Saturday 15 October 2011

Who's running the C1 tomorrow?

Either tomorrow or next Sunday, Hampshire County Council are handing the C1 Sunday service from Velvet over to Xelabus. We have a problem though.

According to Velvet's timetable it's tomorrow.

On Xelabus's website, they announce that they will be running the Sunday C1 soon with "details to follow". No timetable. Are they ready?

But wait, according to the service registrations with the Department for Transport, Xelabus don't take over the Sunday C1 until the 23rd.

Traveline's journey planner on the other hand agrees with Velvet, that Xelabus start tomorrow.

Would anyone living on or near the C1 route (Eastleigh-Velmore-Chandlers Ford-Hiltingbury) care to keep an eye out tomorrow and let us know A, whether any bus turns up at all, and B, who's operating it?

4 comments:

  1. I read somewhere that First is obliged to accept tickets issued by other operators for Botley

    Not sure about Hedge End though

    Great post again...that is not a good start is it Xelabus ?

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  2. There never was an issue here.

    Xelabus originally registered in good faith for the 23rd (there was a degree of confusion at the time over the actual implementation date of all the contracts, thanks to an admin error at the county council). When it became clear that it was actually the 16th, they simply reregistered, but of course that won't appear in N&P until some time after the original registration.

    So it was always going to be Xelabus from the 16th, and even if for some reason they couldn't have done it from that date, we would have done.

    And for what it's worth it seemed to run fine yesterday (even though I wish we were still running it) so the whole story is a complete non-event I'm afraid.

    Fwiw, because Notices & Proceedings lags so far behind reality, and in many cases it is impossible to deduce accurately what particular registrations cover, it is never a good idea to use it as a source of up to date information.

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  3. I understand it might have been a misunderstanding but, in my humble opinion, in considetarion of their clients Xelabus should have updated their website.

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  4. Thanks for the update Phil. I had a feeling the info on Velvet's website would be reliable :-) You've given me an idea for another post actually...

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