Welcome Break’s welcome new bus route

Tuesday 28th January 2025

It’s not often a brand new motorway service area opens for business and even more rare for there to be a new bus route laid on to serve it, but that’s exactly what happened on Friday before last when the new £40 million (some reports quote £55 million) Welcome Break services opened at junction 33 on the M1 near Rotherham and First South Yorkshire began operating new bus route X6 taking workers living in Sheffield and Rotherham to and from the site on a daily basis at five shift change times every four hours.

As you can see, pretty much the same timetable applies throughout the week with two buses deployed on the route; both leaving either end at the same time and passing through the service area five minutes before 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00 and 22:00, which presumably are the shift change times. I’m guessing there must be an overlap in shifts otherwise the cash tills are going to be empty for a short period of time with staff coming off shift and going home having to be at the bus stop at the same time as the bus arrives with the incoming staff.

You’ll notice at weekends the lunch time journey runs slightly earlier at 13:20 instead of 13:40 from Sheffield with a later departure from Rotherham at 13:55 rather than 13:20. I’m not sure why.

Not surprisingly with the new service area having no safe access on foot and being hemmed in by a river, motorway, A-road and railway, Welcome Break are making a welcome financial commitment to fund the service to help its 230 employees get to and from work.

Vehicle access to the site is from a new slip road in the north west corner off the roundabout at junction 33 (M1/A630) with egress from the site along a new slip road back on to the A630 south of the roundabout as can be seen above, with the blue line showing a bus tracking from Sheffield via the services to Rotherham.

First Bus are keen to promote the new X6 as offering a fast alternative (taking just half an hour for an end to end journey) to its other bus routes between Sheffield and Rotherham…

… with excited social media posts over the last couple of weeks extolling the virtues of “a faster and more direct link”.

However, First South Yorkshire’s routes X1/X2 (every 15 minutes) and X3 (approximately every 20 minutes), both via Meadowhall, don’t take much longer at around 35 minutes…

… and provide many more opportunities for passengers with the X6 being very limited in its offering, both number of journeys and bus stops served.

Indeed, the timetable on the First Bus website shows times at just one intermediate bus stop and includes incomprehensible names (and to a passenger, the usual irrelevant numeric stop codes).

You need to know ‘Mft’ stands for Moorfoot, or the more well known Moor Market, bus stop ES3; ‘MSA’ is motorway service area and ‘Intc’ is Interchange.

I think even Kiki, doing her best on the First Bus Twitter feed, was a bit befuddled trying to explain to Adele where she could board the bus…

… repeating the rather confusing stop names of Rotherham MSA and Moor Market ES3 (ES3 being the bus stop designation).

Confusion reigns on what bus stops are observed as both bustimes.org and Google maps show buses also stopping at Arundel Gate in Sheffield and two bus stops in Canktow, between the service area and Rotherham, on West Bawtry Road (A630) and another in Rotherham itself.

I’ve seen one report stating Welcome Break’s commitment is for nine months funding which begs the question how will the 230 staff now working at the site get to and from work if First Bus pulls the plug in October? However, when I travelled on the route on Saturday the driver told me it was a three year contract.

I arrived in good time at Sheffield’s Moor Market to catch the 13:20 departure with the bus pulling up to the bus stop at 13:10 and the driver stepping out for a cigarette break.

He told me he hadn’t carried any passengers on the route so far and seemed surprised when I said I was intending to travel as an X1 pulled in behind the bus and left before the X6.

He was even more surprised when climbing back into the cab at 13:20 and seven other passengers boarded with me, six of whom were employees at the service area, and alighted there, and the seventh rode through to Rotherham.

The driver also told me there were no intermediate stops on the route other than the service area so we set off and after just a few minutes passed by the busy bus stops at Arundel Gate where there’d be good interchange for any passengers wanting to connect from other bus routes…

… and then headed out of the city towards the M1 along the fast moving A630.

Exactly 15 minutes later we came alongside the new service area as we approached the roundabout above the motorway forming the junction…

… and commenced the tortuous route to access the service area including passing under the M1 through a 14 foot six inches tunnel making it quite tight.

The HGV area lies on the north side of the motorway but the designated parking area was empty except for one lorry indicating the new facilities haven’t caught on with the HGV clientele yet, or maybe it’s not yet open for them.

The parking area for motorists is well endowed with electric charging points and was busier, but not unduly so.

The bus pulls up right outside the main building housing all the facilities and eateries but there was no obvious signage but there again no member of the public would just randomly alight or board here; only employees.

We were a couple of minutes down as we left at 13:37 for Rotherham and I noticed the driver pointedly used the outside lane of the A630 passing two of the contentious bus stops (are they or aren’t they?)…

… as we headed towards Rotherham.

We arrived into Rotherham Interchange a couple of minutes early at 13:48 and the other passenger and myself alighted and the bus and driver went off on other duties.

I’d expected the bus to return to Sheffield on the 13:55 departure but the driver had already told me that’s done by another driver and bus and sure enough a single deck left on time with four on board who all looked as though they were going to work at the service area.

It was good to see departure stand information had been updated inside Rotherham Interchange…

… with reference to the X6 added at stand B6 from where it departs along with the much more frequent X1 and X2 via Meadowhall.

Sadly, information displayed at Moor Market ES3 (or ES3 Eyre Street, The Moor … or Moorfoot) hadn’t been updated, with neither the bus stop sign nor departure time details below having a reference to the X6.

The new X6 is a unique bus route and it made me wonder how employees without a car get to and from work at the other 59 Welcome Break service areas, as well as other operators’ facilities, especially those actually on motorways rather than at junctions. You can hardly walk or cycle to work.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in three years, or is it nine months?

Roger French

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