Saturday 12th October 2024
Many apologies for the late running of this ‘Every route 100’ blog. This is due to ‘blog uploading congestion’ over the last couple of weeks so to get things back on schedule, welcome to a special weekend ‘Every route 100’ double with the next route 100 appearing in an extra Sunday blog tomorrow, leading to the inevitable route 100 blog bunching.
There’s just one route 100 in the whole of Yorkshire. And even that’s not exactly a high profile money earner that packs the passengers in. It’s one of those hyper-local between-the-peaks meandering bus routes on an hourly frequency linking as many residential roads it possibly can on a former council housing estate with the city centre.
It can be found in the city of Wakefield. Operated by Globe Holidays it takes just 32 minutes to do a round trip to the Eastmoor estate when the bus is able to cross link to another hourly local route (the 101) to Lofthouse Gate with two buses operating the two routes combined.
Here’s the timetable as found on the West Yorkshire Metro website.
And if you think that’s rather sparse on the number of intermediate timing points, then you can turn to the Bus Times website which at the other extreme has three or four timing points per minute of journey time on one section of the route.
The route can be found on Metro’s network map for Wakefield but you’d struggle to work out which way buses go around the circuit…
… so here’s my more detailed version using three different colours (and I’m not sure why Windhill Road is written upside down on the above map).
Buses leave the bus station on the blue line then after a circuit of Linton Road (bottom right) it (turns into light purple and) retraces its route along Park Lodge Lane to reach Eastmoor’s neighbourhood shops where it doesn’t pull into the Windmill Road turning circle then it heads north to do a circuit of the Harwood Road square before returning to Eastmoor’s neighbourhood shops and this time makes a turn in the Windmill Road turning circle to retrace its route (having turned green) via Linton Road again (bottom right) and back the way it had entered the estate to the bus station. Got it?
It did occure to me as we meandered around Eastmoor that it might work better to do a one way circuit….
Which could probably be achieved in 20 minutes and be easier for everyone to understand.
I took a ride on the 12:28 departure from Wakefield’s bus station – the Bus Times website timetable states it departs from Stand 4; in fact it’s Stand 2, but I expect the locals know that, and for strangers like me, luckily the departure board highlights Stand 2…
… and there’s a timetable at the Stand itself.
It wasn’t a busy journey. We carried two passengers. Both travelled to the second (Harewood Road square shaped) loop – the bit in light purple on my map.
We didn’t pick anyone else up. On the first passing of the shopping parade on Windmill Road we came across two Arriva buses operating on routes 102 and 103 – two more local circuitous routes serving Eastmoor as you can see on the Metro map – both running every 30 minutes – making Eastmoor well served by circuitous buses.
The second time we arrived at the shopping parade, we pulled into the turning circle as we were turning back on ourselves and the driver unsurprisingly turned to ask me where on earth I was going – wondering why I was doing the whole double circuit.
I quickly weighed up whether to admit I specialise in riding bus routes numbered 100 (which he might find too far fetched as an explanation) or tell him the more believable tale that 49 years ago I lived in this part of Wakefield when working for what was the West Riding bus company – part of the National Bus Company, and I was enjoying an almost-half-century-nostalgia-fest – which I was.
This led to a great chat on the short journey back to the bus station and I left the driver to head off on to the 101 to Lofthouse.
Roger French
Did you catch the other nineteen ‘Every route 100’ blogs so far? 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), 8 of 26 Chatham-St Mary’s Island, 9 of 26 St Paul’s-Wapping, 10 of 26 Syston-Melton Mowbray, 11 of 26 Wellington-Telford Sutton Hill, 12 of 26 Hanley-Stone, 13 of 26 Burgess Hill-Horsham, 14 of 26 Aylesbury-Milton Keynes, 15 Pontypridd-Royal Glamorgan Hospital, 16 Barry circular, 17 Farringdon Park-Larches (Preston), 18 Hastings Conquest Hospital-New Romney, 19 Morecambe-Lancaster University.
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and tomorrow Su for an extra ‘Every route 100’ blog.
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 
Roger’s yellow route would be useless for anyone who wanted to get the local shops in East Moor. One third of the estate would have a service to the shops and the other two thirds a service from the shops. The current service is untidy on the map, but seems a decent attempt at giving a link to both the local shops and the town centre. That said I wonder if this service really needs to exist at all given that Arriva 102 and 103 run every quarter of an hour through the area.
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Who on earth designs routes like these, or more worrying, who pays for them? I do wonder whether the new world will create even more nonsense like this.
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Actually it’s rather an elegant solution to covering three differrent traffic flows with no dead mileage:
– from the southern end of East Moor to the local shops (blue loop continuing as the pink route, returning via the green route)
– from the north end of East Moor to and from the local shops (the pink loop)
– from the southern end of East Moor to the town centre (green loop inbound, blue route return).
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It may be elegant in facilitating all of these options but the one data point we have suggests a lack of need for them all.
My own view is that overly indirect services and those which passengers don’t understand always get suboptimal usage.
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In the dim and distant past, a local councillor will have asked for a service to penetrative the estate for the old dears to use for shopping.
It will have been adjusted / revised to allow commuters and scholars to use it as well.
Times change; travelling habits change, but in LTA-land either no-one bothers to evaluate usage, or it cannot be changed for “political” reasons.
And so it will continue evermore. For those people promoting franchising of bus services ….. be afraid, be very afraid …. this nonsense will become the norm.
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Excellent summary, greenline727. The future is bleak in areas where franchising is taken hold or planning to. Transport for Wales – take note. Colours on a map mean nothing – get out and see what’s happening on the real world, or stick to destroying the rail network…
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@greenline727, @anon 09:19
And yet, initial results in Greater Manchester have showed that since Tranche 1 was introduced, revenue has been above budget (by around 20%), passenger numbers have grown, punctuality has improved.
What’s to fear?
Malc M
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It’s not comparing like for like though, is it Malc?
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which could mean they aren’t very good at budgeting revenue! 20% above last year would be a better result than 20% more than budgeted.
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@anon 21:23
Passenger numbers up
Punctuality up
Comparing revenue against pre-franchising is a red herring. Unless I am mistaken, TfGM’s policy is to offer cheaper fares (surely a benefit to passengers?) and multi-modal fares (again, surely a benefit to passengers?)
Malc M
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Passenger numbers up 5% according to TfGM which isn’t particularly out of kilter to what is being reported elsewhere. In fact in the same edition of a number of the trade press where TfGMs press release was reported on there was a medium sized operator reporting a 40% increase over 2 years thanks to the £2 fare cap (not like for like on period so you can’t make direct comparisons but it shows growth isn’t limited to TfGM at the moment and both growths would have benefitted from £2 fare caps either the slightly older local one or the national one). As Anon 21:23 said the 20% above budget in the first year says more about a badly compiled budget particularly as they are only reporting a 5% increase which suggests they expected to lose passengers in the first year.
Franchising may or may not be a positive but it is far to early to judge Manchester just yet. There are lots of people claiming Manchester shows a success, they haven’t finished rolling out implementation yet let alone having enough time to show a real trend of effect.
Dwarfer
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@dwarfer
20% increase in revenue (against budget) from only 5% increase in passenger numbers.
At first sight, that might indeed appear to be a flaw in the budget figures. Maybe it is. However, is revenue per passenger a single, uniform figure? If patronage growth is being driven by adults paying full fare, compared to, say concessionary pass holders (if revenue per pass holder is lower than the full fare), that could be a valid reason for differing figures.
Agreed, it is too early to judge conclusively whether franchising in Manchester has been a success. Nevertheless, early signs do appear encouraging, rather countering those commentators who are quick to paint a picture of franchising being something to fear.
Malc M
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This is the type of service that it will be claimed is vital for less mobile passengers, who can’t reach the main road routes.
But at the other end of the route, it barely penetrates the city centre – indeed the bus station is further away from much of the shopping area than the houses are from the main road routes.
So three passengers in half an hour – that’s got to be a subsidy per head pushing on for DRT levels…
KCC
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As with many similar short services in urban areas, it is a lifeline for a diminishing number of people who would be seriously inconvenienced if withdrawn. By memory, did not Arriva work the whole group (100-105) in the past, and withdrew from a couple of routes a few years back or lost the contract. It probably needs a “Bus Person” (all now retired it seems) to re-design the network, but in this case the vehicle obviously performs other peak work and thus costs should be marginal.
But as greenline727 points out, with franchising about to hit West Yorkshire, another clamouring for “London style” bus services and thus buses run for political reasons, will anyone be watching the costs? Council tax payers indeed need to be very afraid.
Terence Uden
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I see the hospital on the map, perhaps this service would do better if it served it? The elderly shoppers will also have lots of outpatient appointments (I speak as someone recently emerging from 7 years of being a carer).
Peter Brown
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The ‘Wakefield Town’ network has always been, lets say an interesting, interworked network over the years and only known to the locals – mind the whole former West Riding / Yorkshire Woollen network is steeped in a history raft of interwork here, there and round every chimney block!
Indeed the whole Town did used to be worked by Arriva out of that Art-Deco of a depot, Belle Isle. However they did loose a lot of the Town network over very recent years when WYCA retendered and started looking more at the VFM they were getting, that and basically some of the decisions made higher up within Arriva to the detriment to the local teams, the it came to putting silly bids in and hence the current picture. Ironically, as is many a case a lot of the Tendered Network has been operated Commercially, owing to the divvy up of journeys which were tendered.
When it started to be chopped, if you had a Arriva ticket it literally started to become worthless over night meaning users, unless on ENCS passes, had to migrate over to there more expensive M-Card (formerly MetroCard) products.
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WY Metro’s website is appalling. If you want to access a timetable you have to know the route number – there is no service list on the site. If you try and plan a journey from a to b you have to know whereabouts in a you are and where in b you want to be. I tried Leeds city bus station to Bradford (Interchange was offered, despite being closed for buses) and amongst the myriad of choices offered was catching a bus across Leeds to the railway station & getting a train.
Re the 100 timetable, to be fair to Metro, if you download the PDF it does contain a route list. But overall, Metro ( a “good” public body rather than a “bad” private one) seems to wish to discourage public transport use.
John
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Its an odd one as we are examining this due to being a 100, rather than a Network review of West Wakefield. I suspect that the 100 is mainly aimed to serve the Health Centre at the turning circle, rather than the shops, although it seems the Post Office has relocated down the road. But the 102/103 seem to cover a lot of the journey patterns that passengers may make, including to the large nearby hospital.
This is a great example of how badly designed estates were in the 50s and 60s and locations of facilities were located with no consideration to access by public transport.
Also, Roger, you selected “all stops” on BusTimes, which is why it is showing so many with the same time. The Timing Points are still only the two.
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I also find that with stagecoach’s website. I feel like you’ve got to know where you want to go to and from and then they will tell you. But if you want to know where all the buses from one location go they’re not really going to tell you. (If I’m incorrect on the website & it can do this then it’s not very clear)
The side tab you have choose plan your journey/Maps/service updates/timetables.
the page itself you put your location (So you have to know where stagecoach operates) enter a bus number to get the timetable (So you have to know that) or you can personalised your timetable by putting in your street town or postcode
It was better when I was younger you could just get like a map of the uk click on a county or town and then it would just list all the information in one place. These days you can’t just type in one location and it’ll give you all the Routes from that place.
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