculous complication I’ve not come across anywhere else.

I caught the 10:30 route 100 – it wouldn’t have done to have gone all that way and got a 440 – it would have ruined the authenticity of this blog series for a start – and much to the bemusement of William, the lovely driver, I did a complete circuit.

As the bus arrived from Calton, one passenger alighted at the bus terminal with four staying on and alighting at the next stop in the town centre, at a bus stop appropriately enough called Main Street, where a fresh contingent of three boarded to go back home to the Meadows.

As we wandered around the Meadows circuit we swapped those three for another three, two of who alighted in Main Street and one went to Tesco.

It was just me on board for the circuit around Calton until we got back to Tesco where we picked a new passenger up to head home to Meadows and I alighted at the next stop, back at the bus terminal, where we arrived at 10:56, just 26 minutes after setting off.

William reckoned it was a typical loading for the journey/s but thought it might be busier in the afternoon. As the rain set in around lunch time in Campbeltown I think his optimism may have been misplaced.

Before signing off for this blog, on the theme of 100, a BIG shout out to the Guildford based Safeguard bus company which is celebrating 100 years of operation in two weeks time on Saturday 16th March. There’s a whole host of attractions being laid on including community celebrations from noon at the Cathedral and heritage buses running on three local routes. It looks to be a very special day celebrating a special bus company’s centenary.

Roger French

Did you catch the first four ‘Every route 100’ blogs? Here’s 1 of 26 (Stevenage-Hitchin) 2 of 26 (Crawley-Redhill), 3 of 26 (Lincoln-Scunthorpe) and 4 of 26 (Glasgow-Riverside Museum).

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS with occasional Su extras, including tomorrow.

Comments on today’s blog are welcome but please keep them relevant to the blog topic, avoid personal insults and add your name (or an identifier). Thank you.

16 thoughts on “Every route 100. 5 of 26.”

  1. With those loadings it does not sound much of a commercial proposition. Hopefully the school journeys add significantly to the days total passengers

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Surrey County Council always used to have subsidised journeys on a route a different number from the main route, even if it was the same operator that provided the commercial journeys

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Same situation on Merseyside for 20 years after d-reg, were Merseytravel tendered services showed different numbers from the main commercial services[normally between 100 & 250, but their were exceptions, particularly when Merseybus launched a mini bus network under the Merseymini brand from 1988] which meant you had some absurd numbers for tendered services, like in Liverpool the Merseytravel number for 18 Liverpool-Croxteth Park was 198 [as their was already a 118 & 218], the Merseytravel number scheme didn’t fit in with the Crosville H series numbers, so you had numbers like 143 being Merseytravel number for H3

      SM

      Like

  3. This shows that even on the simplest little route, it’s possible for the authorities to add complexity and make bus travel more confusing than it needs to be.

    Thank you Roger for travelling all that way from Hassocks to bring us this experience.

    Peter Murnaghan

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It seems a little early for the driver to take a lunch break

      That sort of low frequency service is only really likely to attract shoppers who tend to go out either AM or PM. Having a gap in the service say 12:00 to 13:00
      would not matter that much. The middle of the day is usually quiet wit shopping services

      Like

    2. Avon used to be the same with subsidised journeys being numbered 500 and above. So my local route was the 4 and became 504 in the evenings and on Sundays. The fares were also subsidised and not round numbers. If the fare on the 4 was £1 then the 504 would be something like 87p….

      Simon Mathieson

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The Avon situation was also mirrored in Cleveland. The 1 In Hartlepool became the 501, the 268/9 became 768/9, for instance

        Like

  4. Definitely seems a curious commercial service serving such small housing estates in such a small town, and seemingly with the sort of light loadings one would expect those areas to generate.

    It’s also unusual for the peak journeys to be commercial while some of the off peak journeys are tendered. Far more common in small towns for it to be the other way round, with journeys between schools being able to operate commercially using resource already bought-and-paid-for by school contracts whereas the journeys overlapping with school run times are prohibitively costly (even if quite well loaded) as they would require an extra peak bus and driver.

    Would be interested to know the story here. Is there perhaps some funding from an organisation other than the LA? Or with Campbeltown being West Coast Motors home town (still owned by one local family I think) do they even see a sort of community interest/ CSR case for running it commercially rather than a solely financial one?

    It’s all of these little local curiosities that make our industry so interesting!

    Like

  7. I assume the SCH “extra” service is interesting as there will be two vehicles, and drivers, out on the road at about the same time in the morning. I would guess one of those drivers covers the 440 ? Would have been interesting for you to have taken the 2nd 440 to see if the loadings were high or low ? Given the operator is in the town and is one of the smaller companies in the industry job roles are probably flexible, with a 2nd driver probably prepping any private hire, doing paperwork , arranging MOT/COF work etc on the vehicles (if its Wednesday its doing the payroll kind of thing). It might be too that the 440 has a kind of subsidy that would not be justified if it was mearly a “contribution” to a commercial 100 , and indeed risking the kerfuffle of re-tendering etc a route the authority is happy with, and a small “de-minimis” contribution gives the local authority flexibility in its budget ( I dont know specifics of Scots law and permissions on road public transport these days).

    Like

  8. The holding company Craig of Cambeltown is the major operator in Kintyre with operations in Oban, Glasgow, Mull, and Bute. They are also operate all Scottish Citilink services to Kintyre and Oban from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Border Buses in Nothumberland is an associated company. The last accounts show the company is highly profitable. I doubt the local services are seriously subsidised. It is likely given the operation is based on a number of small depots that enginerring staff may cover some peak duties as was the case with MacBraynes where drivers had both PSV and HGV licences.
    Bustimes.org indicates that three vehicles interwork local sevices, both commercial and tendered, so the mid morning gap in the 100 may not be due the drivers statutory break.

    Robin

    Liked by 2 people

  9. In Nottinghamshire the tendered services have a series of route numbers which define which district council area they are in. So when there were routes in Bassetlaw – before DRT swept them away – the tendered routes began with 1. If the route is in Mansfield it begins with a 2, the second and third digits fit in with other, local, commercial route numbers. There are two route 18’s – one in Mansfield numbered 218 – and one in Broxtowe numbered 518. Not always adhered to as the 141 in Mansfield didn’t change number when it became tendered. All this just adds confusion and uncertainty which puts people off public transport, keep it simple was always my motto!

    Another Arriva escapeeee

    Like

  10. Most people walk into town or drive. I think if everyhouse got a leaflet and timetable it would uplift use. But Campbletown is not the sort of place where you would see anything proactive!

    Like

  11. Argyll and Bute has a large number of services 4xx which are council supported services – some have a commercial equivalent number xx. At a quick glance, your 100/440 seems to be one of the few that does not follow the xx/4xx convention of simply adding a 4 for the council supported service(s) and in these instance the xx and 4xx both follow the same route. Mull examples of the xx/4xx convention are 95/495 and 96/496.

    Other services not following the xx/4xx convtion are 200/442 Campbeltown – Machrihanish and 300/445 Campbeltown – Carradale.

    You can find a lot of timetables for Argyll and Bute at West Coast Motors https://www.westcoastmotors.co.uk/services who is the major bus provider. And good maps.

    Also https://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/public-transport/timetables-directory

    I do not agree with your comment “ridiculous complication” – surely it is a simple case of Argyll and Bute Council wishing to clearly and easily identify which services are council supported and are not commercial.

    TW

    Like

Comments are closed.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑