Sunday 9th June 2024 Beginning this series of daily blogs featuring highlights of last week's enjoyable wander around the country using a complimentary First Class All Line Rail Rover (thanks to a year's worth of Delay Repay) is a post about the newly restored railway line to Leven which opened for business exactly a week... Continue Reading →
Saturday 8th June 2024 It seems a good idea to complete the trio of bus routes numbered 100, all operated by the associated bus companies of Centrebus, Chaserider and D&G Bus, by taking a ride on the latter’s service between Hanley and Stone in Staffordshire. Routes 100 operated by the other two companies (in Melton... Continue Reading →
Thursday 6th June 2024 Readers will recall Tuesday's blog saw us ending Part 1 of our round London Superloop odyssey beginning at East Croydon having only reached as far as Finchley Central rather than the planned Walthamstow Central. Thanks to light rain conditions, unimpressive aged vehicles on the SL7 to Heathrow, slow going through Northolt... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 4th June 2024 The small gang of intrepid (mostly retired) busmen who do occasional bizarre London based bus trips has been at it again. Way back before Superloop was even a glint in a Mayoral eye, in June 2016, some of the team circumnavigated the extreme outer edge of the Capital's bus network using... Continue Reading →
Saturday 1st June 2024 I was going to spare you another blog about DRT and just give Somerset Council's new Slinky branded service a passing mention in Thursday's 'Seen Around' blog. But that was before I remembered the sorry state of Yeovil's bus station and environs which deserves more than a passing mention. I managed... Continue Reading →
Thursday 30th May 2024 Welcome to another end-of-the-month round up of miscellany that’s caught my eye during travels in May which haven't made it into a full blown blog, but nevertheless might be of interest. First up, a visit to Oxford, after checking out that frozen-in-time Park & Ride site at Eynsham to see ...... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 28th May 2024 It's good to see the First Bus takeover of Ensignbus last year hasn't stopped the Purfleet based company being its usual entrepreneurial best over the Bank Holiday weekend, when it once again added a fleet of heritage open-top buses to its now traditional seafront service from Southend-on-Sea's world famous Pier. And... Continue Reading →
Saturday 25th May 2024 After last time’s wander from Syston to Melton Mowbray it’s the turn of the second of three route 100s operated by associated companies CentreBus, Chaserider and D&G Bus. We’re in Chaserider's Shropshire territory travelling between Wellington and the suburbs of neighbouring Telford now administered by Telford & Wrekin Council. And if... Continue Reading →
Thursday 23rd May 2024 No wonder Monday's online webinar about Cheshire West and Chester Council's iTravel DRT scheme was promoted as a "DRT rural success story" with "strong uptake". When asked what the target had been for judging success of the service (introduced at the end of July 2023), the Council's Team Leader Transport and... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 21st May 2024 Matt Kitchin and his Stagecoach Yorkshire team launched the Peak Sightseer open-top bus route in conjunction with Derbyshire County Council last summer. As explained when I blogged about the route last August, the route was a collaboration between Stagecoach, the County Council, the National Park Authority and Chatsworth House operating to... Continue Reading →
Sunday 19th May 2024 Keith Shayshutt has just published another book about buses in the south west. This time he’s turned his forensic investigative powers to examine the turbulent 1978-1982 period when Western National, like all National Bus Company subsidiaries, went through the MAP (Market Analysis Project) era to establish a viable network of bus... Continue Reading →
Saturday 18th May 2024 It's a measure of the impact of the Elizabeth line on London's public transport that yet another station that sees purple trains calling has a place in the Top 10 chart of Britain's busiest railway stations. Stratford appears at sixth place having clocked up 44,136,784 passenger entries and exits in the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 16th May 2024 This week has seen Stagecoach South East re-enter the Brighton-Eastbourne market competing directly with both Brighton & Hove (B&H) and Southern Rail in East Sussex while in neighbouring West Sussex, B&H's sister company, Metrobus, has revved up its route 273 to better serve the Crawley-Brighton market. The Stagecoach South East initiative... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 14th May 2024 Crewe’s newly built bus station opened for business last Tuesday. It’s a huge improvement on what went before... ...including a former Crosville bus garage on the site... It's been built in four stages over the last couple of years... ... and together with a new 389 space multi- storey car park... Continue Reading →
Saturday 11th May 2024 My latest ride on a bus route numbered 100 is one of three to be featured in this fortnightly series operated by the closely linked bus companies of Centrebus, Chaserider and D&G Bus; all having ownership interests by bus entrepreneur Julian Peddle. This time it's the Centrebus operated route between Syston... Continue Reading →
Thursday 9th May 2024 Rail companies which bought into the Vivarail idea of refurbished London Underground D78 stock becoming diesel/battery Class 230 and electric Class 484 trains in their new guise haven’t had a lot of luck with their purchases. The idea sounded good when first mooted by the late Adrian Shooter who founded Vivarail... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 7th May 2024 There are some great examples of community organised bus routes around the country. Perhaps most famous are DalesBus and MoorsBus where volunteers oversee bus networks serving the two National Parks (Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors) with financial contributions and sponsorship from local businesses as well as support from local authorities.... Continue Reading →
Saturday 4th May 2024 A brand new 850 space Park and Ride site in Oxfordshire has recently been constructed at a cost of £51 million but it won’t be used for "a number of years" because, according to media reports, there’s no funding for its access road and roundabout on the adjacent A40. Sounds bizarre?... Continue Reading →
Thursday 2nd May 2024 A few weeks ago a partnership between Arriva and Stagecoach was announced. It's part of the Leicestershire Enhanced Bus Partnership and has seen the two bus companies amend timetables of their respective hourly routes (X3 and X7) between Market Harborough and Leicester so there’s a more even half hourly frequency from... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Another month end. Another motley collection of miscellaneous matters and some good news to begin with ….. £920,000 fence reopens Cambridge busway The northbound Cambridge busway between Addenbrooke’s Spur Road and Cambridge railway station finally reopened on 30th March having closed in February 2022 due to safety concerns arising from two... Continue Reading →
Saturday 27th April 2024 We're now a third of the way through this fortnightly series featuring all of Britain's bus routes numbered 100 and having been to Stevenage, Crawley, Lincoln, Glasgow, Campbeltown, Guildford and Manchester I thought it was time to head to London and take a ride on TfL’s route 100. It’s odd to... Continue Reading →
Thursday 25th April 2024 Mid Cornwall Metro is a £56.8 million project providing a new hourly Coast to Coast link with direct trains running between Newquay, Par, St Austell, Truro, Penryn (for the Exeter University campus) and Falmouth. The aim is to upgrade the Newquay to Par branch line first, facilitating a doubling of the... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Welcome to another investigation into a sensational public transport headline from the mainstream media. Way back on 11th October last year BBC News carried a story stating "more than 500 people have signed a petition to save a bus stop in Cornwall set to be removed due to safety concerns". It... Continue Reading →
Saturday 20th April 2024 The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) are at pains to point out on its website how its statistics on rail station usage can only be estimates: "as Great Britain does not have a fully gated rail network, a complete recording of passenger flows through stations is not possible, so some... Continue Reading →
Thursday 18th April 2024 This month has seen four developments in the burgeoning world of DRT operations. Firstly, Nottinghamshire County Council expanded its Nottsbus On Demand offering last week adding a fifth area south of Newark. To kick start the new arrangements it withdrew “your friendly local link through the Rushcliffe Villages” represented by Marshalls... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 16th April 2024 What do the three bus routes linking Maidstone with Ashford; Ashford with Canterbury; and Canterbury with Maidstone have in common? And I don't mean they're all operated by Stagecoach South East. And I don't mean they’re all (usually) operated by Enviro 400 double deck buses. And I don't mean they'e all... Continue Reading →
Saturday 13th April 2024 The eighth route 100 to be featured in this fortnightly series must rank as one of the quirkiest. It’s Arriva's second of that Company’s two routes numbered 100 but unlike its busy Stevenage to Luton route already featured, and certainly unlike the lengthy Manchester to Warrington featured last time, this 100... Continue Reading →
Thursday 11th April 2024 I attended a fascinating and timely visit organised by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport to Metrobus’s Crawley bus garage on Tuesday. It was to hear more about the challenges the Company is facing with its pioneering introduction of liquid "green" hydrogen including commissioning what is destined to be “the... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 9th April 2024 I paid a visit to the Didcot Railway Centre over the Easter weekend. Never having been before, it had been on a list of interesting looking places to visit for a long time having always given it a good stare out of the window when travelling on trains between Reading and... Continue Reading →
Saturday 6th April 2024 No, sorry train fans, this blog isn't about the much hyped Greater Anglia super duper two return journeys a day express linking Norwich with London Liverpool Street in an impressive 90 minutes launched with much hype and self congratulations in May 2019 only to succumb to the Covid retrenchment 10 months... Continue Reading →
Thursday 4th April 2024 Something odd has been happening to rural bus routes in the Dacorum district of Hertfordshire these past few weeks. Readers may recall the County Council's Herts Lynx branded DRT scheme expanded into the Berkhamsted and Tring areas west of Hemel Hempstead in December 2023 without any reduction in conventional bus routes.... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 2nd April 2024 It’s not often a bus service has to succumb to a 10 mile diversion due to a road closure resulting in half its route and two villages left unserved for up to six months. That’s what happened when Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks embarked on its multi-million pound “Alton-Bordon Network Investment”... Continue Reading →
Sunday 31st March 2024 Welcome to March's month-end miscellany. Odds and sods that have caught my eye while travelling around over the last 31 days but not enough for a full blown blog. Latest Greater London Bus Map The excellent news to kick off this month's miscellany is Mike Harris has updated his Greater London... Continue Reading →
Saturday 30th March 2024 I took a ride on the busy inter-urban route 100 linking Manchester and Warrington on its very last day as a commercial operation by Go North West - last Saturday, 23rd March. The following day, Sunday, the route became part of Greater Manchester’s expanding franchised controlled Bee Network. Buses were already... Continue Reading →
Thursday 28th March 2024 Stockport's impressive new Interchange opened for business on Sunday last week (17th March). It’s cost a cool £140 million and forms part of a £1 billion regeneration makeover of the town centre. The so called ‘north/south divide’ and need for ‘levelling up’, both never far from a politician’s sound bite these... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 26th March 2024 The long standing popular ferry link across the River Thames linking Gravesend and Tilbury is being 'paused' from Saturday while a new operator is sought. Jetstream Tours has operated the service under contract to Kent and Thurrock Councils for the last seven years but Thurrock Council’s well documented financial difficulties led... Continue Reading →
Saturday 23rd March 2024 I still call it St Pancras even though it gained its International suffix back in 2007 and if you want to buy a ticket from a ticket machine to travel there you have to know to type in London St Pancras International. At 33,296,120 passenger journeys a year, it lies in... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st March 2024 Bus passengers travelling along the coast road between Brighton and Eastbourne are enjoying superb comfort from the brand new buses now entering service with Brighton & Hove Bus Company as part of a substantial order of 44 ADL Enviro400 MMC buses. 38 of the new intake are destined for the hugely... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th March 2024 Two of Britain’s bus services numbered 100 are Park & Ride routes and in a happy numerical coincidence when I took a ride on Guildford's route 100 on Saturday afternoon, the first of the two to be featured in this fortnightly blog series, the car park was packed with people ...... Continue Reading →
Saturday 16th March 2024 This month sees three high profile public transport networks change hands. Firstly in Northampton, unō withdrew from its operations last weekend (9th March) after 11 and a half years in the town to be replaced by Stagecoach. Secondly next Thursday (21st March) Stagecoach ends its 27 year tenure operating the Sheffield... Continue Reading →
Thursday 14th March 2024 The sub title of this 'hot off the press' voluminous book, coming in at 420 pages, 'In shades of brown & cream' adds 'South Yorkshire PTE - the bus operating years' clarifying it's a comprehensive study of that renowned bus operator in what was dubbed at the time 'The People's Republic... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 12th March 2024 I paid a visit to Somerset last Wednesday to investigate an interesting development in that county’s bus scene. Both Somerset and North Somerset Councils have used some of their BSIP funds to reinstate route 126 between Weston-Super-Mare and Wells. Regular readers may recall I took a ride on the route just... Continue Reading →
Saturday 9th March 2024 Contextual Alert: The following blog was written prior to Lambeth Borough Council's dramatic decision on Thursday afternoon to suspend the Streatham Wells Low Traffic Neighbourhood with immediate effect. Teaser Alert: I paid a return visit to Streatham yesterday afteroon to see what impact this suspension was having. Read on for the... Continue Reading →
Thursday 7th March 2024 The £56 million project to greatly increase the capacity of the West Midlands railway station called simply University has been completed with the new station opening at the end of January. It’s an impressive transformation. There’s no comparison to the cramped conditions of the old station with two newly constructed massive... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 5th March 2024 I’ve recently caught up with the three latest additions to Britain’s burgeoning DRT landscape. They’re in West Berkshire, West Sussex and Derbyshire. West Berkshire’s scheme was launched on 15th January. There’s a rather cute home made video on YouTube explaining the background to it here featuring West Berkshire's Councillor Denis Gaines,... Continue Reading →
Sunday 3rd March It was a big day for buses in London yesterday. As well as the final orbital segment of Superloop taking to the road with new route SL2 running every 12 minutes between Walthamstow and North Woolwich, completing the 1pm to 3pm clock face... Map courtesy of Geoff Marshall ... a raft of... Continue Reading →
Saturday 2nd March I’m back in Scotland for this fifth journey exploring all Britain’s 26 bus routes numbered 100, and it's another short one Or should I use the plural, as it’s really two mini town routes for the price of one, and in my case just £1.65 for a complete five mile rounder covering... Continue Reading →
Thursday 29th February 2024 Welcome to the BusAndTrainUser month end round up of noteworthy sitings spotted on my travels over the last few weeks. Sign language signs I was interested to see the replies and comments I received on X after posting photographs of the departures boards at Doncaster station where LNER are carrying out... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 27th February 2024 A fortnight ago I explained in the blog about Flitwick's Transport Interchange that Stagecoach was withdrawing its hourly route 2 between Bedford and Flitwick after 17th February. The two buses saved from that cut were redeployed on an extension to the company's half hourly route 9A/9B which perviously ran from Bedford... Continue Reading →
Sunday 25th February 2024 It's the London Borough of Bexley's residents’ turn to enjoy the delights of TfL's Superloop limited stop 'express' buses now traversing their home patch. New route SL3 began yesterday linking Bromley, Sidcup and Bexleyheath with Thamesmead (just over the border in the Borough of Greenwich). It brings the metaphorical clockface Superloop... Continue Reading →
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