Saturday 13th April 2024
The eighth route 100 to be featured in this fortnightly series must rank as one of the quirkiest. It’s Arriva’s second of that Company’s two routes numbered 100 but unlike its busy Stevenage to Luton route already featured, and certainly unlike the lengthy Manchester to Warrington featured last time, this 100 is just 2.3 miles in length and takes only eight or nine minutes (depending on direction) to get from one end to the other making it the shortest of all 26 routes across the Country numbered 100 in both mileage and journey time.
It also operates to a somewhat inconsistent timetable with just ten journeys between 06:42 and 18:11 and only on Mondays to Fridays with no service at the weekends. Furthermore there are inconvenient gaps in its irregular weekday frequency including no departures for much of the morning including almost a two and a half hour gap between 09:32 and 11:57.
You’ll find this oddball route 100 between Chatham bus station and a relatively new residential development on St Mary’s Island located just north of the town centre which is its raison d’être – to provide a link between the two, working to a clockwise loop arrangement around the Island.
Residents aren’t completely marooned at the weekend as Saturdays see Nu-Venture provide a two hourly service (five return journeys) numbered 151 and on Sundays there are journeys at 08:23, 10:23 and 19:29 from the Island.
I caught the first bus back on a Friday from Chatham to St Mary’s Island at 11:57 after the two and a half hour gap, intrigued to see how many others would be travelling.
Three boarded with me. One travelling to the bus stop as we crossed the Marina on to the Island …
… and two alighted on the Island itself with its modern style accommodation and twisty narrow road so typical of this kind of development and not built with buses in mind.
Before reaching the Island we’d crossed over the A289 which dives into the Medway Tunnel then becoming a Rochester by-pass taking traffic to where the M2 becomes the A2 into London.
After pausing for a minute at the ‘terminal ‘bus stop’ halfway around the loop …
… and suitably marked …
… the journey back saw one passenger picked up on the Island and a family of three adults and two children closer to Chatham’s bus staton at St Georges Centre where other frequent services are also available, including routes 1 and 2.
Unsurprisingly we weren’t exactly over subscribed.
And that’s about it. Short and sweet. Just like this route 100.
Roger French
Did you catch the first seven ‘Every route 100’ blogs? Here’s 1 of 26 (Stevenage-Hitchin) 2 of 26 (Crawley-Redhill), 3 of 26 (Lincoln-Scunthorpe), 4 of 26 (Glasgow-Riverside Museum), 5 of 26 (Campbeltown local), 6 of 26 (Guildford’s Onslow Park & Ride), 7 of 26 (Warrington-Manchester).
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS.
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.
BusAndTrainUser 
All the hallmarks of a route funded by some S106 money which will disappear in a years’ time sad to day. I assume the bus pops off to do a school run between half seven and half eight, which keeps the costs down but makes the route all but useless if you want to get into town for the start of a normal working day.
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They don’t learn, do they? Build a brand new, isolated, out-of-town development with roads unsuitable for buses, put on an erratic, infrequent “service” that is too irregular to be attractive, then wonder why hardly anyone uses it. I’ll give it three months.
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Yet another badly designed estate and bus route which is doomed to fail as soon as the money runs out. It is of no use to anyone as it is far to infrequent. It will get the odd random passenger but that’s all
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This route has been running for some years now, it was indeed more regular when it started. Usage was never strong though. Nu Venture numbered the Saturday service as 100 from 23 March, splitting it off from the 151.
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St Mary’s Island dates back to nearly 30 years ago – though has taken in excess of 20 years to build out – and has had a bus service since the earliest days. The spine road was always intended to be a bus route, and for most of the time, it has been at least hourly.
It is an upmarket development and bus use was never going to be brilliant. But prior to Covid, it had a frequent early morning service to Chatham station which was well filled with London commuters. Many of these now work at home, significantly reducing the demand for buses.
What’s left is entirely commercial, except for Sundays. There are much more frequent services available a short walk away at the Dockside Outlet – marked on the map – but as a cul de sac, St Mary’s Island was never going to justify a high level of service (there are additional school services though). To anyone suggesting extending some of the Dockside services, this results in a significantly longer journey time on what is a fairly short route (it’s been tried) as well as disrupting the timetables of those services too.
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Perfect breadvan territory if this was still the mid-80s: small, narrow, low capacity vehicles driven by staff on low wages, at a higher frequency than would be justifiable for big buses.
But there are no vehicles now narrow enough to get round such roads, especially as roadside parking is the norm now even where houses have drives to park on, and no way would lower wages attract drivers given that the industry is struggling to attract at ‘full’ pay.
So, it’ll never be more than a socially-necessary service lingering on the edge of profitability and unable to justify frequencies high enough to make the service attractive – even assuming it takes people where they want to go rather than where the service planners assume they want to go.
The story of too many of today’s bus services, I fear.
A. Nony Mouse
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Perhaps more suitable nowadays to a small midi bus
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A sad indictment of the state of British planning and joined up thinking. Essentially abolished. What is the point of the two journeys to the rail station in the morning? I note the 17.10 from Victoria and the 17.14 from Cannon Street would both miss the 17.52 from town back to the island in the evening.
mikeC
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They’ll either be busy painting “exception bays” or dishing out parking fines if the new pavement parking ban comes in.
Steven
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