End of an Era: First's Final Day

First City Red operates for the final time today, Saturday 18th February. The very final service they operate will be on route 2 from Millbrook, Kendal Avenue Shops at 2333 to the City Centre, terminating at Vincents Walk at 2355 and bringing to an end the history of red buses in Southampton, with a direct corporate lineage back to the very first horse-drawn trams in our city in 1879. Rather appropriately, it will be followed 12 minutes later by a Bluestar 18 running through to Thornhill.

From tomorrow, Bluestar takes over with six new routes, and significantly improved timetables on most of them, including the reintroduction of evening and Sunday services to Merry Oak and Harefield on route 13. Full details of their new network here.

Their very first new First-replacement journey will be on route 19 from Thornhill, Fairfax Court at 0523 on Sunday morning, towards Lordshill.

In other news:

In Bournemouth, Yellow Coaches, part of Xelagroup, ceased operations earlier this week, so routes 18, 33 and 36 have passed back to More.

First Solent have new timetables on routes 7, 9 and 9A from 5th March, including rerouting the 9A via Nobes Avenue.

Xelabus have advised that routes X9 and X10 are due to be withdrawn on 31st March, subject to retendering by Hampshire County Council. We'll let you know as soon as HCC's future arrangements for the routes are clear.

In a similar vein, First Solent have registered the withdrawal of routes 13, 14, 18 and 22 in Portsmouth from 2nd April, pending a retendering process by Portsmouth City Council.