Scunthorpe Surprise (2)

One of the first things you do (well, back in the day, what fbb always did) was to scan a new timetable book and see what had changed. Hornsby's excellent production ...

... does the job for you wit a comprehensive (and comprehensible - the two are often mutually exclusive) list of what is changing from next Monday's start date.

Two big changes are highlighted, namely the complete withdrawal of route 13 ...

... and its partial replacement by an extra twiddle on service 4. The Hospital shuttle (and Park and Ride) is withdrawn on Saturdays. There is tinkering with some improvement to 35 ...

... which from next week will be shown on a separate page from the 90. Whilst fbb is no expert on Scunny's bus routes, he is convinced that a regular user with old and new timetables to hand will find the changes easy to follow.

Possibly easier than searching and re-searchng on line?

What makes the job of following somewhat easier is that with each timetable comes a map. Here is the map for service 4 (shown in two sections due to limitations of the Blogger page layout).

As can be expected with a rural service (tendered?) it has a complicated timetable ...

... but there has been a notable effort to explain the oddities. Separate Monday to Friday and Saturday pages would help readability, but space and cost constraints might well have prevented such a luxury.

Another map (extract only below) shows a more detailed view of routes within Scunthorpe itself and, again, is very helpful.

Hornsby's also operate town services in Brigg ...

... and Barton-on-Humber.

Blog readers are invited to attempt to understand the route  and timetable of the latter - a challenge for an outsider.

And what about fares?

Gareth explains:-

The only thing missing for me is the mention of fares which the customer didn’t want.

I see this as a missed opportunity but the fare setter here is actually Stagecoach through the Simplibus brand. Hornsbys and Stagecoach offer the dayrider (currently £3.70) which entitles you to board either company’s buses for the day (or week on the weeklyrider) and there have been two price rises of 10p in the last year.

What I have said to them is that information needs to go through the website, which it will. A new site is being constructed for the new year and will have a lot more interactivity than the current one. 

It is worth reminding ourselves that correspondent Gareth has been employed to create this booklet by Hornsbys and thus it represents a huge step-change in presentation compared with what has gone before. The company was anxious to improve its publicity, as Gareth explains.

They are keen to get back to publishing timetables and as I type, these are at the printers ready for the new timetable launch on 2nd December. The importance of the printed material has been highlighted an opportunity to get that information out to existing (and more importantly, potential) customers and I’m hoping that with our new timetables, we’ve achieved that.

Well done Hornsbys, well done Gareth and may both enterprises continue to succeed.

 Another Germolene blog : Thursday 28th November