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 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 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 →
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 →
Saturday 12th February 2022 There's been much consternation among bus passengers living in Potters Bar and the surrounding area over the last week. Long standing route 84 between St Albans and New Barnet has been deregistered by Metroline. The 84 is one of those iconic routes with a long history stretching back over a century... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 18th January 2022 The last time I used "London's newest bus route" as a title for a blogpost was on 29th March 2021 heralding the arrival of new route 456 in north London. Almost ten months on I’ve taken another ride on the route to see how it’s getting on but before that another... Continue Reading →
Saturday 8th January 2022 This week has seen further rationalisation between Go-Ahead owned Oxford Bus and Stagecoach Oxford simplifying which bus company operates which routes. Long gone are the days of intense head-to-head competition between the two operators, now there’s sensible cooperation and coordinated timetables making for an attractive bus network to entice passengers. Following... Continue Reading →
Thursday 2nd December 2021 Hereford is one of those market towns where it’s notoriously hard to provide a decent bus service that’s financially viable. With a population of around 62,000, it’s a similar size to Corby, Canterbury, Scarborough, Taunton and Tunbridge Wells. It’s a typical English market town with a relatively low population density in... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Transdev Blazefield’s purchase of Yorkshire Tiger from Arriva in July included an immediate high profile rename to Team Pennine along with a bright new pink themed rebrand with refreshed buses christened Denby Darts introduced on the Huddersfield to Denby Dale bus route renumbered D1 together with a promise of “creating better... Continue Reading →
Friday 26th November 2021 As explained in Wednesday’s blog when the violent storm caused the railway track at Dawlish to collapse in 2014 there was much talk at the highest political level (Prime Minister David Cameron no less) about taking action to ensure the South West wasn’t ever cut off from the rail network again.... Continue Reading →
Monday 22nd November 2021 It certainly can’t be said Hulleys haven’t given it a good try. Introduced on 26th October 2020 the much welcomed Snake X57 branded bus route linking Sheffield and Manchester, via the scenic A57 Snake Pass, is now on its last knockings with a complete withdrawal planned after after 8th January. It’s... Continue Reading →
Saturday 20th November 2021 It’s been a long lingering death sentence. 'The writing was on the wall’ way before the pandemic destroyed passenger numbers so it came as no surprise to hear news Arriva are withdrawing its Green Line branded route 758 between Hemel Hempstead and London Victoria. The route will cease after service on... Continue Reading →
Saturday 6th November 2021 I’m conscious there’ve been a few blogs recently about bus routes in Essex; well, sorry folks, here’s another one. The issue is, each time I visit I spot something that attracts my attention justifying a return visit to investigate further. I did the same a year ago when I took a... Continue Reading →
Monday 25th October 2021 Following my recent outing to Sheppey and Grain on the north Kent coast, it's time to replicate similar island exploring on the north side of the Thames Estuary along the Essex coastline - said surprisingly to be the English county with the longest coastline, mainly because of all its inlets and... Continue Reading →
Saturday 23rd October 2021 It’s been a long time since you could catch a bus from the Debden and Loughton area of Essex, on the fringe of Greater London, and travel to the county town of Chelmsford. A locally based correspondent Chris reckons it was pre war when an early Green Line lettered route provided... Continue Reading →
Sunday 17th October 2021 A surprise ending And so to the fourth and final quadrant of our London encirclement commemorating last year's fiftieth anniversary of the much missed London Country Bus Services. We'd journeyed from Gravesend to Dorking; Dorking to Amersham and Amersham to Bishops Stortford and Friday saw the circle completed by travelling from... Continue Reading →
Thursday 7th October 2021 While down in Cornwall last weekend I took the opportunity to take a ride on First Kernow’s new-for-the-2021-summer-season Falmouth Coaster branded open top bus tour of the town. It’s part of FK’s Adventures By Bus over arching brand of initiatives introduced this summer to attract the leisure travel market. Regular readers... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 5th October 2021 First the good news. Go-Ahead’s Go Cornwall Bus website which acts on behalf of Transport for Cornwall (TfC) now includes a comprehensive map of the combined county bus network showing both First Kernow’s commercial and TfC’s tendered networks. Fantastic. An integrated bus map. At last. And as I found when I... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 29th September 2021 I explored the Isle of Sheppey back in April as my very own ‘Farewell to Arriva on the Island’ Tribute Tour. The Arriva bus garage alongside Sheerness station closed as planned in July with Sittingbourne based independent owned bus and coach company Chalkwell taking over operation of the bus routes on... Continue Reading →
Friday 17th September 2021 The Snowdon Sherpa network of bus routes provides a great way to explore the Snowdonia National Park. It links the six walking paths which give access to the mountains and removes the tediousness for walkers needing to retrace their outward route if parking in one of the designated parking areas across... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Transport for Wales have only gone and done it again. They've further expanded the TrawsCymru network of bus routes with a brand new route - the T10 - running through the Snowdonia National Park linking Wrexham via a connection in Corwen with Betws-y-Coed and Bangor. The T10 timetable provides a two-hourly... Continue Reading →
Thursday 9th September 2021 Buckinghamshire’s expansionist bus company Redline has upped the stakes in its competitive battle with Arriva by introducing of a new hourly route X20 between Aylesbury and Oxford. It challenges Arriva’s long standing three-bus-an hour Sapphire branded route 280 on the same route. Redline are differentiating their interloper by offering a quicker... Continue Reading →
From Compass to Carousel Thursday 26th August 2021 The LCBS Anniversary Tour Gang of Four (now joined by Mike Best and David Cole to make Six of the Best) reconvened on Tuesday to continue our wander around that much missed company’s Polo mint operating area taking us from Dorking Station (where we left off last... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 24th August 2021 One of London's most unusual bus routes makes its final journey this week. I write 'London’s bus route', but it's not a TfL route and only reaches as far east as Romford. But it does operate along a road once used by former London Transport Central Area red bus route 250... Continue Reading →
Sunday 22nd August 2021 Britain has three* bus networks using the prefix W. They’re a very diverse threesome. One comprises frequent routes in Wood Green and Walthamstow in north London (as well as Wanstead and Woodford). Another can be found running through the most remote spectacular scenery you’ll ever find in Britain, in the Outer... Continue Reading →
From Gravesend to Dorking Thursday 12th August 2021 OK, I realise I'm a year late, but just like the Tokyo Olympics, due to the uncertainty of Covid restrictions this project couldn't happen in 2020, but now, better late than never (just like a Green Line coach was for much of the time in the ‘old... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 10th August 2021 As well as bringing back open top bus routes all along Bournemouth’s seafront between Mudeford and Alum Chine this summer, Yellow Buses have also introduced a new route aimed at the leisure market linking Christchurch with Ringwood taking in the western side of the New Forest. It began operating at weekends... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 4th August 2021 This week has seen Stagecoach South East revamp its bus routes between Canterbury, Faversham and Sittingbourne and introduce an exciting new extension onwards to Maidstone. Southeastern trains run regularly between Faversham and Sittingbourne but services to Maidstone are not so convenient with journeys taking well over an hour and involving a... Continue Reading →
Monday 2nd August 2021 It was a welcome makeover at the time. In September 2013 Arriva bought out its majority partner shareholders in Centrebus Holdings which had been running buses from bases in Huddersfield, Elland and Honley since 2008 under various brands. Some of the operations had originally been part of the old Yorkshire Traction... Continue Reading →
Saturday 31st July 2021 How many times have you heard local councillors or traders calling for reduced or even free car parking to encourage shoppers back to town centres? Many of us in the industry usually retort “how about making bus travel free instead?". That’s exactly what's happened in Swansea where councillors have funded completely... Continue Reading →
Monday 26th July 2021 It’s not the longest bus route - extending only about five miles north and east of Llangollen at its furthest points - but it would be hard to find another route that packs in so many amazing scenic delights and heritage sites per mile. The brand new Dee Valley Picturesque Bus... Continue Reading →
Sunday 18th July 2021 As well as open-top buses and DRT, 2021 is also proving to be the year of the electric bus with more and more entering service as various Government funding schemes enable operators and local authorities meet high introduction costs not only of the buses but also the associated charging infrastructure. The... Continue Reading →
Sunday 11th July 2021 As January’s lockdown began at the start of 2021 the Go-Ahead owned East Yorkshire bus company revamped its bus service between Goole and Hull creating a new fast limited stop route X5 operating between the two towns to compliment the stopping service. It sounded like a great initiative to grow the... Continue Reading →
Friday 9th July 2021 I thought it was about time I wrote another blog about open-top bus routes - well, it’s been just over a week since the last one - so here’s a report on my recent travel experiences on First Kernow’s two prime routes in Cornwall - the Atlantic Coaster and Lands End... Continue Reading →
Monday 4th July 2021 It’s great to see the brilliant Moorsbus network of summer weekend bus routes across the North York Moors make a much welcome return after its enforced Covid absence last year. Running every Saturday and Sunday throughout July, August and September the routes numbered M1 to M8 as well as M31 provide... Continue Reading →
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