Sunday 23 April 2023

Late April Round Up

With First's demise, it's fallen to Bluestar to run this year's link to Marwell Zoo. Route ZOO runs from Eastleigh every weekend, bank holiday and school holiday until 3rd September.


Many changes are coming across More's network from 27th May, including route changes and renumbering as the former Yellow routes are further digested and integrated. Full details here.


First Wessex have new timetables from 4th June. They are yet to be announced by First, although they have been registered. Expect a shiny new summer services leaflet/pdf to be available soon. Sadly, it does look like routes 3, 9 and 9A will be withdrawn from that date.

28 comments:

  1. Bluestar registered a route and timetable change to service 13 from June 5

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    1. More then likely something to do with Bishops Road Diversions

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  2. Noticing a few consistent changes since the move to Empress Road. For example the 1710 1 from Southampton is consistently an 'older' Enviro400, rather than the newer variant used for the branded buses on the 1. The short journey on the 1 from Chandlers Ford around 1700 is now a single-decker, and the 10/13/14 no longer seem to consistently feature Enviro 200s on certain workings on Mon-Fri (one diagram, involving the 0933 and 1233 13s, formerly did). Also saw a green 'import' single decker on the 20 yesterday but not sure if that was normal. Finally most workings from Empress Road still seem to be without working numbers ('S xx') - they started appearing late last week/early this week, but have disappeared again this week.

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  3. How could First say there was no demand for a Sunday service to Harefield? Caught the BS13 through Harefield this Sunday,the bus seemed to be well used with the bus stopping at almost all the stops on the estate.

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    1. Interestingly they seem to have double-deckers on a Sunday, too, though this could just be due to interworking with the 20 which needs them.

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  4. According to the days of operation,the Zoo bus won`t be running on Sat 6 May.

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    1. Coronation day and according to Marwell website it will be closed

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  5. Back to Transpora:
    According to VOSA, there will be no service on bank holidays on service 2. They only explicitly mention that the route will be run Monday to Friday every 20 minutes…
    I’m wondering if Transpora is actually taking this competition seriously or just having a laugh.

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    1. I think, more to the point, are GSC in any way concerned about Transpora? They can trample on them whenever they choose, but seem to be happily watching from a distance, waiting for them to over commit.

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  6. The timetables for the revised services from morebus are now available. Just change the dates from today’s date to 30 May (M-F timetables), 27 May (Saturday) or 28 May (Sunday).

    Things to point out:
    Route 18 has no evening service (it terminates at 8pm), plus the Sunday service is every 2 hours and does the Broadstone Loop.

    GoSouthCoast lost an opportunity to space more evenly the 6 and the 13 in the evening, although it seems to be interworked with other routes… an alternative would be extending the 6 in the evening to Corfe Mullen Lockyers School and isolating this route.
    Another alternative would be making the route every 90 minutes in the evening and extend all
    the way to Broadstone via Wimborne.
    Numbering would not be a problem, as there are no number 6 nearby.

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    1. Does Merley really need three separate services to Bournemouth (6, 13 and 32) when Corfe Mullen has none? I’d argue that the peak 13 extensions should go to the latter instead of the former. Or alternatively extend the 18 there like it used to pre-2008.

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    2. Ah, it may be three separate services from Bournemouth that serve Merley, however the 13 and 32 don't exactly serve Merley that often (13 has 2 journeys from Merley in the morning - 1 on a Saturday - with 1 return in the afternoon and the 32 has 2 towards Bournemouth and 3 from Bournemouth - both of which are Monday to Saturday).

      The 32 route is a merger of 2 routes from some years ago when Shamrock were still operating it.

      If my memory serves me correctly, the 13 extension did have more journeys (including late evenings) when the merger between the 132 and 133 happened but the amount of journeys were subsequently cut to the ones that are remaining. I can only assume that they thought that the Merley journeys were worth retaining rather than serving Corfe Mullen.

      The 6 is the only route regularly serving Merley to & from Bournemouth hourly (Monday to Saturday).

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  7. Digging deep into Altonian Coaches (aka Transpora) timetables…

    Service 2 will be only Monday to Friday.
    No service on Saturday or Sunday/Bank Holidays.

    Service will run every 20 minutes between peak times. Peak times journeys will operate only during school holidays.

    It will run from 7am - 6:30pm (if taking into consideration the peak times journeys)

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    1. Where are you finding the timetable?

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    2. Have a look at traveline south west and search for Altonian Coaches.

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  8. Are the 16's leaving from the Portswood rather than Eastleigh depot now? Only ask because I've had to catch the 1st 18 this Mon & 1st 16 y'day & today & they've been late everyday!! 18 on BH Mon turned up 11 mins late, 16 y'day was 9 mins late & today 16 turned up 6 mins late! Wonder if they've become nonchalant as they've only got to get from P/wood depot towards Townhill or Thornhill?!

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  9. I'm going to the Hampshire v Kent T20 Blast Match on the 26th May does anyone know if Bluestar will run extra 14s as it will be near enough a full house?

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    1. They are running extra journeys from the Artic Monkeys gig,on route 14,so quite possibly.

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  10. Is Southampton getting any new buses

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    1. They need to replace those really noisy double deckers on the 19 route.

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    2. I find them quite interesting. Also appears that one schedule on the 10/13/14 use them too, starting with the 0913 10, then 1025 14, and 1203 13. Before the Empress Road change this then would work the 1313 10 and 1425 14, but noticing some changes since; today for instance the 1313 is using an Enviro400 off the 4, and the 1425 one of the blue and green single deckers. Not sure if this is planned or not.

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    3. Sorry to update my last post, but the same has happened again today. The red-and-blue bus comes off the pattern following the 1203 13, and the 1313 10 is covered by an Enviro400 off the 4. This then forms an additional 18 from the City Centre to Millbrook at 1424, presumably to allow an extra vehicle onto the 18 for the evening peak. The 1425 14 seems to have a habit of being late; as of now (1433) it doesn't seem to have set off yet, and I've noticed this on a couple of other occasions.

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    4. ... it left just as I was typing. An ex-Swindon blue and green single-decker, doing its first journey of the day - that again seems to have occurred on other occasions.

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  11. Just been announced on Wave 105,that bus fares are capped at £2.00 till October,then £2.50 for a year.

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    1. Only really helps those who live on a long distance route,only use one bus a day each way,use two different operators,or if you make four single journeys on the Isle of Wight.For most of us it makes no difference.

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    2. We all knew the extension was coming

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    3. Makes trips out to the countryside by bus good value though.

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    4. It was always going to be extended until the election!

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