Barnsley
The big happening in the land of Pie and Pea Dinners, Arthur Scargill and the Great Ian McMillan ...
... the town's self-appointed Laureate, is the consequence of the Barnsley Bus Partnership ...
... almost exclusively a partnership between Stagecoach and ... erm ... Stagecoach! As in previous South Yorkshire "partnerships" this is just a poorly disguised way of cutting services.
But a Bouquet for South Yorkshire PTE (Travel South Yorkshire : TSY) for producing an excellent map. It appears to be correct and shows one of the areas with a hefty chop, namely Stocksbridge and Penistone.
The country routes via Thurgoland and Wortley are fiercely pruned and there are merely remnants of a service to Holmfirth.
Of course, TSY has all its standard timetables available to download, but produces no printed material. A Sheffield correspondent is visiting Barnsley tomorrow to see what Stagecoach have on offer, but yesterday, the first weekday of the changes, you could also go to Stagecoach Barnsley's site ...
Here you would find not a dicky-bird from Stagecoach, timetable-wise, and all the out-of-date TSY downloads, specially left there so you cannot obtain the full information on the changes. As mentioned above ...
... service 25 to Holmfirth was there yesterday in all its glory, as it was on Sunday. It is withdrawn completely!
Its replacement is occasional extended journeys on the cut back service 29 (Sheffield, Chapeltown, Penistone).
But nothing on Sundays.
So a long and loud BOO to Stagecoach for (a) being too lazy to put their own information on their web site and, more horrifically, (b) ensuring that the WRONG information via TSY is well displayed.
There is tinkering in the Rotherham area, but the big change is the renumbering of many First Bus service as a result of the move of operations to Olive Grove depot in Sheffield. First Bus on-line information has been well promulgated and its "Forthcoming" timetables index had been merged into a simple (current) "Timetables" section by Sunday morning - i.e. on time.
So First gets a Bouquet .
But a massive BOO goes to TSY. They cannot be bothered to update their Rotherham network map which, as a result ...
... is showing all the WRONG numbers.
It is a big old BOO again to Stagecoach, but here they have managed to upload a table for the new 106 ...
... whilst leaving all the old tables in place.
There is tinkering in the Sheffield area as well, mostly just timetable tweaks and First's web site is fully updated. But for the joint services with "partner" Stagecoach (stop sniggering at the back!), First only deem to show their own journeys. But we will give them a nosegay , if not a full bouquet.
As fbb has said before, "Partnership, what partnership?"
Let the BOOs continue even louder as Stagecoach still shows the old tables.
This is a particularly poor poor show with the changed service from Killamarsh.
We might excuse an incompetent Stagecoach for not bothering with the mildly tweaked 52/52A but, as reported in this blog a week or so ago (read again), there is a major change on the 71 and 72.
Stagecoach wants to keep it a secret from the good folk of Sheffield.
It gets worse.
A Sheffield correspondent was trundling along happily on a Stagecoach Chesterfield route 25 a few days ago, when he espied an attractive full colour leaflet.
This includes an excellent explanation of what is happening, plus detailed coloured maps of the Killamarsh area and a colour coded timetable.
So BOO, double BOO and treble BOO to Stagecoach for having the information and not bothering to use it.
And yet another BOO to Travel South Yorkshire. The Killamarsh and Stocksbridge areas have not been updated on their usually excellent Sheffield network maps.
But the biggest BOO of all must go to First and Stagecoach. According to one of our more rigorous Sheffield hacks ...
... so no surprise there.
fbb has a proposal. In Sheffield's Botanical Gardens there is a bear pit.
It currently contains one plastic bear.
In to this we should hurl the bosses of First Sheffield and Stagecoach Sheffield, the chief honcho of the PTE and, for good measure, Messrs Fearnley and Montgomery. They will be allowed plastic macs, an Elsan toilet and feeding by the occasional jammie dodger flung half-heartedly from the viewing area above.
Cabbages and rotting fruit will also be made available for the viewing public. OR?
They will not be let out until they have sorted out South Yorkshire's appalling bus publicity mess.
Stagecoach wants to keep it a secret from the good folk of Sheffield.
It gets worse.
A Sheffield correspondent was trundling along happily on a Stagecoach Chesterfield route 25 a few days ago, when he espied an attractive full colour leaflet.
And yet another BOO to Travel South Yorkshire. The Killamarsh and Stocksbridge areas have not been updated on their usually excellent Sheffield network maps.
Try finding a 23 at Bolsterstone from today onwards!
... so no surprise there.
fbb has a proposal. In Sheffield's Botanical Gardens there is a bear pit.
Cabbages and rotting fruit will also be made available for the viewing public. OR?
More news if anything ever happens!
The PTE aka TSY, hiding behind the Partnership, has declined to support the GoTimetable App in any way - preferring their more co-ordinated approach as we observe above. Needless to say, the GoTimetable App was close to accurate completion two weeks before the changes. the final mini-tweaks took a few days longer.
www.GoTimetable.com
Back to the comparative sanity of Kent (?) tomorrow
The PTE aka TSY, hiding behind the Partnership, has declined to support the GoTimetable App in any way - preferring their more co-ordinated approach as we observe above. Needless to say, the GoTimetable App was close to accurate completion two weeks before the changes. the final mini-tweaks took a few days longer.
www.GoTimetable.com
Back to the comparative sanity of Kent (?) tomorrow
Next Ashford blog : Wednesday 1st February
"The PTE aka TSY, hiding behind the Partnership, has declined to support the GoTimetable App in any way"
ReplyDeleteOr in other words somebody turned down the product you tried to flog them.
Quite right Anon. But at least the product for which I am a consultant gets it right. Usage, without the privilege of support, is growing slowly and takes a small leap every time there is a timetable change.
ReplyDeleteNot yet success commecially, but progress with hundreds of enquiries via the Seaton and Sheffield products!
By sheer luck I found that the new timetables _are_ in fact somewhere to be found on the Stagecoach website. They're at the end of the old ones, for example page 7 of the 265 timetable. Of course, if I hadn't scrolled all that way I wouldn't have had a clue – it leaves quite a lot to be desired.
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