Surprise and No Surprise (4)

This Is A Stagecoach ...

... and it would be nice if this were a Stagecoach stagecoach.

But it is actually a Stagecoach horse bus.

This is a Stagecoach train ...

... but so is this ...

... with Virgin only holding a 10% share in the company.

In the case of Virgin West Coast ...

... a smidgen under half of the train is owned by Stagecoach.

This tram used to be a Stagecoach tram ...

... but ten years ago Uncle Brian sold it to the Paris City Transport Company, RATP. (Actually it is still a Manchester Tram tram, but Uncle Brian sold the right to operate it.)

And this used to be a Stagecoach train ...

... but is no longer.

Meanwhile this ISN'T a Stagecoach Bus ...

... it is a Compass Bus bus pretending to be Stagecoach.

But in Sheffield you will find lots of Uncle Brian's buses ...

... but not always in "normal" Stagecoach colours; and, running alongside them, there are lots of lovely Stagecoach Trams.

As our alert and intelligent readers will all know, at Middlewood in the North of Sheffield, you can alight from a Stagecoach Tram and change to a Stagecoach Bus for the onward journey to Stocksbridge.

For the timetable changes at the end of this month, the people at the Supertram office are printing (shock horror!) leaflets showing the new times.

The "YELL" leaflet has a full timetable ...

... but nowhere on this leaflet is there any sign of the connecting buses at Middlewood. It is as if they do not exist. The problem, you see, is that Stagecoach bus and Stagecoach Supertram are completely separate companies. Indeed the tram is part of the group's "Rail" division, fbb has been told.

There are through fares between Sheffield Centre and destinations to Stocksbridge, but finding them is far from easy and sometimes quite impossible.

As fbb has revealed before, the journey planners don't work either, insisting on a ridiculous wait at Middlewood.

A 14 minute wait for your bus is potty; you actually should make the 4 minute connection but the electronic gubbins insists on a connectional time of 5 mins.

Needless to say, the PTE does not make any attempt to show the "through" link. Indeed fbb is fairly sure that the bus people and the tram people have NEVER published a joint timetable for this obviously "through" service.

Until now, that is.

In an amazing rush of blood to the head, Stagecoach BUS is showing connecting TRAM times on its SL1 and SL1a bus timetable.

Can it possibly be that Tram and Bus are, at last working together? Don't be silly - according to a contact embedded in the tram administration, this through service publicity has come as a complete surprise.

In another untypical piece of common sense, that Bus people have published the tram timetable on their "joint" web site, but, instead of showing "and every 12 minutes" (which is tricky to work out), the bus people are showing every tram journey.

So full marks to whoever got it right (both times). 

Now all we need is for the PTE to show the through service on their non leaflets and to ensure that the journey planners work. It is likely that the technology will perform this time, as the connection time at Middlewood is now five minutes. fbb has not yet checked.

 Next Kembleford blog : Friday 12th January