Late March round up / Bishops Waltham loses direct buses to Southampton and Eastleigh

Today, Sunday 19th March, sees new timetables on More Breezer 40 and 60 with seasonal frequency increases.

Bus travel within the City of Portsmouth is free on all Sundays in March, with 26th March being your last chance to get a free ride.

From Sunday 2nd April, First Solent 18 has a new timetable and is cut to back to terminate at Southsea Shops, no longer serving South Parade Pier. The 13, 14 and 22 have been reprieved and will continue to run.

On the same day, Stagecoach have a new timetable on the Coastliner 700. Buses from Portsmouth will no longer run beyond Chichester, so if you want to get to Bognor and beyond, you'll need to change buses in Chichester.

A new timetable also from 3rd April on routes 37 Havant-Petersfield and 38X Alton-Cowplain.

Changes are coming to Bluestar's Romsey routes which receive subsidy from Hampshire County Council:

• 35 Romsey-Braishfield: New reduced timetable from Monday 3rd April. Just one journey a day each way, weekdays only.
• 36 Romsey-Lockerley: Withdrawn. Runs for the last time on Thursday 30th March. No replacement.
• 39 Romsey-Nomansland: Withdrawn. Runs for the last time on Friday 31st March. No replacement.

Stagecoach also have some changes from Monday 3rd April:

• E1/E2 Winchester-Eastleigh: New timetable and E2 rerouted to run direct via Twyford Road instead of via Boyatt Wood.
• 49 Hedge End-Bishops Waltham: New service to partially replace the withdrawn Xelabus X9/X10 which run for the last time om Friday 31st March. Passengers for Southampton will need to change in Hedge End to Bluestar 3 or 14. Passengers for Eastleigh will need to change in Botley or Horton Heath to Bluestar 3. There's no weekend service, so if you want to get to or from Bishops Waltham then, you'll need to use Stagecoach 69 and change in Fair Oak for Bluestar 2 to Eastleigh and Southampton.
• 49h Hedge End-Hamble: New service restoring the severed link between Hamble and Hedge End.

More are having a launch event for this year's Breezer services in Poole Park on Good Friday 7th April.

Stagecoach also have several changes to several of their Winchester routes from Sunday 16th April. Amongst other changes, route 1 is renumbered as route 2, to help avoid confusion with Bluestar 1. Timetables are yet to be released.

Easter service levels:

• Bluestar
• More
• Salisbury Reds
• Southern Vectis
• Unibus
• Unilink

End of an Era: First's Final Day

First City Red operates for the final time today, Saturday 18th February. The very final service they operate will be on route 2 from Millbrook, Kendal Avenue Shops at 2333 to the City Centre, terminating at Vincents Walk at 2355 and bringing to an end the history of red buses in Southampton, with a direct corporate lineage back to the very first horse-drawn trams in our city in 1879. Rather appropriately, it will be followed 12 minutes later by a Bluestar 18 running through to Thornhill.

From tomorrow, Bluestar takes over with six new routes, and significantly improved timetables on most of them, including the reintroduction of evening and Sunday services to Merry Oak and Harefield on route 13. Full details of their new network here.

Their very first new First-replacement journey will be on route 19 from Thornhill, Fairfax Court at 0523 on Sunday morning, towards Lordshill.

In other news:

In Bournemouth, Yellow Coaches, part of Xelagroup, ceased operations earlier this week, so routes 18, 33 and 36 have passed back to More.

First Solent have new timetables on routes 7, 9 and 9A from 5th March, including rerouting the 9A via Nobes Avenue.

Xelabus have advised that routes X9 and X10 are due to be withdrawn on 31st March, subject to retendering by Hampshire County Council. We'll let you know as soon as HCC's future arrangements for the routes are clear.

In a similar vein, First Solent have registered the withdrawal of routes 13, 14, 18 and 22 in Portsmouth from 2nd April, pending a retendering process by Portsmouth City Council.

Bluestar First replacement timetables released

Bluestar have released the timetables for their six new routes that will be replacing First City Red from Sunday 19th February. The 7 also gains some new evening journeys to Sholing.

• The last 7 from town to Sholing is currently at 1945 Mon-Sats. New journeys will run at 2045 and 2245.
• Bluestar 10 replaces First City Red 9, with only minor changes to times.
• Bluestar 13 replaces First City Red 13. The Mon-Sat daytime frequency is doubled to half-hourly, plus evening and Sunday services, axed long ago by First, are introduced. 
• Bluestar 14 replaces the Eastern half of First City Red 8. Buses will generally start running earlier and run until later in the evening. The current last bus from town to Hedge End is at 1930 Mon-Sats - Bluestar will run an additional journey at 2130.
• Bluestar 15 replaces First City Red 6. Minor changes to times include a later last bus on Saturdays, leaving town at 2110, instead of 1950 currently.
• Bluestar 19 replaces First City Red 3. Daytime frequencies are reduced from every 10 to 15 minutes weekdays, from every 12 to 20 mins Saturdays, and from every 20 to 30 mins Sundays. Don't forget the route change to serve Maybush Corner instead of Warren Avenue.
• Bluestar 20 replaces First City Red 7. The Sunday daytime frequency is reduced from three to two buses an hour. The last bus from town, currently at 2243, will be later at 0005, seven days a week.
• There also appear to be some minor changes to existing routes 17 and 18.

Stagecoach 66 has disruption between Winchester and Romsey for the next couple of nights, due to a road closure in Ampfield. The length of the diversion means some journeys are cut, so check this emergency timetable before travelling.

The Blandford Forum to Shaftesbury service, currently South West Coaches X3, transfers to Go Ahead's Damory Coaches from Monday 30th January and is renumbered as route 7. Timetable yet to be confirmed.

First Solent have some timetable changes from Sunday 12th February on routes 20, 21 and 27. The 21 and 27 are reduced to only running off-peak weekday daytimes, with the Saturday service withdrawn. The current last bus on the 20 is cancelled, meaning the last bus will leave Fareham at 1635 weekdays.

Xelabus have announced that their Yellow Coaches subsidiary will withdraw all services in the Bournemouth area, including routes 18, 33 and 36, from Tuesday 14th February, when their temporary contract with BCP Council expires. It is widely expected that More, as the only remaining operator in the area, will pick those routes up, but that is yet to be confirmed.

Xelabus are commemorating First leaving Southampton by running a free vintage bus on some of Citybus's historic routes on First's final day, Saturday 18th February.

First Wessex's seasonal routes in Weymouth start resuming on Wednesday 1st March with Sunseeker 12 to Littlesea. Sunseeker 13 to Waterside starts on Friday 17th March.

Southern Vectis's seasonal Needles Breezer service has been registered to resume on Saturday 4th March.

Sunday 5th March sees changes to First Solent routes 7 and 9/9A. Details to be confirmed.

First Solent will be running the Southsea Coaster 50 tourist service from Sunday 28th May between The Hard and South Parade Pier. Timetable to be confirmed.

Most single fares capped at £2 until end of March

Most single fares are being capped at £2 between 1st January and 31st March 2023, as part of a government-funded scheme. So far in our region, Go South Coast (trading as Bluestar, More, Salisbury Reds, Southern Vectis, Unilink and Unibus) and Stagecoach have confirmed their participation in the scheme. First have now also confirmed their participation. Xelabus are not taking part. There are exceptions, such as school and college routes, but the scheme means that some pretty long journeys can be made for just £2 each way.

Stagecoach has new timetables on routes 21 and 23 in Portsmouth from 3rd January, with earlier buses on weekdays and later buses on Friday and Saturday nights.

Christmas & New Year service levels:

• Bluestar
• First City Red
• First Solent
• First Wessex
• More
• Salisbury Reds
• Southern Vectis
• Stagecoach Portsmouth
• Stagecoach Winchester
• Unibus
• Unilink
• Xelabus

Bluestar unveil City Red replacement routes

Bluestar have unveiled the six new routes they will be introducing to replace First City Red, which closes down in February. Timetables are not yet available, but they have given an indication of expected service levels on the new routes, which will launch on 19th February 2023:

Unsurprisingly, there is no replacement for City Red 1 or 2. Bluestar 12 already goes to Calmore, Bluestar 17 to Weston and Bluestar 18 to Millbrook, so everyone on those routes is already covered.

City Red 3 is replaced by Bluestar 19, which will run every 20 minutes weekday daytimes, down from every 10 minutes currently on the 3. There is also a slight route change: Warren Avenue is already served by Bluestar 17, so the 19 will go via Maybush Corner:

City Red 6 to Hamble is replaced more or less like for like by Bluestar 15.

City Red 7 to Townhill Park via Portswood is replaced by Bluestar 20 at about the same frequency.

City Red 8 to Hedge End becomes Bluestar 14 and the recent extension to the General Hospital is cut. Passengers for the General will need to change in the city centre to routes 17 or 19.

City Red 9 to Sholing via Peartree becomes Bluestar 10. 

City Red 13 to Harefield via Merry Oak becomes Bluestar 13 and the weekday daytime frequency will double from once to twice an hour.

In other news...

• Stagecoach will have Santa driving on many of their routes in and around Winchester in the run up to Christmas. Find out when to catch him on your local route here. He'll even be making it out as far as Eastleigh on the E1/E2, Romsey on the 66 and Fareham on the 69.
• Salisbury Reds are running special service 333 to Stonehenge for the Winter Solstice.
• Xelabus have a couple of changes from 3rd January. The X4 is being split in two at Eastleigh, with separate service X4A taking over the Velmore section. The X21 Chilworth service is cut from three return journeys each weekday to two.
• First Wessex launches new routes 9/9A between Weymouth and Wyke Regis from Monday 9th January 2023.

Christmas & New Year service levels:

• Bluestar
• First City Red
• First Solent
• First Wessex
• More
• Salisbury Reds
• Southern Vectis
• Stagecoach Portsmouth
• Stagecoach Winchester
• Unibus
• Unilink
• Xelabus

NEWSFLASH: First finally pulls the plug on Southampton

First announced today that they are closing their City Red operation in Southampton. The final day of running will be Saturday 18th February 2023. All of their routes in the city will be withdrawn, with the exception of their Solent Ranger X4 and X5 services, which are run by their Fareham depot, which is unaffected by the move. 

Go Ahead's Bluestar, who will have a near monopoly, are already planning a network of replacement routes.

They will no doubt be helped by recent experience in Bournemouth, where Yellow Buses collapsed at the end of August and Go Ahead's More stepped in with 48 hours notice to successfully replace most of Yellow's routes. Bluestar have a bit more notice here, so there should be no gaps in service.

This move by First brings to an end almost 150 years of history, as their current operation is the direct successor of the Southampton Tramways Company, initially running horse-drawn trams from 1879 before coming under council control in 1898 and eventual conversion to electric trams. After the second world war, buses gradually replaced the trams, but the council-owned Southampton City Transport still had a monopoly on most routes within the city boundary. Buses outside of Greater London and Northern Ireland were deregulated in 1986, which meant competition was now allowed. In 1993, what was then known as Southampton CityBus was sold to its employees. They gave in to temptation in 1997, as First swooped in to wave a bunch of tenners under their noses and local ownership of our city's buses came to an end.

Since then, it's been a sad, long and slow decline.

The first major blow was in 2001, when the University of Southampton, unhappy at how First was serving their students and staff, decided to subsidise its own network of routes, which became Unilink. That made many First routes on the Portswood corridor become less and less viable. They were gradually cut back until they were eventually withdrawn (save for the Townhill Park route, which stumbles on), leaving a huge hole in their coverage of the city. When I was growing up in Swaythling in the 90s, First had a bus every 10 minutes to the city centre. Decades of mismanagement saw First eventually abandon Swaythling completely in September 2015.

Here's how First's network looked when this blog first launched back in 2009:

There have been some bizarre cutbacks, with First withdrawing routes, declaring them to be unviable, only for Bluestar to immediately pick them up and find them so viable that they are still running them to this day. Evidence: Bluestar 7 to Sholing and to Lordshill via Oakley Road, literally cobbled together over the years out of routes that First had simply given up on and stopped caring about.

Around this time, First lost interest in those routes that were kept running by council subsidy. Filling major gaps in the commercial network, most of them are now with Xelabus.

Here's their network in summer 2015:

By 2019, this was all that remained:

Much the same as their current network, which runs until 18th February 2023:

The main difference between the last two images is the addition of route 1 to Calmore which is a futile almost exact duplicate of Bluestar 12.

For more details of First's long and inevitable demise in our city, see this blog's previous posts. There's an index in the right-hand panel on the desktop version. We've been going since 2009, so we've managed to document a lot of the damage they've caused.

Looking to the future, Bluestar will now be in charge of the whole commercial bus network in Southampton. Good for the inter-validity of network tickets across the city. Not necessarily so good for the price of those tickets: with the absence of competition, Bluestar can and probably will raise fares significantly. We'll be watching and reporting.

We of course feel sorry for First's workforce, the best of which will almost certainly be picked up by Bluestar, and wish them well for the future. To First's management, who have never truly understood or cared about this city: good riddance.

Christmas Round Up

 Here are links to the Christmas and New Year service levels that have been announced so far:

• Bluestar
• First City Red
• First Solent
• First Wessex
• More
• Salisbury Reds
• Southern Vectis
• Stagecoach Portsmouth
• Stagecoach Winchester
• Unibus
• Unilink
• Xelabus

More as we get them.

In other news, there have been fares rises at More, and First City Red 13 has a minor timetable change from Monday 28th November.

Bluestar xmas / Salisbury Reds fares up

Bluestar have revealed the level of service they'll be running over Christmas and New Year, including a limited service on Christmas Day, however the special timetables for that day and New Year's Day are yet to be published.

First Solent have published their new timetables with minor changes for routes 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 18 and X5 from Sunday 4th December.

Salisbury Reds fares go up on Monday 14th November, plus there are timetable changes on routes 87, 88 and Red5.

The Activ8, jointly operated by Stagecoach and Salisbury Reds, got a new timetable on 23rd October.

Cresta Coaches will take over routes 63 and 240 from Stagecoach from 21st November. The new timetables appear in Hampshire County Council's latest travel guide for Winchester.