First turns the screws on Hamble & Hedge End

First 11 was their last high frequency route on which they faced no competition. That changed on 11th November, when Bluestar 17 was extended to Weston. First responded by increasing the frequency of the 11 to up to every 5 minutes on weekday daytimes. This suggests their plan isn't working out well:

From 28th November, fares are going up, but curiously only on routes 6 and 8 and only on journeys starting or ending outside of the city boundary. This means that passengers in Netley, Hamble, West End and Hedge End (who have no other choice) are being disproportionately punished for the mess that First have made for themselves locally. For now, day and period tickets are staying the same, but it's occasional travellers who buy single or return tickets who will be clobbered.

This eagerness to put up fares in those areas and not in Southampton suggests that First are struggling to make ends meet locally and know that they can't increase fares in the city because almost all of their passengers now have a viable alternative offered by Bluestar.

One thing First have managed to achieve is to tell us what levels of service they'll be running over Christmas and the New Year in Southampton, Portsmouth, Wessex and Bath (for the sake of the D1 to Salisbury).

We also have Christmas plans in from Salisbury Reds and Southern Vectis, the latter of which will be providing what must be the country's most comprehensive network of bus services on Christmas Day itself, but nothing yet from Slowcoach Stagecoach. Will anywhere on the mainland have anything like the Isle of Wight's level of service on 25th December? Certainly not Portsmouth, that's for sure.

Talking of the P word, First have registered two new routes to start 6th January. The 6 will run between The Hard and Southsea via Old Portsmouth. The 12 will run between Tipner and Fratton, similar to what the 17 did before September. Timetables are not yet known, but it looks like these are funded by Portsmouth City Council, so Tipner will probably have nothing like the frequency it used to have and after a service gap of 4 months, most regular passengers will have had to make alternative arrangements long ago.

Congratulations to Go South Coast, the company trading as Bluestar, More, Salisbury Reds, Southern Vectis, Damory and Something Or Other In Swindon. They've beaten off national competition to be crowned Large Bus Operator of the Year at the RouteOne awards, which is apparently the Oscars of the bus world.

An overview of all upcoming service changes in our region is available on this page. Why not bookmark it? It's updated often before we have time to write full posts and includes links to all of our local operators' Christmas plans. It will soon be updated to give a comprehensive day-by-day summary of bus service levels across this blog's 10th festive period for our entire region.

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Festive bus services: What we know so far

Christmas is only a few weeks away and the following operators have published their service levels over the festive period (click for details):

Bluestar

Damory

More

Unilink

Xelabus

Yellow Buses

No word yet from First, Stagecoach or Salisbury Reds.

On Christmas Day, Bluestar will be running two routes: the 18, which is extended to the General Hospital and Lordshill, and the 1X which will be a hybrid of the 1 and 2 - it'll run as per the 2 between Southampton and Eastleigh, then along Leigh Road to Chandlers Ford and then via Otterbourne and the Royal Hampshire County Hospital to Winchester.

More will be running the M1 and M2 on Christmas Day again, with each route extended to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Christchurch.

Boxing Day will see a full Sunday service from Bluestar, except for route 6, which will not run. More will also have a Sunday service on most routes in the Bournemouth/Poole conurbation.

After all that, the weekend of 6th/7th January sees changes to many services, especially on Yellow Buses in Bournemouth. First Weymouth 2 (which has an extra weekday evening bus for Overcombe and minor changes on Sundays) and More X8 and 13 will also be amended. We'll let you know the details of those as soon as they come in.

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W1 cut back to Chilworth / Christmas Day buses

Wheelers W1 is being cut back from 5th November, to only run between Southampton and Chilworth. It stopped running at weekends in September last year. Now it will no longer run to Romsey. New timetable here.

11th November sees changes to several Bluestar routes, including the extension of the 17 to Weston and Adanac Park. Full detail here of the changes to routes, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17 and 18.

Christmas bus service plans are slowly being released. Services that will be operating on Christmas Day include Bluestar 1 and 18 and More M1/M2. More as details are confirmed.

There's a change to First Weymouth 2 from 6th Jan. Not yet clear what it is, but we'll let you know as soon as details are out.

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Bluestar coming for First in Weston

11th November is when changes happen to several Bluestar routes in Southampton, most notable of which is the 17, which is being amended to operate between Weston and Adanac Park.

Adanac Park, home to the Ordnance Survey, has been without a bus service since First withdrew the 1. The 17 is its nearest route, but will now be serving Adanac proper.

Weston was the scene of bus wars between what was Citybus and Solent Blue Line back in the late 80s, when a truce saw SBL left with the 18/19 Millbrook-Thornhill route as their only route wholly within the city boundary. Over the last few years, as First have floundered and reduced their network, Bluestar have gradually expanded onto more city routes. Sholing, Aldermoor, Oakley Road, Townhill Park - all used to be Citybus/First territory, now all with a Bluestar presence.

What makes this especially significant is that First's Weston route has until now been their only high-frequency route on which they have not faced direct competition. That changes in November.

The move will surely hit First's profits in our city and make it more likely that they will leave sooner rather than later. We just have to hope they sell rather than close down, as a Bluestar monopoly will be free to raise fares to the higher levels they charge outside the city.

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Changes on Unilink, First Wessex and First Pompey 15

A couple of changes have happened this weekend...

In Southampton, we have timetable changes on all Unilink routes, including extra morning and late night services on the U1, more morning journeys on the U6 and the U2X being replaced by more journeys on the run of the mill U2. New timetable also on the U9.  Details here.

First in Weymouth have new timetables from today on the following routes:

1, 2, 3, 4, 4A, 8, 10, X51, X53, X54

Summer services X55, 500 and 501 are withdrawn for the winter. See their new timetable book here.

And in Portsmouth, First 15 has a new timetable as it extends on weekdays to connect with the Hayling Ferry.

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More Bournemouth changes this weekend

It's another weekend of bus service changes, again concentrated in Bournemouth, mainly on More.

We were also expecting some kind of change to the timetable on Bluestar 2 from Monday, but the new timetable on Traveline is exactly the same as the current one, so it could just be a minor registration amendment related to the rolling roadworks in North Stoneham. Or maybe it's to do with this.

Anyway, back to Bournemouth for some actual changes. Details from More here.

X3 Bournemouth-Salisbury The 1735 weekdays/1745 Saturday service from Bournemouth will now be an X6 at 1745, no longer serving Boscombe.

X6 Bournemouth-Poole via Ringwood Minor timing changes to most journeys.

X8 Poole-Blandford New stop in the car park of Lidl Blandford. Will also be served by the X8A Blandford town service.

11 Poole-Bearwood Minor changes.

20 Poole-Castlepoint Timetable recast.

38 Ringwood-Ferndown Minor changes with some additional journeys.

40 Poole-Swanage Winter timetable starts.
50 Bournemouth-Swanage Winter timetable starts.
60 Poole-Sandbanks Winter timetable starts.

Ringo One/Two Ringwood town service Minor changes. Last weekday bus now at 1615, instead of 1645.

Plus we have the staggered ending of seasonal summer services on routes 5, 30 and 152.


Staying in Bournemouth, all Unibus routes resume their termtime timetable from Sunday.

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Bournemouth changes this Sunday / First mTickets not fixed

Yellow Buses have some major changes from this Sunday 9th September in Bournemouth.

Here's the current network:

...and here's the network that will run from Sunday:

Details of all the changes are here, but here's a quick summary. Click the route numbers for the new timetables:

1/1C Poole-Christchurch The 1 is rerouted to take the 3's old route in Poole, with the 1's old route becoming the 1C. With the 3 being cut back to Westbourne, this means Yellow will only have 4 buses an hour to Poole on Mon-Sat daytimes, while More M1/M2 run every 3/4 mins. There will still be 8 buses an hour between Bournemouth and Christchurch on the 1/1C.

1A Town Centre-Somerford Minor changes.

1B Town Centre-Somerford The main Mon-Sat daytime frequency is cut from every 15 to every 20 mins with most daytime buses running to Two Rivers Meet. Somerford drops from two buses to one an hour (shuttle from Christchurch) for most of weekday daytimes with a large gap in service in the afternoon. Somerford loses all of its 1B Saturday service.

2 Town Centre-Castlepoint More Mon-Sat evening journeys.

3/3A Westbourne-Royal Bournemouth Hospital The 3A is withdrawn and the 3 is amended to run between Westbourne and Bournemouth Hospital. The combined Mon-Sat daytime frequency drops from 8 to 6 buses an hour. For Poole, use the 1/1C.

4/4A Town Centre-Castlepoint/Bearwood Minor changes.

5/5A Town Centre-Kinson Minor changes.

6 Town Centre-Bearwood Minor changes.

8 Boscombe-Mountbatten No longer serves Alderney. Most journeys curtailed to only run as far as Wallisdown Roundabout, with only peak hour journeys running to Mountbatten.

18 Town Centre-Broadstone Minor changes.

36 Talbot View-Kinson Minor changes.

737 Town Centre-Airport Minor changes.



Earlier this week, we reported on nationwide problems with using First's mTicket app. A full working week after the problems first surfaced, they are still not solved.

The app has been promoted by First as a way to speed up boarding by taking payments off the bus. Passengers have been incentivised to use it by offering discounts on many tickets. When it works, it works well. For it to fail for a full week at the busiest times every day is shocking. A company the size of First should have been able to resolve it by now. Has any other operator had such major ticketing problems for a full week?

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First ticketing app fails in both rush hours ... NATIONWIDE!

There was chaos today as First's mTicket app failed at the height of both rush hours today. The nationwide outage meant that passengers who had already bought tickets on their mobile were unable to access them in order to use them for travel.

The problem was first reported by First's Twitter feed, which you can always find in the right hand panel on the desktop version of this blog, along with Twitter feeds from all bus operators in our region, at 0740:

No advice for passengers who had paid for tickets on their phone, which they now could not use. I expect Alex was too busy copying and pasting the same message to all of First's other regional Twitter feeds:

At the time I was attempting to get to the day job in Manchester. When the app failed, it gave an error message that insisted the problem was either with my phone or my data connection. I had a few minutes before it was due, so I restarted my phone. As it was restarting, my bus went past, 3 minutes ahead of schedule (a separate issue - and with no warning of such from the live departures app I use). Still believing it was an issue with my phone, I tried the app again. Same message. Then I looked on Twitter:

Again, no advice on what affected passengers should do. I had no cash on me and contactless has not yet been rolled out here, so I gave up, jumped in the car and drove to the nearest park & ride tram stop. Across the country, many thousands of people must have either found another way or just abandoned their journey.

This palaver lasted for the whole rush hour, with the all clear only being given by First at 0948:

Something wasn't right though, because in the evening rush hour, the same thing happened again:

This outage lasted from just before 1722 (we have to assume passengers were being affected and refused travel for several minutes before First admitted the problem on Twitter) right through until...

2015, long after rush hour had ended! As the first weekday after the school holidays, many people will have been trying the bus for the first time - and will have been put off for good by this fiasco.

I'm not hopeful for tomorrow.

Were you affected? Have you experienced something similar with other operators and how did they manage the situation? Tell us in the comments below.

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