Sunday 12th March 2023 You’re never far away from a DRT experience these days. Those living in the West of England region will soon be subjected to multiple schemes by the Combined Authority so I thought I’d relate my latest experiences on the off chance someone responsible at that Authority might come across this blog... Continue Reading →
Friday 24th February 2023 I couldn't round off a week of travelling on new bus routes without a ride on the very latest DRT scheme which started on Monday in Kent. (New blog subscribers are welcome to put DRT into the search function on this website to read about my travel experiences on all other... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 20th December 2022 It's one of those weeks for end of year reviews and news round ups so I thought a few updates on how Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is going would be in order particularly as the DfT and so many local authorities have such high hopes for it. 2022 has seen nine... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 8th November 2022 It's time for another new DRT try out. This one's in Gloucestershire where £1.35 million from the DfT’s Rural Mobility Fund is paying for two schemes to operate in the county for a two year trial. One is in the southern part of the Forest of Dean... ... and the other... Continue Reading →
Thursday 29th September 2022 Nottsbus On Demand It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen a DfT funded DRT launch but two more have recently hit the road including one in High Wycombe this week and another in Nottinghamshire at the end of last month which had sneaked passed my DRT launch antenna until now.... Continue Reading →
Thursday 4th August 2022 I left you in Tuesday's blog arriving in Narborough on the Vectare operated NovusFlex DRT bus. Keith kindly set me down in Narborough rail station's car park soon after 12:30 and I had cautiously arranged my next journey on the new FoxConnect DRT service from there at 13:00 allowing time for... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 2nd August 2022 I recently blogged about Leicester’s new St Margaret’s bus station observing more exciting public transport developments were coming to this forward looking city. And here we are again, looking at three new initiatives in the city and another in neighbouring Leicestershire, including two new DRT schemes. Launching yesterday was NovusFlex operated... Continue Reading →
Thursday 30th June 2022 Long term blog readers may recall I paid a visit to Wiltshire's very successful 'on-demand' rural bus route 101/102 running between Pewsey and Devizes back in April 2019. I was concerned to read recent reports Wiltshire County Council are consulting on changing this highly successful arrangement to an app based fully... Continue Reading →
Saturday 28th May 2022 As well as a new station opening in Reston, Monday also saw another DRT scheme take to the road; this time in Warwickshire thanks to £1.02 million from the DfT’s magic money rural mobility funding tree. And if you’re thinking ‘haven’t I read one of your blogs about a DRT bus... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 24th May 2022 TPE staff with an original station sign There will undoubtedly be early morning shenanigans today with thousands out celebrating London’s new railway opening its central core gate lines for the first time, but today I’m bringing you news of a comparatively minor development - yesterday's opening of another railway station closed... 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 →
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 →
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Following a suggestion in the comments on a recent blog about a new DRT scheme, I've compiled a chronology of DRT introductions over the past five years and given it a special page on the busandtrainuser.com website. You can find it via this link, or by clicking on the menu icon... Continue Reading →
Friday 29th October 2021 This week’s DRT bus service launch is Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s trial in that rural part of ‘West Huntingdonshire’ lying west of Huntingdon and St Neots. It’s got the same features and challenges I’ve covered in other blogs about rural DRT operations so I won’t repeat the same old stuff... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th October 2021 As regular readers will know I’m very partial to a lovely rural bus ride. The more infrequent and quirky the better. I always feel a sense of achievement by visiting picturesque isolated villages by bus so I thoroughly enjoyed an outing on Tuesday last week when I managed a trio of... Continue Reading →
Saturday 9th October 2021 A couple of exciting zero emission developments were added to the Leeds bus scene in September. I caught up with both during a visit on Thursday. First up is another DRT operation using electric Fiat minibuses with Mellor bodies. I know, I know, you must be tiring of reading write ups... Continue Reading →
Friday 1st October 2021 The DRT craze reached Aberdeenshire on 16th August when the snazzily named Ready2Go five vehicle operation hit the road. Six weeks on it was time for a ‘BusAndTrainUser’ visit to give it the once over which I managed to do on Tuesday morning to add to my collection of DRT travel... Continue Reading →
YorBus and HertsLynx Thursday 23rd September 2021 I’ve been back out and about on the DRT trail again. It’s almost becoming a full time occupation as the DfT’s Rural Mobility Pot Of Gold funding kicks in with nineteen schemes starting up as the money begins to flow. First up last Saturday I took a ride... Continue Reading →
Saturday 24th July 2021 “Worcestershire on Demand” is the trying-to-be snazzy overarching brand name for what Worcestershire County Council hope will be a network of DRT schemes across the county to provide "better value and a better service for essential travel". That's what their 'blurb' says with its rather strange grammar in the first sentence:... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 13th July 2021 It really was third time lucky. Readers will know it's taken two abortive visits to Scunthorpe, but after much perseverance I finally managed to experience a journey on the North Lincs JustGo DRT service at the third attempt last Tuesday. I left you in my last blog post on the East... Continue Reading →
Friday 25th June 2021 Trying out new Demand Responsive Transport services in their first week or two, as I often do, can give an unfair assessment due to initial teething problems or the fact few potential passengers know about their existence in the early days. So it's always good to make a return visit after... Continue Reading →
Thursday 17th June 2021 I've become a bit of a DRT connoisseur. Sittingbourne, Weymss Bay, Liverpool, Speke, Leicester, Oxford, Sutton, Ealing, Teesside, Newport, Sevenoaks, Watford, Ebbsfleet, Scunthorpe, Milton Keynes ... I've tried them all over the last couple of years. Regular readers will be all too familiar with my varied experiences so I'm delighted to... Continue Reading →
Saturday 29th May 2021 I was back on the DRT (Demand Responsive Transport) trail again yesterday. There’s no let up in the current fad for national and local government to fund tech based ‘shared mobility’ schemes especially where they’re seen as the possible magic solution to the ‘rural transport problem’. Here’s another one hoping to... Continue Reading →
Thursday 22nd April 2021 Readers may recall my attempt to try out North Lincolnshire Council’s JustGo branded Demand Responsive Transport service when it launched last September. The £9 million (over three years) scheme is operated by Go-Ahead owned East Yorkshire using software provided by tech company Liftango and Mercedes minibuses redundant after the TfL funded... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 31st March 2021 It's all change for Milton Keynes Council's funded bus routes tomorrow as the local authority sweeps away the low frequency services which compliment Arriva's cross town commercial network replacing them with Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) commissioned from the tech company Via. Councillor Lauren Townsend, Cabinet member for Community Safety, hailed the... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Arriva Click began a new DRT (Demand Responsive Transport) venture on Monday thanks to funding provided by house builders Redrow and Henley Camsland who, along with others, are slowly transforming Ebbsfleet's former massive chalk quarries into what is now the fledgling Ebbsfleet Garden City. Ebbsfleet Garden City lies immediately north of... Continue Reading →
Monday 7th September 2020 North Lincolnshire Council became the latest local authority to jump on the app based Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) bus bandwagon today as it launched its new JustGo branded operation. Except this scheme serving a largely rural area has one key positive differential from the other failed DRT schemes; it’s built on... Continue Reading →
Thursday 13th August 2020I had high hopes for fflecsi (it’s Welsh for flex) - the Welsh version of DRT (Demand Responsive Transport).Transport for Wales (TfW) are replacing existing fixed-timetable small-scale bus routes with a bookable flexible bus running along the route and its environs according to demand. It’s a bit like how Go Coach Hire... Continue Reading →
Friday 17th July 2020It hasn’t worked in Bristol, Sittingbourne, Sutton, Ealing or Oxford. And it’s on pause in Liverpool. But these failures haven’t dented Watford Borough Council's enthusiasm for joining the craze of flirting with Demand Responsive Transport (DRT). The latest scheme got underway in the Hertfordshire town a couple of weeks ago on 1st... Continue Reading →
Thursday 4th June 2020 I reported back on 3 April Sevenoaks based Go-Coach Hire were replacing from Easter all its fixed timetable local town routes as well as rural routes in the surrounding area, including Hildenborough, Edenbridge and nearby villages, with a demand responsive bus service branded as go2. Knowing my fascination with DRT schemes,... Continue Reading →
Friday 3rd April 2020 A couple of weeks ago I suggested these unprecedented times might be a good opportunity to give Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) a really good try out to see if its unproven business model would work in the current corona circumstances. With demand for traditional bus services plummeting to around 10% (or even... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 25th February 2020 After Friday's Tees teaser I spotted the new 'Tees flex' app became available to download over the weekend so armed with that and the zonal maps which blog readers kindly pointed out were on Stagecoach's 'Tees flex' webpage as click throughs from the zonal names, I was able to plan today's... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st November 2019 Following last Friday's try out of TfL's latest Demand Responsive Transport trial in Ealing, I found myself back in the Borough with two bus industry colleague friends to give it another try yesterday afternoon. There was a Slide vehicle parked up waiting for custom as we came out of Ealing Broadway... Continue Reading →
Friday 15th November 2019 It's all change in the world of Bus Demand Responsive Transport (DRT). This week sees the final foray for Arriva Click's pioneering 'pilot' in Sittingbourne and Zeelo's scheme for pilots (and others) living in Crawley and working at Gatwick Airport. The former ends tomorrow having been launched with much fanfare back... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 28th August 2019 I was puzzled by a recent news item that Merseytravel are withdrawing a local bus route they fund in the Speke area of south east Liverpool from this weekend to be replaced on Monday by Arriva Click: 'the new Arriva Click Speke Zone service will operate between the same hours... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 13th August 2019 TfL's first foray into the new fangled world of App based Dial-A-Ride (aka Demand Responsive Transport) in Sutton is now in its twelfth week and yesterday a rather impersonal email popped into my inbox announcing an exciting extension of the area served by the swish exec style wishy-washy liveried Mercedes Sprinter... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 28th May 2019 TfL jumped on the digital DRT bandwagon today launching its own version of Arriva Click and Oxford Pick Me Up. This latest app-based Demand Responsive Transport has landed in upmarket car dominated Sutton and Carshalton using six minibuses out of a fleet of eight between 06:30 and 21:30, seven days a... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 1st May 2019 It's day three of Arriva's latest Click venture introduced in Leicester on Monday, so I thought it was worth a trip to see how it's panning out. Corporates love to boast about being the first to do something; they salivate over 'ground-breaking initiatives' and associated hype reckoning it makes for a... Continue Reading →
Friday 12th April 2019 Wiltshire's Wigglybus was introduced way back in 1999. At one time it was considered so cutting edge as a project to solve the rural transport challenge it attracted £1million in Government funding for expansion. Rebranded, along with other shared taxi type services across Wiltshire, to the less colloquial 'Connect2Wiltshire' umbrella brand... Continue Reading →
Friday 5th October 2018 Oxford's Pick-Me-Up is now over three months old so I thought it was time to see how it's settling down after the introductory honeymoon. My four criteria to judge these new ride share taxi-come-bus services are: waiting time for bus to arrive; direct or meandering route; solo ride or share with... Continue Reading →
Having been plagued for some weeks by marketing emails from the London black cab App organisation called Gett, I finally relented yesterday and headed up to London to use up the £10 credit (with an expiry of 31st August) they'd recently added to my account in a last ditch attempt to entice my return custom.... Continue Reading →
Followers of this blog, my twitter timeline and various magazine articles I’ve written will know I’m a bit of a sceptic about the current fashion for App-A-Ride, the modern day Dial-A-Ride and so called demand responsive services. I just can’t see how the business model will ever deliver a profit. I must be missing something... Continue Reading →
Well done Oxford Bus. I'm all for innovation and trying new things. And it's time someone had a real go at beating UBER at their own loss making game of undermining the taxi trade. So I'm pleased to see Phil Southall and his Oxford Bus team joining in the fun and games with a brand... Continue Reading →
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