Stagecoach begins competing with Brighton & Hove

Thursday 16th May 2024

This week has seen Stagecoach South East re-enter the Brighton-Eastbourne market competing directly with both Brighton & Hove (B&H) and Southern Rail in East Sussex while in neighbouring West Sussex, B&H’s sister company, Metrobus, has revved up its route 273 to better serve the Crawley-Brighton market.

The Stagecoach South East initiative is a new Eastbourne based Monday to Saturday daytime hourly route 701 linking that genteel coastal town with Seaford, Newhaven and Brighton. And yes, Brighton & Hove has been successfully providing a high profile, up to nine-buses-an-hour, Coaster branded route along this corridor enjoying spectacular growth in passengers over many years on its routes 12/12A/12X, but the 701 does add something different.

Instead of continuing west along the A259 coast road after Newhaven, it heads north along what has been a bus-less A26 for many years before joining the A27 at Beddingham…

… then taking the by-pass avoiding Lewes…

… and entering Brighton past the Universities at Falmer and Moulsecoomb along the A270 to terminate at the Old Steine.

It’s a four bus operation commencing as early as 05:40 from Eastbourne to enable a first journey back from Brighton at 07:30. Oddly the last journey is as early as 16:25 from Eastbourne which forms the 18:30 back from Brighton.

That’s the downside of an Eastbourne based route operating an 85 minute journey and why, in history, the Brighton Eastbourne corridor was always operated from Southdown’s bus garages at both ends of the route in Brighton (which passed to B&H on its formation in 1986) and Eastbourne (as well as Seaford, but that’s showing my age).

Stagecoach inherited Southdown’s Eastbourne and Seaford based operations on the route when it bought the company in 1989 but sold these on to B&H in 2005 along with its Lewes based services.

In more recent years B&H has operated the route from its expanded Newhaven base as well as an outstation in Eastbourne, which ironically sees its buses stabled at the Stagecoach bus garage in the town which it acquired after buying Eastbourne Buses in 2008.

I imagine Stagecoach will say it’s aiming to attract students at Sussex and Brighton Universities living in Eastbourne, Seaford and Newhaven to use route 701 as an alternative to Southern Rail’s frequent trains linking those towns with university buildings at Falmer and Mousecoomb. That’s not going to be easy with the train offering far more attractive journey times and discounted travel for students. And if you’re going for the student market with a new bus route you start it in September, not the middle of May!

Interestingly, Stagecoach tried a similar venture way back in 1995 and 1996 with a route 714 running from Eastbourne to Newhaven and then via Bedingham to Brighton but even though it also included Lewes rather than the by-pass (by absorbing a Lewes Brighton short journey on route 28 which Stagecoach ran at that time), it failed.

There’s no doubt Stagecoach will be expecting route 701 to cream off passengers enjoying the “turn-up-and-go” aspect of B&H’s offering along the route east of Newhaven which I recently reported has been enhanced with a fleet of brand new buses offering great comfort on board and a high profile livery.

Is this the start of a new aggressive stance from Stagecoach South East looking enviously over its south western flank at what B&H is achieving?

Or is it a reflection of being a bit miffed from a Bus Service Improvement Plan funded foray last year when B&H successfully gained the East Sussex County Council tender and extended its Brighton-Lewes route every half hour over to Hailsham and then down into Eastbourne along a busy corridor served by Stagecoach bus routes?

I took a ride from Brighton to Eastbourne and back on route 701’s first day on Monday and naturally numbers travelling comprised a few first-day-bus-route-riders-ticking-the-box-to-say-they’ve-done-it as well as curious and puzzled looks from passengers at bus stops along the way who, in some cases, the driver persuaded to come on board and give it a try.

We left Brighton at 10:30 heading up the Lewes Road towards Falmer with three of us intrepid first day explorers on board and just one joining as we inched our way passed every stop along Lewes Road at a crawl hoping for custom. Another first day try-outer joined at the A27 Ashcombe roundabout (having alighted from the Brighton bound bus) who travelled to Newhaven, and after that it was non stop for the next 15 minutes along the Lewes by-pass, the A27 and A26 to Newhaven, where after calling at the station, the next ten minutes is spent doing a complete rounder of the town’s one-way circuit including looping into the Lower Place bus stops and then another loop over at Denton Corner to serve another bus stop before heading east on the A259 to Eastbourne.

It’s a bit confusing for passengers with buses in both the Brighton and Eastbourne direction doing the circuit and serving the same bus stops including at Lower Place where traditionally only eastbound buses have called but now you can travel to Brighton from here – and just to add to the interest Stagecoach 701 buses are timed to almost meet there as happened on the journey I took with the Brighton bound bus arriving (photographed below) as we left towards Eastbourne and two B&H Coaster buses bound for Seaford and Eastbourne there too.

Some of us on board wondered about the logic of what comes across as a tortuous bit of route which, with Newhaven’s notorious traffic challenges (including a swing bridge and level crossing) seems to ‘take for ever’ and whether a more attractive option would be to go via the B2109 and serve the Paradise Park leisure park and garden centre instead of Newhaven town centre which, after all, does have B&H’s frequent services (nine buses an hour on the 12/12A/12X to Brighton and Seaford and six an hour to Eastbourne) and Southern Rail to Falmer and Moulsecoomb.

However, two tourists bound for Seven Sisters did join at Newhaven station with another two joining in Seaford who interestingly eschewed the 12X immediately in front of us.

Perhaps they’d have been better off on the 12X with its next stop audio/visual announcements as they missed their desired Seven Sisters stop on our display and announcement-less bus and got taken on to the next stop at Friston Pond, almost two and a half miles further on. Another passenger travelled from Denton to Seaford; with others to Eastbourne having boarded in Newhaven, Seaford and Eastbourne Old Town making for 13 of us on the journey in total.

We arrived into Eastbourne’s Cornfield Road just after the scheduled 11:55.

That’s 85 minutes. The journey time from Brighton to Newhaven Lower Place is 46 minutes and from there to Eastbourne 39 minutes.

Brighton & Hove’s every-20-minutes 12X takes 35 minutes along the A259 from Brighton Station to Newhaven (just 26 minutes from the Old Steine) and from there to Eastbourne the same 39 minutes as the 701. The all stops and circuit of Seaford, every-20-minutes, 12A, takes 94 minutes from Brighton Station and coincidentally 85 minutes from the Old Steine.

With Brighton & Hove having the advantage of both frequency and journey time, and for those passengers who are not paying the £2 fare or using concessionary passes, probably have the loyalty of a Brighton & Hove Saver ticket, it’s hard to see where Stagecoach are going to gain the custom needed to fund a four peak vehicle operation.

The 701 doesn’t run on Sundays which can be a very busy day for leisure passengers during the summer months on this popular corridor, although I appreciate not many students are out and about at Falmer that day.

The return journey I took from Eastbourne at 12:25 was quieter with just seven passengers at various points along the route.

The 701 appeared on some, but not all, of the real time signs along the route…

… and there were no printed timetables available although I overheard the driver tell one passenger they’re being printed.

It’s certainly an interesting development and a bit of a surprise as there’s no doubt B&H has done amazingly well on this corridor introducing improvements in frequencies, span of day, investment in new buses and, east of Peacehaven, the benefit of fantastic bus lanes. It’s no surprise the result has been spectacular growth in numbers of passengers travelling which has obviously not escaped Stagecoach’s attention.

But the days of wasteful head to head competition are surely now long behind us, especially in an era of statutory enhanced partnerships and franchising. If Stagecoach has four peak vehicles available for speculative investment I’m surprised there aren’t bus routes in its own back yard across Kent and the eastern side of East Sussex that couldn’t benefit from a frequency uplift or new links.

Like maybe the 10X, 1X and X3 for example?

Another development for Sussex’s inter-urban bus network this week has been a very welcome enhancement by Metrobus to its route 273 between Crawley and Brighton.

I must declare a personal interest that it’s one of my local bus routes serving Hassocks as well as the adjacent village of Hurstpierpoint.

Back in history this became a very popular route with, at one time, London Country and Southdown providing an hourly jointly run timetable, numbered 773 and ‘SeaLine’ branding and I can well remember in the early 1980s duplicate vehicles having to be deployed on sunny summer days between Hurstpierpoint and Brighton with buses coming south from Crawley already full. At one time the route was extended all the way to Guildford as part of the Green Line expansion in the mid 1980s. The route then became less popular with the train offering a much quicker journey time from Three Bridges and latterly it’s had a somewhat unattractive timetable of just seven journeys a day including a three and a half hour gap in the afternoon.

Now, the timetable has been improved with Metrobus keen to grow the Crawley to Brighton market such that an hourly frequency is back for much of the day and the added journeys have been speeded up by missing out Bolney and Hickstead thereby taking advantage of the fast flowing A23.

Other improvements include journeys south of Patcham in Brighton becoming limited stop by removing eight bus stops within the city boundary and, for the first time for many years, restoring a Sunday timetable.

I took a ride up to Crawley and back on Monday morning, taking a long established journey – the peak hour 07:26 ex Brighton – and on boarding the bus between Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint it had 15 already on board. This journey continues to serve Hickstead and Bolney and we had custom from both. Overall we carried 24 adults and four children but the main issue was congestion entering Crawley.

The 273 passes over the level crossing just west of Crawley railway station on the busy line to Horsham and the Arun Valley.

We got delayed for eight minutes in the long queue of traffic and didn’t reach Crawley’s bus station until 08:50, 13 minutes late.

I returned back to Brighton on the next departure at 09:03 which used the new faster route down the A23 with a scheduled arrival of 10:04 in the Old Steine (a couple of later journeys are given a 59 minute journey time).

As the bus was departing 27 minutes before the concessionary pass witching hour I was surprised to see so many seniors waiting to board, but it turned out they were waiting for a coach tour to take them off somewhere even nicer than Brighton (can’t think where).

We carried 10 passengers and it was noteworthy there were some positive comments about the improved journey time. Much of this is perception of course, as the next journey (10:03 from Crawley) operates via the old route and arrives in Brighton at 11:06, so only taking two minutes longer.

It certainly seems much quicker, staying on the A23, as we passed the turn offs for Bolney and Hickstead.

As you’d expect from Metrobus there were supplies of new leaflets available from the Crawley Travel Shop, which impressively was open for business even before 09:00…

… and there were also supplies on the three buses I travelled on including a journey back from Brighton to Hassocks in the afternoon after my trip to Eastbourne.

Bus stop display timetables had also been updated throughout the route, including in Brighton. It just shows these things can be done and distinguishes quality operators like Metrobus from those mediocre and poor bus companies. It’s also good to see West Sussex rolling out its investment in hundreds of new real time signs across the county thanks to Bus Service Improvement Funding, including in the village of Hurstpierpoint.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the improved 273 timetable leads to enough growth in passengers to offset the extra costs. I get the impression there’s an appetite for more inter-urban bus travel among passengers with such markets growing around the country, so here’s hoping Crawley to Brighton becomes another one, especially for my vested interest.

Roger French

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