Thursday 15th October 2026
Continuing the exploration of the many new bus routes introduced around the country this year, saw me recently visit Peterborough and Southampton, as both cities have coincidentally just added a route numbered 26 to their local networks.
And in both cases part of the route serves new residential developments so I’m guessing Developer Section 106 funding, as well as Local Authority Bus Grants, has helped kick start the services.
Peterborough’s route 26 began almost four months ago, at the end of June. Operated by Central Connect it comprises a circular route serving the Thorpe Meadows/Thorpe Road area to the west of the city centre as well as Old Fletton and Farcet to the east before continuing on a loop of the southern half of the city, including the Serpentine Green shopping centre and Yaxley where the new residential development is located at Lodge Way, known as Lakewood Meadows to the west of Yaxley. Indeed, it’s so new the Ordnance Survey map hasn’t quite caught up with showing the development already built.
Both clockwise and anti-clockwise journeys (numbered 26A) each run hourly on Mondays to Fridays from around 06:00 to 20:00. Conveniently it takes 50 minutes to do a full circuit so operationally the route requires two buses. Oddly, on Saturdays buses only operate on the western side of the circuit reaching as far as Yaxley, Station Farm before turning back, and in what looks like strangely inefficient scheduling, the bus appears to sit at Yaxley for 45 minutes in each hour, although I suppose it might nip off to Central Connect’s premises. There’s no Sunday service.
I know from previous trials, politicians and officials at the Combined Authority have a thing about circular routes in Peterborough as I found when trying out route 29 back in 2023 which was famed for being one of the Authority’s most expensively subsidised services while over in Cambridge they love their route T2 linking three of the city’s Park & Ride sites on an arc pattern.
Unlike route 29, new route 26/26A does at least serve the city centre but that also means for much of its route there are alternative long established routes provided by Stagecoach. For example the Thorpe Meadows area is served by Stagecoach’s route 2 every 20 minutes, the Serpentine Green retail centre (and adjacent Hampton residential area) by route 6 every 20 minutes and Yaxley, Farcet and Old Fletton (on the eastern arc) by route 5 every 30 minutes. But, of course, these routes don’t connect the areas together without changing buses in the city centre which is why politicians love the idea of a circular route . The 26/26A links Thorpe Meadows with Serpentine Green and also Yaxley. As always with such routes, are there enough passengers wanting to make such a journey to justify the route?
I took a ride round the route on Monday of last week catching the 10:10 departure from the city’s Queensgate bus station – not one of the country’s most glamorous and attractive places from which to catch a bus, being functionally basic in facilities. At least the escalators up and down to the adjacent shopping centre were working this time. So often they’re broken.
The bus was already on the stand enjoying its 10 minutes layover and we left on time with no-one else coming on board, perhaps not surprising for a journey heading out of the city centre at that time. But, sadly that remained the position for the entire 50 minutes journey back to the bus station again on the inward journey, albeit we followed and then overtook a Stagecoach bus on the aforementioned half hourly route 5 from Yaxley.
Furthermore, once we’d overtaken it people waiting at bus stops along the route let us go by in favour of waiting for the 5. We also passed the bus operating the clockwise 26 on the circuit (twice) which had no-one on the first time (heading into the city near Thorpe Road) and one on the second time (heading out of the city near Farcet).
Back in Peterborough I watched the 26A bus depart on its next journey at 11:10 with three passengers on board, which was better, as did the next departure at 11:40 on the 26, although the bus only arrived with one passenger at 11:30 meaning across all the journeys I observed the average was two passengers.
Not very encouraging after three and a half months although the driver told me it does get busy at peak times and particularly with school children using the route.
But, of course, it’s good that the bus is available for residents as they move into their new houses as the residential development continues to expand although no passengers materialised on the journey I made.
Over in Southampton, the Bluestar operated route 26 is a more recent addition to the city’s bus network, commencing at the end of August, so when I travelled on the Friday before last it was coming to the end of its fifth week.
Like Peterborough, this 26 is operated with two buses providing an hourly frequency but with a more extensive day from around 06:00 to 23:00 as well as a Sunday service albeit only every two hours.
End to end journey time is 50 minutes outbound and 56 minutes inbound with the route from Southampton taking in Bitterne, Hedge End and Botley before continuing to Whiteley and from where it provides a new direct link to and from Southampton.
The area seeing considerable house building is to the north of Whiteley called Whiteley Meadows…
… near Curbridge and where again, development is so new Ordnance Survey haven’t yet caught up.
South of the new development, closer to Whiteley itself, there’s a large shopping centre including a large Tesco which was proving popular with passengers when I travelled.
The western half of the route into and out of Southampton runs parallel with city route 3 which also runs to an hourly frequency giving a convenient doubling of the frequency along Bitterne Road East (between Bitterne and Hedge End) which I’m sure will be welcome and generate extra passengers.
Indeed I was impressed to see 21 passengers travel on the journey I caught which was the 13:25 from Southampton over to Whiteley including four who travelled all the way from the city centre to the main stop in Whiteley.
That must be an encouraging start for both Bluestar and Hampshire County Council which has put in the funding for the route.
It’s so encouraging to be writing blog after blog about new bus routes during the course of this year, and makes a welcome change from the days of bus route cuts after bus route cuts. I just hope the public funding can continue but in this case, the Southampton route 26 has all the makings of a commercial proposition in due course. I’m not so sure about the Peterborough one.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
Leave a Reply