Bluestar have introduced live departure boards on their website. From the panel on the left hand side of their front page you can select your route, direction and stop and then see something like this:
Do leave a comment and let us know your experiences of using the new system. The times are supposedly more real than those that appear on NextBuses, which covers all operators nationwide, but tends to rely more often on the timetable rather than actual bus locations:
First three will be rerouted during weekday morning rush hours from 29th May to run via Obelisk Road towards the city centre in order to avoid traffic on Portsmouth Road. Obelisk Road used to have regular bus services until First cut them before this blog started. Do you remember when they were cut?
Stand by for a new type of regular post from Sunday, which might interest our friends in Winchester, Portsmouth, Salisbury and Bournemouth!
With reference to the forthcoming return of buses on 'The Three' to Obelisk Road, I think the last time buses went that way as a regular feature was in the early 2000's when the 16 (now 6) was sent that way at the insitence of one of the local Councillors, despite the fact that it took passengers - and his constituents - in the Newtown Road area away from the Doctors' Surgeries they were visiting. The operator would have preferred to divert what we now have as 'The Three'! There were several instances of drivers missing the stops, where the flags were on lamp posts obscured by trees, so the road was marked as well. Services that way ended - at the latest - about a year before I retired in 2008. I think they were taken out sooner than that. I'm sure someone else will be able to advise/correct.
ReplyDeleteYes it was John Denham MP for Itchen at the time who got the buses back along Obelisk Road after an outcry from the local residents about the service being withdrawn.I suspect at the time He would have had no idea that this would have an impact on residents in the Newtown area,in cutting them off from the Doctors Surgery along Portsmouth Road.You just can't win can you in whatever you do.
ReplyDeleteI must admit it's quite interesting watching a particular stop with these live departure times.The worse route is as expected the Bluestar 18,which for most of the day you can observe just how erratic it operates.I've been looking at the City to Thornhill section in each direction,and for most of the day there is hardly any reliability to it.Mind you the Red 10 has become some days just as erratic in operation.It's only because there are now so many buses between these two points via Bitterne,that few notice just how unreliable the service is,between the two operators.
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