Tuesday 3rd December 2024
Tomorrow is the last day for most Megabus coach services operating in England and Wales.
Stagecoach launched its low-cost inter-city megabus coach network 21 years ago in 2003 challenging National Express’s monopoly for much of the express coach travel market in England and Wales. At the time the company predicted megabus.com, and Sid, its brand ambassador, would “transform the market by lowering fares and allow people to book in advance online from the comfort of their own home”. Fares were based on a pricing model followed by low-cost airlines, allowing people to grab a bargain by booking early.
As is the way with these things, National Express quickly responded with its own low-cost fares bookable on line and passengers enjoyed bargain basement fares on competitive routes not seen since the British Coachways era at the beginning of deregulation for express coach services in 1980.
When megabus celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2018 it was operating 90 coaches to nearly 80 destinations carrying around five million passengers a year.
Subsequent developments have included close links with Scottish Citylink (including Stagecoach part ownership of that brand with ComfortDelGro) to provide a coordinated network and launching Megabus Gold as a brand; a foray into Europe in 2014 only to sell the network two years later to Flixbus; broadening sales to include megatrain.com selling bargain ticket prices on Stagecoach’s rail network; using the brand and online sales to dovetail in with the South West Falcon branded Bristol to Plymouth route; megasightseeing in London with tickets initially as cheap as £1; and who could forget Sir Brian Souter trying out bunk beds in the new megabusgold sleeper coaches which raised the quality for the day offer too.
In 2022 Stagecoach sold “the Megabus retail platform and customer-service business, which sells and markets Megabus in England and Wales” as well as the retailing of tickets for the South West Falcon to ComfortDelGro and in return increased its share in the jountly owned Scottish Citylink from 35% to 37.5%.
Megabus announced its “planned network reduction from 4th December due to low passenger demand”. This effectively means most services in England and Wales are withdrawn other than those long distance cross-border routes to Scotland, those within Scotland under the Scottish Citylink and megabus brands and the tie up with the South West Falcon branded route between Bristol and Plymouth.
Journeys on Megabus will still be possible between, for example, London and Manchester, or London and Leeds by using the coach which continues to Glasgow or Edinburgh but journey times are lengthy due to the stopping patterns (eg London-Sheffield-Leeds-Durham-Newcastle-Dunbar taking 9 hours 25 minutes to Edinburgh).
Megabus Managing Director Simone Walsh said “This has been an extremely difficult decision. However, unfortunately it is not sustainable for us to continue operating our current network as the customer demand is simply too low. So, we are making these changes to ensure that we have a more efficient network going forward.”
There’s no doubt the arrival of Flixbus in the UK in 2020 with its significant growth since the pandemic, backed by the deep pockets of its equity owners, has led to a crowded market for inter-city coach travel. Flixbus has grown market share through bargain rate fares which both National Express and Megabus have had to match. Whereas Megabus’s initial appeal was to the younger traveller, that market now finds both Flixbus and National Express offer an attractive alternative.
I thought I’d take my very first and very last ride with Megabus before the 4th December deadline and booked a journey on 31st October from London to Coventry for travel a fortnight later on Wednesday 13th November. As you can see from the screenshot below, there are just two journeys to choose from and as I didn’t fancy an 02:30 departure, opted for the more civilised 11:00 with a two hour and 15 minute journey time and £5.99 fare.
Taking a leaf out of the airlines charge-for-any-extras-they-can playbook, passengers are invited to spend £2 bagging one of the front three rows of seats – although the diagram makes it look like it’s rows three to five.
As £5.99 is so cheap for a 110 mile journey I splashed out to reserve myself the front offside gangway seat bearing in mind the nearside pair had already been taken. After adding a £1.50 booking fee my total bill came to a reasonable £9.49.
By comparison National Express operates 11 departures from Victoria Coach Station to Coventry at 06:00, 07:00, 09:00, 11:30, 13:00, 15:00, 17:30; 19:30; 21:30; 23:00; 23:59. The fastest and the only non-stop journey is the 06:00 charging £20. All the other journeys operate via Heathrow AIrport and either Banbury or Warwick with the cheapest fare at £5.30 available on four of those departures including the 11:30 but a journey time of three hours and 10 minutes – 55 minutes more than Megabus. I wasn’t attracted to the idea of a journey via Heathrow when heading north from central London.
Flixbus only offers one journey at 06:00 priced at £5.99 which although direct has a two hour 45 minute journey time, presumably the extra half an hour to cater for peak hour motorway traffic.
For returning back to London I decided to take a look at what London NorthWestern (LNR) – famed for its bargain basement rail fares on the West Coast Main Line – and Avanti West Coast (AWC), could offer. Again, booking two weeks ahead you can see from the sceenshot below fares of £5.95 were available on the half hourly LNWR journeys taking one hour 45 minutes and only £9.65 on the much faster AWC journeys including the hourly non-stopper to Euston (at 14:10) taking just 56 minutes.
These prices include the one third discount with my Senior Railcard but even without that, the prices would be £9 for LNWR and £14.50 for AWC. With the former, in particular, I can see why Megabus has been struggling for the book-ahead market – LNR offers a similar price but quicker journey time and a much more frequent service.
As I walked along Buckingham Palace Road to Victoria Coach Station on the Wednesday morning I saw what I guessed was the coach I’d be travelling on arriving at 10:14 which was 34 minutes later than its scheduled arrival of 09:40. As you can see it was devoid of Megabus branding, presumably already preparing for its afterlife.
It’s been some time since I’ve been inside Victoria Coach Station. You’re greeted with an impressive alphabetical listing of departures by destination showing the departure gate number. There are so many places served, the 10 screens can only show places between A and M, before changing to M through Z.
The waiting area by the departure stands is well signed with branded logos and clear electronic signs above each ‘gate’ conforming the next departure.
As you can see it was very busy for a mid-week mid-morning although there’s not a lot of room and a even a semi-full coach needs quite a lot of space where its passengers can wait.
My 11:00 departure was from stand 13 with one or two passengers already sitting by the gate when I arrived just as the previous departure from that stand left at 10:30. At 10:53 the Megabus coach arrived and our tickets were checked by a member of staff as we passed through the gate…
… with the driver helping to load luggage into the coach.
Boarding the coach, the couple in front of me went to sit in what I had assumed was the seat I’d paid the £2 to reserve but it turned out they were the passengers who’d booked seats 1 and 2 and the difficulty was trying to see the seat numbers in the dark. Luckily the driver soon put the interior lights on and we made ourselves comfortable for the journey ahead.
It’s always impressive to see the flotilla of coaches leave Victoria spot on time either on the hour or half past, and at precisely 11:00 the door was closed, 15 passengers were on board, the engine switched on and we were give the signal to move by a controller marshalling us behind three National Express coaches.
It takes a bit if time to go round the block and along Buckingham Palace Road, not helped when a G4S van blocks the bus lane…
… but by 11:12 we were rounding Hyde Park Corner…
… and taking advantage of the bus lane passing otherwise slow moving traffic heading north up Park Lane…
…hitting a Christmas light decorated Oxford Street at 11:17.
A left into Portman Street and as we headed up Gloucester Place towards the Finchley Road for a scheduled pick up I noticed the driver’s SatNav was programmed to take us on the route via the A5/Edgware Road towards the M1.
Every junction it told the driver to turn left…
… which made me wonder what the point of it was.
We arrived at the Finchley Road station pick up at 11:37 which was seven minutes later than scheduled but as there were no passengers…
… we were soon on our way again towards the M1 which we joined at the start of the motorway on the North Circular Road by Brent Cross at 11:50.
Being a mid-week late morning the M1 was free flowing. We hit the usual 60 mph limit around Luton…
… and the inevitable “average speed camera” enforced 50 mph section as more emergency refuge areas are installed, for six miles between junctions 12 and 13…
…and for nine miles between junctions 16 and 17
… where we took the M45 exit at 13:03 meaning it had taken 73 minutes to travel on the motorway giving an average speed of 62.5 mph for the 76.4 miles.
The journey into Coventry along the M45 was equally smooth going…
… as was the A45 and A444/A4114 which took us to the Ring Road…
… and we reached Pool Meadow bus station at 13:29 – 14 minutes later than scheduled which seemed odd as we hadn’t really met any delays that would have been out of the ordinary…
… and where we pulled up behind a Scottish Citylink liveried coach.
I had a quick chat with the driver as I left the coach and he told me he was looking forward to the future as the drivers were having a meeting later in the week to discuss the takeover of the route by Thandi Coaches which he thought would be a good thing for him. With that he headed off to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Later I checked out the ownership of the Tourismo.Mercedes-Benz coach I’d travelled on and the Internet tells me its based in Smethwick and owned by Thandi.
I wish all employees who’ve been driving with Megabus over the last 21 years all the best for the future.
Roger French
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 
Goodbye Megabus, memories on them since the Leyland Olympian to the Volvo B11RT.
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Very sad to see Megabus retrench. They have been my go to travel provider for 21 years & I will miss them terribly.
The best memory was when Selkent provided a Dennis Trident to replace a coach & we blasted up the M1 on a standard Double Decker Bus.
The fares were incredibly cheap & regularly traveled to Exeter for £1 when my late parents lived in Torbay. It was always brilliant if Stagecoach Devon provided a Volvo Olymppian as a duplicate.
Remember my first journey on a Hong Kong Megadecker the very first week of Birmingham to London.
Personally I would rather burn in hell than use National Express so its Flixbus for me from here on.
However I will never forget the 21 years of Megabus.
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Not the most inciteful critique of the nation’s biggest scheduled coach operator I’ve heard!
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I can’t be critical of a service I have never really had a problem with.
Unless you know differently why would I be critical of Megabus when they have provided a first class service for the price paid?
For many years Midland Red (South) Limited was at heart of the delivery of Megabus along with Stagecoach Cwmbran as well as Selkent all of which provided thier services efficiently and effectively.
Do you have personal issues with them if so it would be interesting to hear them following your bizarre comments?
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i recall a summer daytime Megabus trip from Perth (Scotland, not Australia) to London back in 2008 for which I paid £1!
Roger G
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Victoria Coach Station, despite its non-central location and distance from tubes and most local bus routes, is at least a single point for coach journey connections – which the rail industry sadly lacks. I’ve only used it once, many years ago, for a journey from Lamberhurst to Liverpool, and had a really good experience: helpful staff, clear signs and PI, comfortable seats etc.. Coaches ran very well to time, and my connections were kept – even on the return trip, having to get the one-a-day to Hastings!
If only there could be something similar for rail travellers – not a single station, which would be too big, but perhaps three (e.g. West End, City, South-bank) with all trains calling at two and continuing through. If trains also stooped in outer London (both sides), giving four London stops, these central stations need only be an island platform for each direction; all long-distance journeys could be made with at most one change, at a (hopefully) well-designed interchange. Yes, it would cost a lot – but it would save some of the billions being spent on Euston … and it would seriously start emptying the M25, which would save quite a lot from the road budget!
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Farewell “Sid” 😦
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Will it that happen in as well or not
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I fogot to put in scotland
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Megabus was not directly competing with National Express, Itsw aim was a coach version of the Low cost airline. Perhaps what they over looked was the headline fare for a low cost flight tended not to be what you paid you end up having to pay lots of extras which is how they make money. THe low cost coaches did not have this
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Low cost may have been the aim when they started up but that has been lost in recent years. There were many examples of them being more expensive than National Express or even the train!
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The Megatrain operation, which offered wonderfully cheap tickets on the Midland Mainline for a while, was so lightly re-skinned from Megabus that the ticket instructed that you had to present it to the driver upon boarding. Always tempted to try it on an Intercity 125, but never did.
John Geddes
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I was surprised at the Megabus exit. National Express have claimed so much increased ridership, driven by high fares (even if not in this case) and unreliability on the railways, that I assumed that the market had grown sufficiently to sustain 3 major national operators. Also, I’m surprised at the timing. I thought December, and particularly the Xmas/new year break was a peak.
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National Express have been trimming and slimming down their network as well. Focussing on more direct services, axing the lengthy cross country routes such as Edinburgh – Bournemouth, using Birmingham as the main interchange hub and reducing duplication have combined to increase ridership. Quite simply they’ve increased the ridership by ensuring their services operate at full capacity as much as possible.
I do wonder what Flixbus will do when the venture capitalists move on.
William.
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there is no LNWR TOC, the initials are LNR.
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Thanks for letting me know.
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You wouldn’t be the first or last… even the new infamous Euston departure boards got it wrong to start with 😂
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With “Nanny State” speed restrictions currently in force your journey on the M1 was painfully slow compared to the crack BMMO “CM5T”. The turbo charged engines on these were rated for 85 mph. The author of a book I have rode on one and for fifty miles the speedometer never fell below 77 mph. In my refereeing days, however I was driven to and from a match at Charterhouse School on the A3 with that BMW’s clock reading 100 mph for short stretches of both journeys. The only legitimate time I have been at 100 mph was on a Class 444 of SWT when I read the clock of an intermediate driving cab.
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And changing drivers on the move? Did that really happen?
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sounds as if you need a nanny,Anonymous, to teach you a bit of sense. Speed restrictions save lives.
hopefully your comment was tongue in cheek?
Stephen
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There was of course far less traffic on the motorway in those days, and in general.
Yet there were 6,922 road deaths in 1963 and 7,820 in 1964 … and 1,624 in 2023.
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20 mph is killing bus travel times in London.
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Very happy memoriies of travelling to Brighton for £1 one January when a standard Olympian/Alexander deputised for the regular ex Hong Kong Olympian coach; I recall the katter had very limited legroom given the market it was built for!
GJS
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The M1 junction 12-13 works is the year long centre reservation barrier works rather than emergency refuge works; I am sure that will come soon !!
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I think you’ll find that, when the timetable says “via Warwick” it actually means via the University of Warwick which is actually in southern Coventry (I’ve known people who book events at this University who then travel to Warwick only to find themselves 8 miles from the University).
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No, it serves Warwick Parkway station just outside Warwick (Hampton Magna). Megabus stopped serving Cannon Park shopping centre, adjacent to the Warwick Uni campus in Coventry, about 6 years ago. When they did serve Warwick Uni, they called the stop “Coventry – Cannon Park”. They now serve Pool Meadow in Coventry like everybody else.
Keith R
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Roger, I suspect the clock times given for Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch may have slipped by an hour!
Ian McNeil
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Many thanks for spotting that Ian; now corrected.
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Oh dear, it appears the M1 VSL indicators at J11 are inviting drivers to break rule 268 by overtaking on the left. With an on-slip just ahead, no less!
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I remember the days of £1 fares on Megabus!
Also, I was sad and annoyed to see the demise of the London – Scotland sleeper coach. I actually cannot believe that there is no market for this – Stagecoach claimed it was uneconomic but with the bed layout providing nearly as many spaces as seats surely it can be made to work on this heavily-used corridor, especially now that Caledonian Sleeper has priced out the budget travellers (also sad).
Stephen H
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They were never really though £1. It was always £1 + mandatory booking fee.
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You are WRONG. Megabus regularly did free promotions where it was possible to book during a limited period and travel for just 50p Booking Fee.
They were capacity controlled but I regularly travelled around at this point for just 50p .
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True. However, it only cost one booking fee if you booked multiple journeys at the same time. I’d book 20 – 30 journeys in advance for planned days out from Newcastle to Leeds/Sheffield/Manchester/Birmingham/London, getting not only the £1 tickets but only paying as little as 50p booking fee for the lot. Best deal was getting £1 tickets for South West Trains between Waterloo and Bournemouth enabling a £4 round trip from Newcastle!
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I was told the Falcon Flyer Taunton to Bristol Airport was continuing and yet, no published timetable beyond 5 January. This is my only way of getting to the airport, so feel let down by the uncertainty
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Megabus used to do a Bath Uni to London service. I travelled on it once from Chippenham on a weekday mid morning. There were only two other passengers! It was great on departing to be told “next stop Heathrow”. Leather seats, footrest, big windows, seemed better than GwR HSTs with view obstructing ridiculously high backed seats and non aligned windows. I was surprised this route didn’t last long as I thought the students would make it viable.
Peter Brown
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Megabus only changed the network a year ago, & are now withdrawing most services, some of the departure/arrival times at the start or end are bonkers like, the 19.05 Liverpool-London arrives in London 01.35, the 19.00 London-Newcastle arrives in Newcastle 02.45
SM
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i never got to travel Megabus, but used Megatrain quite a bit beck in the EMT days. Usually from the Nottingham area, but I do remember they did coach / train connections at East Midlands Parkway from places in East Yorkshire and Humberside for a while.
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The coach / train combination service was called Megabus Plus. I used it several times to travel between Huddersfield and London and it was an excellent service at an amazingly low price. I think there were two or possibly even three coach routes to East Midlands Parkway which connected with the train to London.
I made a farewell journey on Megabus on Sunday, Leeds to London (Finchley Road) which was in a National Holidays liveried coach with no Megabus markings that I could see other than the destination blind. It was around 80-90% full on that particular journey, which seemed like it would be profitable, but it may not be like that on other days of the week.
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So sad that they are no longer in operation on the East coast of the country. I used this service many a time to go back to Birmingham from Norwich in 4 hrs. Almost as quick as driving. Sadly the East of the country lacks motorways & transport links have always been poor. Myself & friends visiting will struggle to find cheaper alternative fares without going through London, also National Express took over 7hrs to do the same trip. Not one I want to endure being disabled. So looks like I will be staying where I am & hoping people will come to see me now somehow. I would of excepted to pay more for the faster route, just wished they was still running.
Thank you to all the drivers at Megabus for the services you have provided, you will be sadly missed by many including me!
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I missed my last National Express bus back to Leicester from London Victoria at midnight one night, but the megabus that left shortly after let me travel back with them instead free of charge. Thank you Megabus 😊
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the service was getting really shoddy over the past few months and dealing with Customer Sevices regarding delays etc ws a really really painful experience. Hopefully another Coach company will arrive on the scene to offer another choice for all if us Coach travellers. How else will we keep cars off the road?
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Hi Roger, just for some context, the coach you travelled on was operated by Thandi, and was previously one of their main coaches for Megabus work, when they only operated two diagrams. They acquired two new Tourismos for this, so that older one was debranded, but with the changes in September meaning they had more work, it was brought back into use.
However, it appears that some last minute changes are still afoot, as it appears there will still be a handful of M82 services from Bristol to Leeds, and M87 services from Bristol to Norwich, running after the deadline.
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Although Megabus never served Lincolnshire (except for the Silverstone F1 service); I did get to sample Megatrain from Lincoln to Nottingham and then Megabus onwards to Birmingham. Even with the late running coach; I still got to Birmingham before the train.
i was also lucky enough to get Waterloo to Bournemouth for £1 each way on Megatrain with some very early booking and an alert on Twitter from a fellow customer.
Lincolnshire has suffered a massive reduction in National Express services over the decades and there’s been no massive increase in train services. For a university city; we are poorly served. There’s potential there for a decent network east of the A1 corridor; but the remaining coach operators seem to get a nose bleed if they go east of Peterborough Services/Black Cat Roundabout.
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| Lincolnshire has suffered a massive reduction in National Express
| services over the decades
I came across a mid-70s National Express timetable covering Lincolnshire a while back and, even ignoring the summer Saturday coastal services, I was surprised at the sheer range of services calling into Lincoln.
Now there’s just the Hull<>London and Grimsby<>Birmingham coaches, each running just one trip a day. It’s one heck of a retrenchment.
| there’s been no massive increase in train services
One of those nasty railway union people Mr Uden loves to hate (see his comment below) has told me that they’re waiting for confirmation of the date that the Lincoln<>Nottingham service will increase to two-trains-per-hour (although it won’t be clockface half-hourly, of course). Only problem I can see is that more trains = more passengers and I already see trains leaving Lincoln station full and standing on that route.
Whether we’ll ever see the promised hourly Lincoln<>Grimsby and Lincoln<>Doncaster trains is anyone’s guess!
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thank you Megabus for your long efficient service
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I’m intrigued by the average speed of 62.5 mph on the motorway section achieved despite a 62 mph speed limiter and a 50 mph section of road. That would suggest the vehicle must have been over speeding on downhill sections which is a tachograph infringement.
Gary
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Speed limiters are set to 100kph
100kph = 62.13 mph. Allow for rounding and acceptable tolerances of the limiter and it easily seems possible.
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I saw that too. The 50mph section is stated by Roger as 6 miles for six miles between junctions 12 and 13 then for nine miles between junctions 16 and 17 so ~20% of the journey. If the governor was bang on 62mph by my calcs the average would be just under 60mph.
I wonder what tolerance is allowed on the governor?
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As a regular user of Megabus from it’s inception, enjoying the heady days of former Hong Kong Olympians, it is sad to see it go. It was of course the brainchild of Sir Brian himself, and it was inevitable that Stagecoach, under new foreign owners (from the same Country as Flixbus) were probably going to regard it as “non-mainstream” to running their bus business. Clearly the plans have been building for some time as gradually the work, and excellent double-deckers with it, withdrawn from Stagecoach garages and transferred to outside Contractors.
Making deliberate observations over the last couple of weeks, particularly on those services competing with both Flixbus and National Express, I was surprised to see Megabus often had better loadings than the others, so whilst they may have suffered a little from competition, coach travel in general has never been healthier (Thank you Mick Lynch and Co). It would therefore be improper of me to suggest that there may have been other motives for deciding to withdraw in the rather brutal way they have, and perhaps the claimed “poor loadings” are not the full story (see above).
Terence Uden
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“coach travel in general has never been healthier”
I keep hearing this, and yet…
The National Express network is by far the smallest it’s ever been; Flixbus and Megabus have never come near much of the country, and the small operator ‘infill’ links which used to exist have long since ceased.
I’m not even seeing as many touring coaches as I was pre-Covid.
I wish coach networks were expanding, yet to me they seem to be retrenching except on the motorway links between the big cities, and I’m not sure they’re quite as good as they have been – Birmingham<>London NX now run an approx. 45 min headway with some wider gaps, whereas I recall them being every half-an-hour all day.
Where I am now I’d have to travel there just aren’t any. As another commenter has said, it seems coach operators are frightened of coming east of the A1.
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I would also love to know where this “healthy” coach travel industry is. A lot of private hire operators have thrown in the towel over the past few years.
Locally the options for long distance coach travel don’t exist. You either use the train or drive.
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Never used the Megabus sleeper, but the First Glasgow/London one was useful for a full day in London a few years ago, so am surprised that there’s not enough demand for such a thing.
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Anglo-Scottish services will still operate
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In 2022 Stagecoach sold “the Megabus retail platform and customer-service business, which sells and markets Megabus in England and Wales” as well as the retailing of tickets for the South West Falcon to ComfortDelGro and in return increased its share in the jountly owned Scottish Citylink from 35% to 37.5%.
Does it mean the Megabus in England and Wales are owned and managed by ComfortDelGro while the Scottish part is jointly owned by ComfortDelGro and Stagecoach (37.5%)?
I am a bit puzzled.
KS
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Seem to remember going to Brussels from London VCS for 50p each way on some special offer. Or am I dreaming?
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For routes where there are alternatives with a low cost from a passenger perspective then end of Megabus is not a major issue. Where they will be missed is where, at least for now, no replacement or alternative or only rail with a significantly higher fare and maybe connections rather than a direct journey. If the rail route includes Cross-country potentially over capacity ‘fun-size’ trains too.
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