Wednesday 19 August 2015

Bluestar 16 to run via Bitterne

Bluestar have revamped their website and given notice that the 16 will be rerouted via Bitterne and Northam from 28th September:


First 12 currently links Townhill Park with Bitterne and will be withdrawn on this side of the city from 6th September. Bluestar 16 currently runs via Bevois Valley, Portswood and St Denys, which will continue to be served by First 7.


7 comments:

  1. Great news for those who would have been shafted,in the Midanbury and Townhill area,with no direct connection to Bitterne,but as ever there are losers and i feel sorry for those in the Cobden Ave and triangle area,who lose their Bluestar 16 service.

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  2. Why is the change of the 16 not going to happen till the 28th September?

    And I thought the timetable changes can only take place on Sundays.

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  3. Yes, Anon at 22.44, it is unfortunate that Blue have pulled out of the Cobden Avenue and Triangle area. Not their brightest move, perhaps. I can't help but wonder if keeping that bit, and adding the Bitterne variation on to the end, producing a loop, might have been a better idea.

    Reece, I'm not aware of a legal requirement to change only on Sundays. So far as I'm aware, it's a tradition because of having fewer buses on a Sunday, so there are fewer people to confuse. Talking of which, there was a news item some months ago - and in the Milton Keynes area, not round here - about a service running only on the 5th Tuesday of the month. "Why not every Tuesday?" was the question nobody could answer!

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    Replies
    1. There is no legal requirement to change services only on a Sunday - different operators change on different days, including Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.

      Reece asks why the change is not coming until September 28. In the ordinary course of events, a bus operator wishing to change the times or route of a registered bus services must give the appropriate area Traffic Commissioner 56 days notice of the change. I assume that this is why the change is not coming until the 28th. There are circumstances in which a change can be accepted by the Traffic Commissioner under shorter notice, but I am not familiar with the legislation which details those circumstances,

      As for the question "Why not every Tuesday?", probably because there were too few passengers to justify a weekly service. Surely the question should be "Why the 5th Tuesday??". I have known examples of services which operated only once a month which might have been, for example, on the 3rd Tuesday in the month, but operating only on the 5th Tuesday gives only about four journeys per year.

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  4. What happened if you didn't have a 5th Tuesday in the month? February for example?

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  5. Regarding the comments about the 5th Tuesday, I can well understand that there might not have been enough demand for a bus every week. The question was being asked on the radio - I've no idea if anyone did manage to answer it, but not while I was listening - and it may have been a market run. Going on from that, a look at services to market in Salisbury suggests they run every week. Ah well!

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  6. If it's the same service, it's come up before.

    The reason the service in question ran on the fifth Tuesday of a month was that the community transport operator ran a service every Tuesday, but varied where it served depending on the week of the month.

    It would have been poor use of their resources to leave the bus parked up on a Tuesday just because it was the fifth day of the month, so this was the logical solution!

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