Thursday 22nd December 2022 Four new unusual bus routes started running in north London this week. That’s the introductory paragraph I optimistically wrote as I left home yesterday morning to try them out. Spoiler alert: one never ran; one had such a long gap in service I gave up waiting; one was extensively disrupted by... Continue Reading →
Sunday 6th February 2022 Readers will have seen my recent news update about Essex County Council promoting its "spring clean" of Harlow's notorious bus station “with help from Arriva and Harlow Council”. It was good news that "public transport posters and timetables have been updated, alongside a deep clean" so as I was passing through... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 1st February 2022 As expected the southern section of Cambridgeshire's guided busway between the railway station and Addenbrooke's Hospital and Trumpington closed yesterday for an indefinite "temporary period" pending the outcome of an independent safety review expected to conclude this month. I wrote about the background to this last week which led to a... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 25th January 2022 A one and a third mile section of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway will close next Monday due to safety concerns. It follows two fatal accidents, one in September 2018 and another in October last year. Following October's incident an independent safety review was established and after consultations with the Health &... Continue Reading →
Friday 15th October 2021 Rail. Replacement. Bus. October 2021: warning for February 2022 already As you can see down here in Sussex Rail Replacement Buses are front page news again as GTR and Network Rail's media machine begins the warm up warning to give rail passengers plenty of advance notice of next February’s nine day... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 18th August 2021 It's always impressive to read corporate vision documents. You know the kind of thing. Glossy photos of staff helping smiling customers and paragraphs full of glowing statements about the company's unbridled commitment to customers and how we're at the heart of everything the company does. Sadly they seldom match up to... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 4th May 2021 We all know it's going to be a big challenge to get passengers using public transport after the past year's pandemic hiatus. And it's good to see some exciting developments with new bus brands in Lancashire for tendered routes (Ribble Country and Little Hot Line), ambitious new services for the leisure... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 6th April 2021 It's not often TfL's bus stop contractors manage to install new bus stops in time for the start of extensions to bus routes. (Readers will recall my recent ride along new route 456 featuring 'dolly stops' and temporary flags despite plenty of notice before the service started.) But in Wandsworth, they've... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 26th August 2020 It's been trailed on social media as making "it easier than ever to connect with the people and places that matter to you". Arriva'smuch vaunted new website and app were launched yesterday. It gets a one star rating from me, and that's being generous. Bring back the previous website famed for... Continue Reading →
Monday 25th May 2020 Among the “today I can announce” sound bites at last September’s Conservative Party Conference was Grant Shapps gifting £23.5 million over four years to Cornwall Council to reduce bus fares across the county in the hope of boosting passenger numbers. At that time a spokeswoman for the unitary authority said “the... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 12th May 2020 Back in the carefree pre Covid-19 days of travelling around the country for pleasure, on Wednesday 5th March, I found myself on a train from my local station, Hassocks in Sussex, up to London to seek out hydrogen fuelled buses on TfL route 444 before they were withdrawn from service. I’d... Continue Reading →
Thursday 12th March 2020 London’s so called ‘integrated transport system’ with its much lauded ‘seamless ticketing’ didn’t work for me on Monday. TfL’s ticket machines at stations on the Metropolitan Line also served by Chiltern Railways (ie Harrow-on-the-Hill, Rickmansworth, Chorleywood, Chalfont & Latimer and Amersham) are unable to sell tickets with a Senior Railcard discount.... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 18th December 2019 There's never a good time to have a complete signal failure at East Croydon but for the power to go down just as the evening peak is kicking in around 16:45 is probably one of the worst of times. I'm sure everyone at Network Rail did their very best to get... 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 25th October 2019 Spoiler alert: the postman delivered a National Rail Voucher for £6.70 this morning. I wrote about the outrageous rip-off fares policy on the Gatwick Express back in May, but the other day I came across another pricing scandal from this past-its-sell-by-date train brand. I was buying a ticket in the Gatwick... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 25th June 2019 There's something seriously amiss with Caledonian Sleeper's train service. I've blogged about the new Mark 5 coaches a couple of times recently (here and here) highlighting the teething problems I encountered, in particular no water in the en-suite shower in my supposedly swanky new 'Club' room on two of the three... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 29th May 2019 It's all happening in Colindale. That's the area in north west London with a station almost at the end of the Edgware branch of the Northern Line; the one before Burnt Oak, before you get to Edgware itself. Colindale's in the London Borough of Barnet and is one of the largest... Continue Reading →
Saturday 20th October 2018 Monday's 'Business Announcement' outlining proposals to centralise even more of Arriva's UK bus business mysteriously landed anonymously in my inbox. I'm told it's a legacy plan left over from recently departed UK Bus MD Kevin O'Connor (formerly Regional MD of G4S) who's now moved on to pastures new. I thought I'd... Continue Reading →
I've received some interesting promotional emails from the new breed of ride sharers recently. Arriva Click sent an enticing personalised message on Thursday proclaiming some 'great news' for me. It seems Click now accepts concessionary passes. Amazing. Arriva certainly know how to rub salt into the wound of being in that frustrating cohort having to... 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 →
I arrived in Liverpool yesterday lunchtime to try out Arriva’s new Click service and soon spotted the awful ‘Say Yes To Bus’ bus with its gaudy contravision vinyl, passing by on route 53. 'Say Yes To Bus’ is a campaign funded by partners in the ‘Liverpool Alliance’ with the laudable objective of encouraging bus travel... Continue Reading →
Yesterday saw the demise of another bus company name from the Harlow area. EOS Buses packed up and withdrew four routes, one of which had only been introduced eight weeks ago. To mark the occasion the Company borrowed an open-top Routemaster from Ensignbus running it over the four routes for one final fling: the 66 Waltham... Continue Reading →
After I returned home from North Wales last week I thought I’d check out how much a few standard fares on Arriva’s bus routes around Rhyl are so I could compared them to the ‘One Arriva’ £4 ticket. Are there "massive savings on standard bus tickets" as the promotional poster claims, or is it all... Continue Reading →
I’ve long thought bus and train owning Groups are missing a trick by not upselling travel in the way savvy retailers would (‘people who bought this also bought this’) so I was encouraged in May last year when Arriva announced they were putting matters right with an exciting modal integration project in North Wales. Arriva... Continue Reading →
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