Some Bluestar fares are changing, including period tickets. Bluestar however remains the last major operator in our region not to publish full details of single and return fares on their website. I never thought First would beat them to that, but they have.
Xelabus have new timetables on all of their routes from Monday, but you can't find them yet on their website. They are on Traveline, but the 'new' timetable there for the X3 is wrong. The X3 is being cut back to only run on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Looking ahead to April and also being withdrawn are Velvet's night route N8 and the 300 to Ringwood. Neither will run after 6th April. Ringwood then resumes its status as being cut off from Southampton's bus network. National Express still provide direct journeys by coach.
After 6th April, the only remaining night bus routes will be Unilink U1N, which is being extended to Eastleigh, and Velvet N6.
Damn, I was under the impression that this would result in a more frequent effective service overall between Swaythling and Portswood (between the 2 and the U6) - looks like it does in one direction (Portswood to Swaythling) but not in the other. Odd, I think they must be massively increasing the turnaround time/padding at the city end or something.
ReplyDeleteYes the new timetable for service 2 has been opened up. This service up to know has had in recent times more than it's share of delays caused by traffic holdups,breakdowns,road diversions. It will be interesting if any major improvement is seen from the introduction of the new timetable. Interestingly as I write I have yet to see on any vehicle any referrence to the fare changes at the weekend, and talking to a few of the staff, they are just as in the dark, apart from season ticket changes. PAC
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the last-minute/non-promotion of fare changes for Bluestar is because when First announced their fare changes, Bluestar went back to the drawing board to see if any of the increases could be changed, to avoid losing passengers to First, but in doing so, kinda shot themselves in the foot, because it came as a surprise and people may stop using them in protest anyway.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few fares have remained unchanged, and the rest have only gone up by 10 or 20p. As always dayriders, Weekly or Monthly passes for frequent users remain the cheapest way, and even cheaper on The Key or mobile app.
velvet also run burley-ringwood school route am/pm,
ReplyDeletewonder who will run this
Night buses were under used,probably cause,in Romseys case,people were offering town lifts for £5 ,to take them to leisureworld!Not sure the legalities of this though,as naturally it does taxi drivers out of trade,but ,if you offer this to "friends"on Facebook does it become acceptable?
ReplyDeletere anon 23/2 19:55
ReplyDeleteI heard that some form of consultation is taking place over New Forest bus services, and wonder if the Ringwood school services have already been signed as to their future. The 300's cessation date seems to indicate that its demise has something to do with officialdom in the schools area much as pax numbers.
Burley apart from Brock services only has a limited MWF off peak service.
So, yes, it will be interesting who runs any service through there, let alone the schools to and from Ringwood.
a velvet vehicle ran the burley/Ringwood school service
Deletetoday 22/4 with usual ex 300 driver and bus!!
Seems Unilink/Bluestar cannot produce a timetable which agrees with their publicity. The B* site says late night buses (0100,0200,0300) to Eastleigh but their U1N timetable shows destination as Airport. These services only seem to run term time and apparently do not run Saturday nights - as I suspect they do run then they should be shown as the first buses on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly if you use U1N the fare from Southampton to Eastleigh is £2 single.. However if you use Bluestar 2 it's £3.60 single. A good bargain on U1N for a journey at such a late hour. PAC
ReplyDeleteIt has often been the case with even the old nightstar trips, that they were cheaper than the daytime ones. Fawley/Langley/Hythe and Winchester were £5.30 in the day, and £3.50 at night. They should all have been a fiver in my opinion, as you still couldnt have put 4 in a taxi for £20. Yet they still could not afford to run them, or half fill them....! Lack of publicity and too much tinkering was to blame, i think.
DeleteNot strictly a bus issue but can anyone tell me when I try to access xelabus.info I get a system error saying the site is not set up ok. I use a mac. I can access the xela site thro the link on this site
ReplyDeleteThanks for any ideas
Latest rumour is that Xelabus is acquiring Velvet!
ReplyDeleteVelvet have gone bang. Xelabus have taken over some of their routes but getting rid of a lot of them
ReplyDeleteAgain off topic, but I understand that Xelabus has acquired the entire Velvet business! Velvet drivers all talking about it today.
ReplyDeleteNews is that the deal between Xelabus and Velvet is off due to the hand being dipped in the public purse till at the council by one operator!!!
ReplyDeleteBefore I posted this message, I was informed by a bus driver on Wednesday that their has been a change of ownership to one of the smaller companies in the area, and on checking yesterday and today before posting, this seems to be the case. PAC
ReplyDeleteI am surprised no one else has picked up that Velvet has now been sold to Philip Blair. Apparently there will now be a rationalisation of Velvet's network and close integration with Xelabus.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/pages/routeONE-magazine/167153556959
Xelabus have hit new heights in their history, not only buying a competitor for 24 hours and then backing out of a legally binding deal to purchase said competitor.
ReplyDeleteOnly a bunch of anoraks playing buses can screw up so badly in buying their biggest competitor, going public on it, before swiftly retracting the deal within 24 hours of signing the contract.
ReplyDeleteIt really is a shocking level of incompetence from Xelabus, but as they've got no viable plan as to how they operate their business it should hardly come as no surprise they can botch a business deal up that would allow them to consolidate in an area, strengthening their position and giving them a stable commercial platform from which to expand.
If Phil Stockley does decide to exit in the future I hope he finds a much better purchaser who will keep a lot of what he's started, from nothing, and developed in 6 years.
I do actually believe that before Xelabus brought Velvet, they wasn't able to look at the Velvets books but once they'd brought them they was able to, they then realised that Velvet were in so much debt they decided to pull out of buying Velvet.
DeleteIf Velvet are so indebted, it proves that expertise in a skill such as running buses, architecture and so on do not mean financial expertise as well. From what is available from Companies House from available balance sheets the other 49% of the ordinary shares and also the preference shares that raised the nominal capital from £450K to £550K in 2012/13 are mostly held in Stockley family accounts and trusts.
DeleteTBH I wonder if the weight of the minority shares held so closely did not prove a deterrent also.
No, before you purchase an operator, you conduct something called due dilligence. In that process you examine the state of the business being purchased, one often finds things that weren't disclosed by the vendors, that cause a purchaser to walk from what seems like a good deal. You don't buy a business then look at it's books, you do this before you purchase!
DeleteStagecoach do very little due diligence and work more instinctively than more formal businesses - this means they can act faster in a purchase, but their size means they can absorb quite a few unseen things.
Debt is not a big problem, but it is when the debt falls due that is a problem - and can the business service the debt, if a businesses cannot settle its debts within a sensible timeframe that becomes an issue. A business needs to be able to settle its liabilities from its trading- often these are to a bank. Are Velvet's liabilities to its directors or to a bank? As a limited liability company, its directors are limited to their investments within the business.
A bad year here or there can be ridden through if you have reserves - unless you don't have reserves, low margin work like tenders returns low margins so overall there may be some doubts as to its longer term viability. But Velvet does have some commercially viable services and income streams, which is unusual for a small operation of this size.
What a sad and embarrising saga this has been. PAC
ReplyDeletePlease Velvet & Xelabus state on here the real reasons for the on/off buyout & thus we can stop the guesswork & stick to the facts. Thanks.
ReplyDelete