Lost And Gone For Ever? (1)

Formerly

Formerly

Formerly

... has a justifiable reputation for being a very good bus company and certainly the quality of the services that it runs, the quality of its vehicles and the quality of its publicity are all superb. If only the likes of First, Arriva and Stagecoach could learn from those that are successful, they might not be so down-at-heel and struggling as they palpably are.

But commercially viable good service is NOT the same as good service; and an awful lot of "service" has been abandoned in Harrogate over recent years. 

2005, that date of the network map shown yesterday ...

... is only seven years ago. So we look at what has gone

Claro Road (YELLOW)

This is a 1930s council house estate squeezed in off the Skipton Road, but not too far from the town centre (see the red box of the railway station with the bus station alongside).

The housing has been successfully refurbished ...

... and note the provision of extra road width for parking and the typical paved-over garden. There is no shop on the Claro Road estate; presumably the 1930s planners assumed that residents would walk to the town. Its bus service of old was never frequent ...

... with just four journeys in 2005, off peak, Monday to Saturday.

Now there are none.

At the far end, beyond the former bus route, an industrial estate has grown up.

If you look closely centre left, you will spot a footbridge over the railway ...

... leading to Dene Park. Here you could, in 2005, catch a service 201 (now 2A), BUT you are at the start of a large one way loop. So by the time you have toddled to the footbridge, toddled further the other side, waited a bit then sat on your bus for 15 minutes ...

... you could have walked into town anyway.

If you were fit enough.

Next we move to:-

Wedderburn (ORANGE)

There is a shop ...

... (one of four that once traded) serving property built a little more recently than that at Claro Road, possibly just before and just after WW2. It has also been refurbished.

But what is that, viewed on the street courtesy of Streeetview? What is that just beyond the nearest parked car?

Aha! It is a North Yorkshire County Council bus stop flag and smashed timetable frame. there's another one by the shop (ex shops).

It is of similar quality and equally useless; because there is now no bus service to Wedderburn. In 2018 it was served by Connexions Buses X4 (X is the "X" of ConneXions - with no meaning of added speed!).

The 2005 timetable was sparse ...

... and fbb would guess that the North Yorkshire tendered X4 journeys would not have been any better.

And he would have guessed right. Renumbering to X4 probably made no difference.

This time, however, the alternative is perhaps a little less taxing than at Claro Road.

Knaresborough Road, to the north of the Wedderburn estate, carries the very frequent service 1 complex ...

... running every 10 minutes.

There is also the much less frequent route 8 passing the southern extremities of the Wedderburn housing ...

... but you would guess that it is not attractive for local travel!

On the opposite side of the Knaresborough Road lies a small block of housing usually called "Kingsley".

Buses via Rydal Road (?), Kingsley Drive and Kingsley Road had already gone by 2005. It is a private housing development of semis and bungalows and, again, was completed after WW2.

fbb reckons it never really justified a bus service - but, back in the late 40s and early 50s, there would have been "pressure" to provide buses as part of the attraction of these new and modern properties. fbb's hazy memory is that Kingsley had a similar minimalist bus service to that at Claro Road and Wedderburn.

Possibly, back in the day, all run by the one bus?

It is, of course, clear that, commercially, none of these places could justify a financially viable bus service. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have one! IF the UK had a proper transport policy (stop sniggering out there!), and if you added up the environmental cost of cars, white-van-man deliveries, road maintenance, cost of accidents etc. etc, then a subsidised bus service would be by far the cheapest and the best option.

More Harrogate tomorrow.

 !Next Where Have They Gone blog : Weds 16th