Tuesday 7th July 2026
It’s yet another Tuesday tale of competition between bus companies in the Home Counties. While Thames Valley and Carousel have dampened down their skirmishes with tactical withdrawals in Berkshire, the battle for the High Wycombe and Slough to Uxbridge corridors between Carousel and First Bus continues and over in neighbouring Bedfordshire a new outbreak of hostilities has just begun.
I recently covered the battle between Red Rose and Arriva for the corridor between Aylesbury and Buckingham and a few months ago highlighted wasted duplication in Luton and Dunstable between Arriva and Grant Palmer with both companies chasing each other on the roads between the town centre and Linmere and Thorn, but yet more competition began in this area from the end of May when Arriva expanded its network to take on Centrebus starting a new head to head battle for the Marsh Farm residential area in north Luton.
As part of a significant change round of routes from 31st May, including a renumbering into single digits, Arriva changed its route previously numbered 29 which had shuttled every 20 minutes between Rumfold, Biscot and Luton town centre to now be known as route 5 with an increased frequency of every 15 minutes and an extension from Rumfold to serve the large Marsh Farm residential area.
This puts it in direct competition with Centrebus’s route 10 which runs to the estate on a more direct route every 12 minutes and has done so for decades, including by predecessor bus companies.
The two routes are shown on an extract from Arriva’s comprehensive network map of the conurbation (above) with its new route 5 shown in light blue (I’ve added the name Rumfold to clarify where it is) and Centrebus route 10 shown in orange via Limbury. You can see they both serve Marsh Farm with a large anti-clockwise loop along with Arriva’s route 6 (was numbered route 27 until 31st May) which also runs every 15 minutes around the estate before continuing to the town centre via Leagrave. Below is the full network map from earlier in the year showing the arrangements before the recent changes from which you can see the light blue route 29 didn’t continue over to Marsh Farm.
As part of its network changes Arriva are promoting buses between Marsh Farm and the town centre “every 7 minutes” (actually 7-8 minutes) by coordinating frequencies on routes 5 and 6 albeit they take different routes into town with the 5 taking 30 minutes while the 6 takes 26 minutes. Centrebus’s comparable journey on the 10 via Limbury takes 24 minutes.
The OS map extract below shows the comparable routes of the 5 and 10 from which you can see why the 10 has a four minute time advantage due to its more direct routing through Limbury rather than Rumfold.
I took a ride on both routes on Thursday morning last week to see how the competition was going in its fifth week. Things got off to a bad start as I walked from the Interchange through to Silver Street where both routes depart alongside Luton’s big shopping centre, now branded as Frasers Plus.
A small number of passengers were waiting at the bus stop for the 5 and 10 but there was a distinct lack of buses.
The road was closed beyond the bus stops and none of us were quite sure whether buses would still be serving them before doubling back to regain the normal route.
There were no notices posted at any of the six bus stops and everyone was looking rather confused at each other and gradually drifting away, mostly to the nearby Interchange alongside the station where both routes also stop on their inbound journey at Stand 2.
Here there was more confusion with buses arriving on the 5 and 10 with passengers expecting to travel onwards to the shopping centre and drivers telling them this is as far as the bus was going with other passengers boarding for their return journey. No information was posted here either.
It wasn’t very encouraging.
I hopped on a route 10 and we soon set off with five on board not far behind an Arriva route 5 which had departed a couple of minutes before with four passengers. As we approached the busy and congested retail and residential area of Biscot just north of the town centre, we caught the Arriva route 5 up…
… as well as passing an inbound Arriva route 5 followed closely by a Centrebus route 10 both with high single digit numbers on board. We stayed on the tail of the 5 until it turned off to continue via Rumfold while we headed for Limbury where we paused for a couple of minutes by the area’s local retail centre…
… and two buses heading into town on the 10 passed with about a dozen passengers between them.
By now just one passenger remained as we set off again for Marsh Farm where the Arriva route 5 got just in front of us as we began the anti-clockwise circuit around the area.
It was interesting to see two passengers shunned the Arriva bus just in front of us at the first stop and boarded the Centrebus 10…
… as we continued to follow the 5 which was just in front.
The same thing happened at the next stop with another passenger letting Arriva go by…
… and the next stop after that with two more passengers favouring Centrebus over Arriva.
It may be because they were travelling to Limbury or perhaps perceived the 5 took a longer route (which it does) or were befuddled by the route number showing as 5, as previously the Arriva route for the town centre at these stops would have been the 27 (now the 6 via Leagrave) and not helped by the bus stops still showing the old route numbers.
Both buses seemed to be taking a pause at this stop so I took the opportunity to switch from the 10 to the 5 and see how that fared on its journey back into town.
There were two passengers already on board the Arriva bus and we continued to wait a little longer as the Centrebus bus set off and overtook on its journey back into town.
No-one boarded as we headed around the Rumfold area but once we got to the busy Biscot area we picked up 14 passengers at eight bus stops including four of those 14 alighting after making just short journeys on board giving us 12 passengers as we reached the town centre not far behind the route 10 which had set off before us from Marsh Farm and I’m sure did just as well through Biscot.
The section of route through Biscot is undoubtedly serving a well patronised area and again I noticed the bus stops were still showing the former route number 29 rather than the new 5…
… although the new look bus stops for Luton don’t have a facility for route numbers so that will solve that problem.
Purple seems to the favoured corporate colour for the Unitary Luton Borough Council.
It was evident Centrebus’s long standing presence in Marsh Farm has led to a loyal following and I got the impression Arriva’s additional frequency (eight buses per hour rather than the previous five) as a result of the newly extended route 5 (ex 29) wasn’t making much of an impact
While in Luton I also had a look at the Arriva/Grant Palmer clash between the companies’ routes H/H1 and Jo/L and numbers travelling didn’t look any different to what I’d found when sampling these routes back in February.
There simply aren’t enough passengers to make these competitive clashes sustainable.
Roger French
Summer blogging timetable: 06:00 TThSSu
BusAndTrainUser 
The days of Luton Corporation buses around the town in a Caramel and Cream livery (were they mainly double deck Leyland PD2 ?) What frequencies to such residential areas applied then ? With Purple bus stop signs I would expect some kind of Harry Potter triple deck RT conversions running around.
With United Counties to the North and London Country area to the South the border town in regulated days had a good fair service and the Thameslink fast electric trains were way yet to come for the rail network as such and a much smaller airport with much larger Vauxhall Motors manufacturing in town giving plenty of route income.
Is the combined 5/6 going to generate more passengers and leave enough for the 10. Given they take different routes there might be. Having had personal experience of not getting bus stops updated at flag level in time for route changes I realise that it can be a challenge to get everything done, but surely once published in notices and proceedings ( why in these electronic information ages links to the proposed timetable be incorporated in such things from the DfT ?) someone needs to go and order the vynal stickies and a ladder , ideally getting new route up in advance by a couple of days no bad thing , removing old over a few days later ASSUMING the timetable case has been updated.
JBC Prestatyn
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The 1930s area agreements protected Luton Corporation to an extent. The London Passenger Transport Board’s London Country buses were not allowed to carry passengers locally within the Borough of Luton – the trade-off being that their Green Line coaches had the exclusive right to the passenger traffic between Luton and London.
The Vauxhall Works was a thorn in the side of the Corporation, even if it did provide much custom. Wages were similar, but Vauxhall workers did not need to work extreme early and late turns and has evenings and weekends off. This led to staff shortages and the services were plagued by cancellations. The union short-sightedly resisted driver-only operation (although this eased in the late 1960s) which would have allowed the services to operate with fewer, but better paid, staff. Eventually the ailing undertaking was sold to the newly-formed National Bus Company, being absorbed into United Counties from 4th January 1970.
Julian Walker
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Interesting – if depressing. We (the public) were sold deregulated, privatised buses on the basis hat competition would make them much more passenger-friendly; no points there, I’m afraid.
‘There simply aren’t enough passengers’ – well, there probably would be if the service quality didn’t put off anyone who had an alternative … If the service(s) operated to timetable, and passenger information at stops was accurate, and reliable, it should be possible to generate at least some new custom: every year, a crop of potential new public transport users leave school, another crop of older people give the buses a try, and others whose political instincts are Green would be glad to have a decent service to cut down on car-use. Why can the managements of these operators not see the big ‘fail’ they are making by not attracting this potential new custom?
I’ve gone on about road-works previously but, again, why are bus management so unwilling to knock at the door of a – presumably – more public transport conscious minister to try and sort out this problem which affects buses much more that cars and lorries, which can and will divert if they informed? Again, a big ‘fail’ for not even posting publicity at stops – these bus companies obviously can’t be trusted to ‘put the passenger first’ even in this most obvious situation, so councils need to be properly funded to do the publicity – by the companies that cause the road closures.
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It’s Runfold estate Roger👍🚌
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