Easier To Get Across The City? (2)

 A Little More On Service 1

It seems that route 10 to Beeston reverted to route 1 as recently as October last year. At the same time buses were turned short at Lawnswood. And here is a service 1 loading scholars (for want to a better word) at the Lawnswood School stop on the Leeds side of the ring road at Weetwood.

Presumably, at the same time, route 8 replaced the 1 to Holt Park. (No it didn't, see addendum below.)

ADDENDUM : Service 8 was introduced when the service 1 was split. The split became 10 City to Beeston and 8 City to Holt Park. Seemples? Confused.com? Thanks Colin, correspondent from Leeds who has provoked these blogs.

Do 6s become 8s at Holt Park ASDA?

Dunno! But very likely.

Back in October the man from First explained it all to the folk of Beeston, well the bit that affected Beestonians.

The change from 4 October is part of a review of services that takes into account both the re-opening of the Headrow and the impact of the Covid pandemic on both passenger demand and bus resource. Service 1 will operate between Beeston and Lawnswood School and will replace the Beeston – Leeds service 10. The service will provide 8 buses per hour Monday to Friday daytime and will directly re-connect Beeston residents with both the north of the city centre, Headingley and West Park. Operating to Lawnswood will allow us to provide a more resilient bus network in the area with Holt Park continuing to be well served by other bus services. Full timetable details will be available shortly.

Erm, not quite.

There are eight buses an hour to Leeds centre but only a 15 minute frequency on to Lawnswood. It is good to see that note "A" warns us that the city-only journeys run to Albion Square, as opposed to Albion Square as shown in the timetable.

Traveline, as usual, has a potty turn. It thinks service 1 runs to West Park ...

... and West Park is in ...

... Leeds in Kent. Traveline also tells us that route 1 ONLY runs to ...

... Headrow M although the timetable might imply otherwise.

Bus stops are a bit fluid due to work on The Headrow, but fbb cannot, currently, identify stops in Albion Street. Lets hope Leeds residents can do better!

So all we need to know now is why route 1 is coloured MUD south of the city and YELLOW when it continues northwards. And why Colin's bus to Beeston was showing a strange destination on its front screen.

One of the things that First Bus does with aplomb is provide its users with line-of-route maps, geographically accurate and in reasonably good detail. They are not always up to date but, when OK they are very good! Herewith, an example from Sheffield.

So, as "It's All On Line", can we find sensible and accurate maps c/o First Bus.

Answer, NO!

Here is the MUD coloured "map" (now a crude line diagram) for service 1 from Beeston to Lawnswood.

Goody - it seems to show every stop. But it continues ...

... to Leeds and goes no further. As far as First bus cartographical department is concerned, service 1 does not run beyond Leeds (Albion Street ???). No route is shown to Lawnswood. Remember that phrase fbb asked you to bear in mind?

Hold on to that phrase "through service was soon re-instated" - it will come in useful later.

Or even take note of the heading to these blogs, "Easier to Get Across The City".

It would seem that residents of Beeston have less buses for "Getting Across The City" and the information is much worse that it used to be in the heady days of First's BROWN "Overground Line".

As you ponder these inexactitudes, enjoy this little video.

The plans outlined in the video were first revealed to an expectant world early in 2020.

In order to create these "lines" colours have been used but the new colours ignore existing cross city linkings ...

"Easier to Get Across The City" - Remember? ...

... and any previous route branding from First. So the MUD route to Beeston is now named "The Beeston Line". Red wedges wedge no longer.

Service 1 north of the city is part of "The Headingley Line" in glorious YELLOW. But its not a "line"; it is a fairly complex group of lines as we spotted before. Nor is it at all clear where the MUD line changes into the YELLOW line.

Back in February last year fbb did suggest that a band of happy First Bus employees would peel off the MUD wedge at the city terminus and stick on a YELLOW wedge. Maybe not too practiacble?

Unfortunately the diagram of the yellow line is not yet available.

So we make do with an extract from the "Core Network" geographical map.

What all this means is that Metro West Yorkshire (a k a west Yorkshire PTE) has decided to throw away all First's route branding and wedge-adorned buses and replace it all with their own scheme.

Already we see one problem with a scheme that is supposed to make it ...

... "Easier to Get Across The City" ...

... has split all the cross-city services, taking away the opportunity of visually keeping hold of the cross-city link. The buses still run from one side of Leeds to another, but most of them will change their line name and line colour as they cross.

Easier or more confusing?

The little video also exposes another problem. Remember what the commentary said.

"If you want to get to St James' Hospital, just hop on a St James' line bus."

Unfortunately, not all St James Line buses pass St James Hospital. Service 4 misses. Likewise not all the White Rose Line buses call at the White Rose Centre.

LILAC routes call except route 2; but route 12 (GREEN) does!

And what might a user make of the East Leeds Line (ORANGE)?

Not a line, but the results of an fbb attempt to knit a square for a charity quilt! The diagrammatic version is far worse!

Click on the diagram for an enlargement - but it doesn't get any better!

Making travel easier is a very noble aim; and much needed. Public Transport is hard to "get" and has become harder to understand since the demise of timetable books and good maps. But the Metro people have tried too hard to tinker with colours and groups of services. They have created lines where none exist.

What is needed is a thorough look at the whole network and, possibly, a thorough rejig of cross-city services to create a simpler network.

But that would involve taking charge of First's commercial network ...

... and our Tracy has already said that's exactly what she is going to do!

So, once she gets going, it will all change again! Maybe this time it will be ...

... "Easier to Get Across The City".

Lucky Leeds bus passengers! Or not!

There might be a better solution, one that retrins the commercial network but uses colours to emphasise the frequeny routes whether cross-city or not. Each main route (or small group of routes) would have a unique colour which would be applied to stops, timetables and the buses themselves.

What might such a neywork be called. One ide would be to puinch the concept of London's underground train network and call it Leeds Overground.

It would be simpler to understand than West Yotkshire Metro's scheme. OK, you would need a few extra colours to deal with the non-First Bus operators, but it would not be difficult to incotporate the 200, 201 and 203 via White Rose Centre, for example.

It might be worth a try!

 Next Integration blog : Friday 6th Augiust