Tuesday 7 June 2016

Competition? Capitulation? Commercial?

Another Battle Won by First?
Not too long ago, Wessex Bus, part of the Rotala Group, was showing four commercial services to the University of the West of England (UWE), former Alma Mater of No 1 son.

A more recent map reduces this to three ...
... but fbb cannot find any evidence for an X14 on the Wessex Bus web site.
There is, however, a timetable on Traveline.
The 19 is a reasonably direct service ...
... but running at an unhelpful frequency of every 25 minutes.
The 13 is wiggly via Fishponds ...
... and a change of bus is needed to get to UWE.
Competitor First has been pushing resources at its UWE routes; with pink fronted buses on the 70 and 71 ...
.. and pink ...
... and/or electric on the 72 which is the equivalent of Wessex 19.
There is a nice even 30 minute frequency.
To add insult to injury, a recent (August 2015) change from First was the introduction of a 48A as a variant of its route to Emersons Green.

NEW SERVICE* 48A 
City Centre – UWE Frenchay (via Fishponds)
This new service is designed to work alongside services 48 & 49.
It will follow the same route as the 48 & 49 from City Centre to Fishponds
From Fishponds service 48A will turn into Manor Road, Blackberry Hill, Broom Hill, Frenchay Park Road, Stoke Hill & Coldhabour Lane before terminating at UWE’s Frenchay Campus.
This new service will create new links between Fishponds & UWE’s Frenchay and Glenside Campus’

So it wiggles just like the Wessex 13 ...
... and runs every 20 minutes - all the way.

So what do you think had just been announced by Wessex.

Yep, here it is:-
... withdrawal of the 13 and 19 from 22nd July - with regret. Hmmm?

More rejoicing for Fearnley?
But not in Leeds!
Hey ho, you can't win 'em all!

fbb is indebted to Bristol correspondent Paul for sending the Wessex Bus news.

 Next bus blog : Wednesday 8th June 

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for alerting us to the fact that the X14 timetable link had gone astray - it has now been re-instated.

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  2. I see you can do a part 2 in due course as Wessex are cutting back the One and One2 from Cribbs Causeway from 1 Aug and running some 3s to Cribbs Causeway instead. (from VOSA)

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    Replies
    1. Not sayimg ypu're wrong, but if you got that from the 3/3A/3B/3C/3X Vosa change, be warned that the route numbers and locations on that regiateation haven't changed since there was a Wessex 3 going to Cribbs...

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