Saturday 21st May 2022 There’s been talk about how to solve the 'first and last mile' conundrum in transport circles for ages. Pre Covid, whole conferences were even devoted to pontificating on the best ways passengers could ‘transit’ from their rural/suburban based homes to reach trunk bus routes or railway lines for longer commutes and... Continue Reading →
Thursday 19th May 2022 Last week was Rail Sale travel week for me. I’d bagged a couple of bargain priced tickets when they went on sale last month for two day trips - one to Cornwall and one to Scotland - as you do. Monday morning last week saw me roll up at Paddington for... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 17th May 2022 Southend-on-Sea’s famous pier has recently seen the arrival of two new eco-friendly trains for its iconic three-foot narrow gauge railway so I popped over yesterday to take a look. Sadly, neither were in service. One train has yet to be made ready for service and the second had some ‘teething troubles’... Continue Reading →
Sunday 15th May 2022 I couldn't help but notice a few other things as I wandered around south east London and south Newham on my recent travels. Here's a few for your edification. Liverpool Street bus station You'd think the bus station alongside Liverpool Street station would be a prime spot to reach out to... Continue Reading →
Saturday 14th May 2022 Running almost four years late and over budget by £4 billion but all the trials and tribulations of this unduly long gestation period will soon be forgotten as today's the day TfL finally launches its programme of bus service changes in south east London centred on Abbey Wood, Greenwich and Lewisham... Continue Reading →
Thursday 12th May 2022 Back in January I blogged about the decision by Reading Buses to suspend its Tiger branded route 7 between Reading and Fleet from 17th January. Problems with long term roadworks necessitating a lengthy diversion and few passengers travelling were cited as reasons as well as every bus company being desperately short... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 10th May 2022 Photo courtesy Ashbourne Community Transport. My latest DRT expedition was last Tuesday when I took a ride on Staffordshire County Council’s Moorlands Connect. It’s been around for a few years but until last month only as a phone based community bus dial-a-ride type operation. From April, thanks to that DfT pot... Continue Reading →
Saturday 7th May 2022 To Scotland for the first time in my fortnightly A-to-Z wanderings and the wonderful city of Inverness. The administrative centre of Highlands Council, it's a fast growing city - some say it's the fastest growing city across Europe - with a population of around 65,000. Everywhere I went as I travelled... Continue Reading →
Thursday 5th May 2022 I took a ride on the wonderful Bluebell Railway on (Bank Holiday) Monday. I almost left it too late this year with peak bluebell season nearly over but I wasn’t disappointed. Unlike many heritage railways the Bluebell wasn’t a victim of the Beeching axe. British Railways actually closed the line as... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 It's a lovely train ride over to Gloucester particularly the scenic section through the Cotswolds between Swindon, Kemble, Stroud and Stonehouse. Gloucester railway station is perhaps not quite so scenic but its renowned claim to fame is having Britain’s longest continuous unbroken platform measuring 659 yards - that’s over a third... Continue Reading →
30th April 2022 If you fancy taking a direct train from Brighton station to somewhere beyond the normal Southern/ Thameslink outposts of Southampton, London Victoria, Bedford, Cambridge or Hastings/Ore then you’ve got just ten working days left. After Friday 13th May those destinations will be the limit of your rail travel experience without a change... Continue Reading →
Thursday 28th April 2022 I had an enjoyable evening last Saturday at The Hawth Theatre in Crawley (Tony Blackburn's Radio 2 Sounds of the Sixties Tour since you asked - highly recommended for those of us of a certain age). Whilst there I couldn't help but notice in the foyer and throughout the theatre were... Continue Reading →
26th April 2022 An £82 million face lift to transform Coventry's railway station has just been completed. It certainly looked eye catching from the media coverage I’d seen so I paid a couple of visits last week to take a look for myself. £40 million of the funding came from West Midlands Combined Authority’s Devolution... Continue Reading →
Saturday 23rd April 2022 And so to H. I thought about Harlow, just fleetingly, but couldn’t face the negativity. Hemel Hempstead came to mind - I sort of lived there with my parents for a time in the early 1970s while at university in Reading and it’s always interesting to go back - but in... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st April 2022 The bus route between Birmingham, Bromsgrove, Droitwich Spa, Worcester and Great Malvern was first introduced by Midland Red in 1914 and although extended to Malvern Wells two years later and given route number 144 in 1928, it's pretty much continued unchanged for the past hundred years or so, save for the... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th April 2022 It's been six months since I've done a marathon bus journey (Stagecoach's route 35 in Aberdeenshire) so decided it was opportune to take another extended ride over the Easter weekend. Stagecoach’s long established route 700 takes a lengthy 4 hours and 40 minutes to travel all the way from Portsmouth to... Continue Reading →
(Major changes to bus services in Wales) Saturday 16th April 2022 It's an interesting time for buses and trains in Wales. The Welsh Government took over running the nation's rail franchise in February last year thereby bringing trains back into public ownership. Until then, and since October 2018, the Wales and Borders franchise had been... Continue Reading →
Thursday 14th April 2022 There’s a lovely hamlet in Essex called Good Easter. Located in rural Essex between Chelmsford and Braintree it just happens to fall into one of the two areas covered by Essex County Council’s brand new DigiGo branded DRT scheme which began this month and was officially launched yesterday. It seemed like... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 12th April 2022 It's been a while since I tried out a new DRT service so I was pleased to put that right yesterday by giving the recently introduced new scheme in rural Norfolk the once over. It’s been included as part of Norfolk County Council’s well established 'Flexibus' brand which has been running... Continue Reading →
Saturday 9th April 2022 "it" looks like an old branding scheme as it was the only example I saw. Located towards the south western tip of Lincolnshire 23 miles south of the county town of Lincoln, 22 miles east of Nottingham, 29 miles north of Peterborough and 31 miles west of Boston, Grantham’s population is... Continue Reading →
Thursday 7th April 2022 Congratulations to this week's 31 lucky winners in the DfT’s Bus Service Improvement Plans lottery. Roughly half of England is destined to enjoy buses emulating what the Secretary of State describes as the "success of London" (which, by the way, confirms for any doubters the DfT really does suffer from some... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 5th April 2022 A shorter than usual and unashamedly self indulgent post today following the wonderful bus rally based on Lewes organised by David Mulpeter and the team at Seven Sisters Bus & Coach I was pleased to attend on Sunday. The rally was arranged at short notice to raise funds for Ukraine and... Continue Reading →
Saturday 2nd April 2022 Palestra Twitter followers will know I was privileged to be asked into TfL Towers (Palestra in Southwark) on Tuesday afternoon to share ideas on how to improve revenue and grow the number of passengers using its bus network based on best practice pursued by the country’s leading bus companies in the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 31st March 2022 Bluewater's bus station is next to Marks& Spencer in the south east apex of the complex. Out-of-town shopping centres can be extremely difficult to serve by bus. Only the very large ones like Bluewater have anything like a decent service. But they're a mecca for car users. Bluewater opened its swanky... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 29th March 2022 It's not often a bus company opens a brand new travel shop these days. Many bus companies have been only too pleased to save costs and close down any ‘High Street’ vestiges they once had which provided helpful face to face contact with the travelling public. Arriva's former travel shop in... Continue Reading →
Sunday 27th March 2022 Photo published with kind permission of The Bus Archive. I finally got round to paying a long overdue visit to The Bus Archive on Thursday. What a treasure trove it is. The above atmospheric photograph is taken from The Bus Archive's Facebook update for March. It's one of over a million... Continue Reading →
Saturday 26th March 2022 Continuing my fortnightly alphabetical wander around Britain brings me to the south coast. Folkestone’s population is 47,000. A further 15,000 people live in neighbouring Hythe, while the total population of the Folkestone & Hythe District Council area (renamed from Shepway Borough Council in 2018) is 113,000. Being a coastal town, and... Continue Reading →
Thursday 24th March 2022 March is free bus travel month in Newport but shhh, don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. This latest month’s worth of free bus fares follows a similar arrangement in December last year up to Christmas Eve and arises following what’s known as the Burns Commission report (named after its chairman Lord... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Photo courtesy Network Rail Aside from the shiny new mega-size stations about to open in the Crossrail core there are quite a few other brand new stations currently under construction on the national network which are due to open during 2022. It’s a bit of a sweepstake to see which will... Continue Reading →
Sunday 20th March 2022 There was a time when jointly operated inter-urban bus routes were quite common not least between adjacent subsidiaries of the National Bus Company. It made for an efficient way to operate a route which linked towns many miles apart which were located in different bus companies’ territories’. One of the most... Continue Reading →
Saturday 19th March 2022 Kent County Council launched a consultation last month seeking views on a raft of cuts to bus services it funds across the county which will be introduced this summer. Notwithstanding Bus Recovery Grant 2 and Bus Back Better’s vision of a wonderful utopian future for bus provision the reality in Kent... Continue Reading →
Thursday 17th March 2022 TfL launched a"long-term plan for buses" last week. The press release headlined it "TfL sets out bold vision for buses in the capital" with the new Bus Action Plan aiming for a "modern bus network to attract more customers and help the capital become net zero by 2030". The 94-page Bus... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 15th March 2022 I’ve been ‘off the road’ for operational reasons since last Monday (otherwise known as testing positive for Covid) which has given me an opportunity to reflect on the rail industry’s policy on ticket refunds. It’s all very simple if you’re a Marks & Spencer customer. Famous for its no quibble policy,... Continue Reading →
Sunday 13th March 2022 Evesham is the smallest town I’ve visited so far in my fortnightly A to Z exploration of the state of public transport in small to mid size towns. It’s got a population around 26,000 so is about half the size of Andover and Durham and a third the size of Bracknell... Continue Reading →
Saturday 12th March 2022 I was in Harrogate last week. You can't help but notice the bus service operated by Transdev Blazefield in the town exudes quality. Harrogate Bus Company is definitely in the bus industry’s Premier League. It's not that all the initiatives highlighted below are revolutionary; indeed some are small fry in the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 10th March 2022 A new sister company for Stagecoach - Belgium's Hansea. Forget that proposed merger-come-takeover between Stagecoach and National Express. That was last week’s news. It turns out while those board room discussions had been going on including a deal with Comfort DelGro to offload Stagecoach's share of Citylink as well as handing... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 8th March 2022 I’ve been visiting friends in Dublin over a weekend in early March for many years and after missing out in 2021 due to Covid was back on the Emerald Isle once again on Saturday and Sunday. It’s a great city to visit and I always look forward to my annual trip... Continue Reading →
Sunday 6th March 2022 Following the demise of Maidstone's Park & Ride last month comes news part of Canterbury's scheme is under threat. Launched in 1990, the city's Park & Ride is currently being subsidised by more than £57,000 a month and has seen the number of users halve since the Covid hiatus. There are... Continue Reading →
Saturday 5th March 2022 Last autumn I took a ride across Aberdeenshire on most of Stagecoach's route 35 between Elgin and Aberdeen, and thought it was high time I told you about it. Elgin (which lies 38 miles east of Inverness) and Aberdeen ... .... are connected by ScotRail trains running eight times a day... Continue Reading →
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Looking south I was in Cambridge briefly over the weekend so took the opportunity to take a look at the interim safety measures now installed between the public footpath/bridleway and the northbound guided busway on the one-and-a-quarter mile stretch between Addenbrooke's Hospital and Cambridge railway station. It had... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 1st March 2022 It's just over ten weeks since Arriva pulled out of Surrey so I took a ride over to Guildford last Wednesday to see how things were going. Bus networks in Crawley and Burton-on-Trent as well as Cannock have prospered since Arriva gave up on those towns so I wondered if the... Continue Reading →
Sunday 27th February 2022 In last Tuesday's blog about the Brighton Main Line blockade I mentioned a rail replacement bus was providing a direct journey between Seaford and Uckfield. As that seemed an unusual link - something not normally possible either by bus or train without changes and extended journey times - I thought I'd... Continue Reading →
Saturday 26th February 2022 It's time for my fortnightly visit to a small to mid sized town and for D I selected one of England's most beautiful and iconic cities which I hadn't explored for many months. The city of Durham's population is around 50,000. It's the administrative centre of its namesake Durham County Council... Continue Reading →
Thursday 24th February 2022 A fascinating exhibition opened at the beginning of this year in Elstree & Borehamwood Museum. I paid a visit a few weeks ago and thought I'd share the highlights with you. Elstree & Borehamwood Museum is a small one room affair on the second floor of Elstree & Borehamwood library located... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd February 2022 A deserted Hassocks at 07:30 I was up bright and early yesterday morning taking a few rail replacement rides to see how Brighton Main Line commuters were faring on their first weekday of the blockade without trains. It was soon apparent, as in 2019, extensive pre-blockade publicity had done its job... Continue Reading →
Sunday 20th February 2022 It's a bit déjà vu on the Brighton Main Line this week. Flushed with a successful nine day blockade south of Three Bridges to Brighton and Lewes during half term in February 2019 which at the time was billed as a one-off efficient way of completing a whole host of upgrade... Continue Reading →
Saturday 19th February 2022 I'd planned to use this blog to write about the fourth funding settlement agreed between DfT and TfL yesterday including the controversial stuff like Travelcards ending. But I guessed a settlement wouldn't be agreed. And instead there'd be a further extension from last night's midnight expiry of the already twice extended... Continue Reading →
Thursday 17th February 2022 I’ve been meaning to enjoy the freedom offered by a Waterside Wanderer Day Ranger ticket since November when Nigel at the Image Team kindly contacted me to let me know about its "soft launch" that month. Last Saturday I finally found time to travel over to Southampton and give it a... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 15th February 2022 As a Brighton Main Line regular I’ve long been used to playing the ‘Thameslink only’ ticket game to save myself money on travels to and from London, not least during the current hiatus when my local station Hassocks is only blessed with trains to London Bridge and at that a Southern... Continue Reading →
Sunday 13th February 2022 Having explored a couple of southern towns to kick off this year's A to Z of public transport provision in small to mid sized English towns last month I thought I’d better level up and select this month’s two contenders in the north. And what’s more they’re both cities rather than... Continue Reading →
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