Some fares on
Velvet go up today. You can find the fare for any journey on a
Velvet route
here. Well done to
Velvet for being the only bus company in our region with the decency to let all passengers know how much they will need to pay before they set out.
Bluestar have a list of
sample fares, but not covering all combinations. The rest have chosen for you to have no way to find out the price of a single journey, short of phoning up every time you want to make a journey you haven't made before.
There are
evening diversions in Hedge End from 7pm until close of service on Tuesday to Friday of this week.
Bluestar 3 won't be serving Wildern Lane, Bursledon Road or Heath House lane during those hours.
First 8B will also be affected - they've not advised of an official diversion but it will most likely be be missing out Wildern Lane and Lower Northam Road, running direct between Locke Road and Maypole Roundabout.
How can you congratulate Velvet on telling passengers they have put their fares up??? Hardly praiseworthy is it?? Be better if you said they have put their fares DOWN!! But that won't happen as they need funds I hear. I know you are referring to notifying passengers about their fares but hang on a minute its not to be congratulated surely??????? their fares are extremely high!!
ReplyDeleteRead it again,and then you will see you have misunderstood what is written.
ReplyDeleteObviously a Velvet fan
ReplyDeleteNever knew Velvet were that expensive...
ReplyDeletePerhaps Velvet's fares are what they are because they don't have the backing of a big group fanancially bailling them out.
ReplyDeleteLet's be realistic have any of the other bus companies had a fares decrease in general? Velvet have done well to let people know exactly how much they need to pay rather than using the all conquering "Revised Fares Please State Your Destination." notice which used to be accepted as the norm, until you got on the bus, tendered your usual fare then found out you didn't have enough money to get home!
Believe me it used to be a pain in the a*!e when i was a driver as well as time consuming to have to go through the same explaination and subsequent augument of apparently ripping off the ill informed "i've been travelling on these buses for years" brigade at every other bus stop every time the fares increased, so fair play to Velvet for having that time saving information available, it helps both passengers and staff.....oh and by the way i am a Velvet fan!
I think it is honourable that Velvet are being open about their fare rises. The level of transparency is a good example to set for other bus operators.
ReplyDeleteLook, Velvet have notices on their buses saying Fare changes or whatever so its no different to any other company. Its more likely that 95% of passengers will still board and not know what the fare has increased too unless they look at their web site - but how many do?? The issue is is their fares are incredibly expensive and riding on old orange dirty olympian paying £3 from Mansbridge to Haskins for example you must be made of money and not choosey!!
ReplyDeleteIs the anonymous critic perhaps crossing a zone boundary in his travel? According to Traveline it's a 5 minute walk, and a £3 charge would seem to apply to a trip from Eastleigh Zone(~1) into the Mansbridge Zone (2). Crossing Zone boundaries COSTS.
ReplyDeleteWere the buses on ordinary routes, or on school runs? The latter would expect lesser vehicles.
Was the critic's experience recent? Velvet have had vehicle troubles recently; that might explain.
http://wiltsanddorsetgroup.forumup.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=45239&mforum=wiltsanddorsetgroup#45239
Just look at the Velvet fare tables and see for yourself! The buses they run are all colours and the orange one regularly sees service on the Route A. Absolutely appalling for the travelling public and sky high fares too. yes they had two old Olympians for a period which they hired from a scrap dealer!!!!
ReplyDeleteHow anyone can criticise Velvet for high fares without mentioning Bluestar or Southern Vectis or Wilts & Dorset (or whatever they are calling themselves this week) is beyond me. Both W&D and SV have fares which make Velvet look postively cheap; and remember Velvet are running a route (A) that Bluestar used to run originally in the Solent Blue Line era but gave up, presumably because it wasn't profitable enough.
ReplyDeleteAnd Velvet generally have good customer service with friendly drivers. Have you tried asking a Bluestar 18 driver for a Solent Travelcard??
The orange bus is ex-Shamrock Buses of Bournemouth, bought after Shamrock went bust. I have seen it on route A, but I'm guessing Velvet aren't planning to have it long enough to justify a repaint.
ReplyDeleteNo I agree Go Ahead fares are also high but it just amazed me when I saw Velvets fare chart and the single fares. Yes agree again about drivers - same as the Xela staff. I think it shows they are friendly because the management work with them. The orange Olympian came from scrap man after he bought it from Shamrock. They have been using it getting on 2 years now! Just heard Xela are buying 2 Enviro 200 and 3 double deck to start fleet replacement. Must be doing well??
ReplyDelete"Just heard Xela are buying 2 Enviro 200 and 3 double deck to start fleet replacement. Must be doing well??"
ReplyDeleteNope just idiots who love "playing buses" and taking work away from other operators, then get bored of it in a month or so and deregister it. Don't forget the "bus company" is funded by the other company of theirs where they take the money from the supermarkets and award the contracts to themselves - oops, I mean "a different company" . . .
I note daddy Bliar is now managing director of both companies now, son now demoted to operations director. Hmmm
DeleteThat's bit harsh.
ReplyDeleteHowever it might help if they bothered to do it right.You know,like showing a destination and route number as I think that is the law...unlike their 1030 X4 from Fair Oak yesterday which displayed nothing at all.It also arrived at Eastleigh bus station six minutes early,so all round a poor show.It was nice and clean though,so that's alright then.
It was also painted green with a Leyland badge on it so they must be a good company, after all any company run to imitate the "good old days" (warts and all) must be good yes?
DeleteAs MD of Xelabus I was made aware of the comments made on this site and find it appalling that no one has the guts to come out from behind "anonymous" and say who they are. It is so easy to write such rude and untrue comments about anyone especially when you are "anonymous". You people can meet me at my office and I will be delighted to put you right about the things you are saying. Who do you think you are? How dare you make such rude comments. I can understand how my colleagues in the industry have taken the view that this site is nothing more than trash and legal views are being sought. So if you are brave enough to meet me and my team, feel free - perhaps we can clear the air?
ReplyDeleteMight help if the MD of Xelabus didn't post anonymously so we knew who it was? I might look a fool visiting their office asking to speak to anonymous.
DeletePerhaps the MD would also like to speak to one of his senior drivers (supervisor ?) seen at about 1400 yesterday texting on his phone in his hand while driving his green double deck along Southampton Road, Eastleigh on his way to operate a Fareham school journey !
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to know what "Xela" means, and good luck to Mr Blair in all his business, provided it is through fair means (no inference that it is not).
ReplyDeleteIMHO some of the posts seem troll like upon the two Phils' operations (Phil Stockley-Velvet and Phil Blair-Xelabus.
Might they be from another source, resentful for some reason?
I'll take any comments from ANYONE with the name "Anonymous" with a pinch of salt, regardless of who they say they are.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I'll be one of the few people here who bother to use their real name when posting on this blog.
Maybe this excellent blog could help clean up the comments section by blocking anonymous commenting?
I am checking this site as a means to eradicate the ignorant persons who choose to be rude under the term anonymous. I have nothing to hide and indeed would be happy to meet as I have said. Xela is "Alex" backwards. He was my grandson who died of neuro blastoma cancer 3 years ago and in an effort to help my son re-build his life we established Xela as his business for the future. gareth had always wanted to be an operator in his own right and this was the families way of supporting him after an extremely difficult part of our lives. Now you know. We are not afraid to experiment with ideas and yes made mistakes along the way. We had tried low floor buses on the X8 simply to see if customers preferred this to high step darts. Yes they did but not enough to justify a stand alone commercial operation. We are friends with Brijan and remain so. The trialling of various routes on the town service has come about by requests and working with the authorities. Our X1 provides a bus service for Stoke Common residents rather than a taxishare. X2 provides a bus service for Bosville residents who have no other means of getting to Eastleigh. X4 provides a link across town to Asda from Fair Oak and Bishopstoke. What did surprise me though was when we were approached by Velvet MD Phil Stockley who said he was looking to give up his C services. We saw this as an opportunity to link C F with Eastleigh for the first time for us and were fortunate to also win the Hiltingbury tender. We have also kept our fares much lower than anyone else. Do you know we are 75p from Bishopstoke to Eastleigh?? Our contract services are positive with a number of years agreed with our customer. Yes we are looking at fleet replacement. The Olympians have done us well and the Tridents are another matter! However to provide for the long term we must invest and it is our intention to start looking at this.
ReplyDeleteNow turning to PB Bus - people know me as an enthusiast but I do not allow that interest to interfere with my business and although I have a number of my collection at Barton Park and I am quite willing to allow these to be viewed, I do keep these away from the operation. Finally we are holding an open day on 8th September with a Hants and Dorset Eastleigh running day and we are hoping to raise a lot of money for Naomi House Hospice for obvious reasons. Well there you are... thats us... don't forget give me a call if you have issues with us or want to raise a complaint and I will do my best to sort. Nothing to hide just a desire to get on with our lives. Phil Blair MD Xelabus Limited
Hiya Phil, it's great that you took your time to post here, it's a shame to hear about your grandson, it's great you were able to come together to make something like Xelabus.
DeleteThough I believe many of the comments here against your company mainly come from how aggressive it's been. For example, running a few minutes ahead of BJ8 rather than creating a joint timetable with buses running every 30 mins. Though it's good to see the smaller operators trying out new things. Hopefully you do get some of the praise you deserve, although I think you may need to tone done the seemingly predatory methods.
Out of interest, do you pronouse Xelabus, as Zel-a-bus or Zeela-bus (Or any other way?)
Yes, I also thought it was rather mixed signals saying friends with Brijan but running the X8 even with a low floor bus being the "deciding factor". Nonetheless it's a deregulated market out there. Still, let's move on & wish Xela a bright future along with all the other local companies too. :-)
DeleteI don't want to stop people posting anonymously, but we should all bare in mind that the poster and content of anonymous comments cannot be verified. I've removed the comment that claims to give the personal mobile number of a bus company's MD as that is a clear case of crossing the line from what this page was intended to do. If that poster was who they say they were, then people can contact him through the company he works for. The step I've taken is that comments are now moderated, so they won't appear instantly. I'll only block those that don't add anything to the discussion.
ReplyDeletequite agree - a comment like that is totally inappropriate
DeleteLiked the comments from PB 4 May - gives quite an insight into xela
Re Velvet fares - this comes about because of zone fares which many operators use nowadays. Personally I dislike this fare method as it can discourage short journeys across zones. However any decision is for the operator whose business it is
Finally can you make the cypher easier to use - I find many of the characters totally unclear
Can I remind people about the Stagecoach Dedicated
ReplyDeleteTwitter feed for Winchester bus services.
Stagecoach are so pleased with the way it is working
out that they have added a press release to their
web site. http://t.co/zSSgutBsaA
It is clear that Stagecoach are keen to expand this
service even further and that they are looking
to increase their number of existing public and
student followers by as many as they can attract.
I have always wondered what "Xela" ment - I think it is a very touching tribute to a brave little boy to have a bus company named after him :)
ReplyDelete