Disappearing Xela routes / First 80 route change

Xelabus X12 and X13 are being withdrawn after the last bus on Friday 11th November. There's so far been no official announcement from Xelabus, but the cut is confirmed by the Department for Transport bus service registrations and the Traveline journey planner. The question is did Xelabus jump or were they pushed? Bluestar had registered extra journeys on the 2, which runs to the same route, at exactly the same times as the X12/X13, but have since revoked the extra journeys, presumably safe in the knowledge that Xelabus had decided to throw in the towel rather then get involved in a bus war. We could have been about to witness a scaled-down version of what happened a few years ago when Velvet tried to compete with Bluestar 2 and were met with extra buses from Bluestar, with which they could not compete.

Talking of Xelabus, the timetables for their free buses to the Asda stores in Chandlers Ford and Totton have disappeared from their website, suggesting that they no longer run. We don't tend to monitor the free routes as information is hard to find and can change very quickly, often without notice. Xelabus still run free buses to some larger Tesco branches. To see if there's one near you, check their website.

There will be changes to First 80 after all from Sunday 4th December. During Mon-Sat daytimes, one of the two buses an hour is renumbered 80A and will take a slightly different route between Locks Heath and Titchfield. The 80 will continue to serve Abshot Road and Warsash road, while the 80A will run direct via Hunts Pond Road, as rather crudely shown here:

Times are unchanged.