Arriva X1 Brighton 1X Comparison (3)

 Shock News From Arriva!

Arriva bus,, now sold on from Detsche Bahn (that was a good investment wasn't it?) has continued to be the basket case of the UK's big operators. It has followed First Bus in ridding itself of great chunks of its territory and, according to bus watchers nationally, has abandoned its key brands and isn't putting much effort into quality damage repair. This means its buses are often bit of a mess.

Bus industry prophets are now predicting that Arriva's new investment bank owners will soon begin to try to find buyers for what is left of the business; which may not be much when franchising arrives in Merseyside and West Yorkshire.

But, here it is in headline ...

... and it starts on Sunday 21st July.

But before we get to this earth shattering news, news of Arriva's first route development since before the pandemic (which is earth shattering for Arriva!), we need to look at the history.

As Milton Keynes grew from a few cardboard houses and lots of mud into a potential new city, there was a need to develop bus links to neighbouring towns. Initially this was achieved by simply diverting or extending existing inter-urban services to the proto city centre.

Thus came United Counties services from Northampton, Bedford and Aylesbury. But nobody seemed keen to link with Dunstable and Luton.

fbb begins his tale in the late 1970s with an utterly stunning group of services (?).

Here we have three slow stopping journeys numbered 67 running six days a week, then (shock horror) two Saturday only shopping trips numbered 66. And even more shock horror, these buses ran via the M1.

The 67 eschews the M1, and for a good chunk of its trajectory even avoids the old route via the A5. It serves Woburn and Milton Bryan before joining the A5 at  Hockliffe.

Then there are two limited stop route 456 journeys. For a while, these baffled fbb as they did not feature in his astute and alert memory banks. Route numbers in Milton Keynes were, by then, mainly in the 400 series; but the old bloke could not remember a 456.

If only fbb had read the small print!

The 456 is a National Express service also running on Sundays.

Lets hope the crowds wanting to travel from Woburn to Hockliffe managed to flag it down and persuade the driver to sell them a ticket! 

There is no NatEx 456 today!

in the 1970s the closest that a "normal" bus service got to Milton Keynes when travelling from Luton was Leighton Buzzard which enjoyed a half hour frequency Monday to Saturday.

The 69 ran via Eggington and Hockliffe to join he good old A5 ...

... whilst route 70 joins the A5 a tad further south after visiting Sranbidge and Tisworth.

In on-line copy of an old Leighton Buzzard timetable book helps us follow the broad trend of developments.

So by 2011 we have Arriva 70 running from Milton Keynes to Leighton Buzzard and then via Stanbridge and Tisworth as previously.

Centrebus X31 runs straight down the A5 and Eggington only gets a local link courtesy of Grant Palmer service 10, but no through buses to Luton.

The 69 and 70 do, however, form the basis of today's stopping services F70 and F77, operated by Arriva. Unfortunately the timetable presentation on-line is a shambles. But before we delve (briefly) into the shambles, let's take a look at where the two routes actually go. 

It is not easy,  due to the lack of usable maps. This old map from the Milton Keynes area does not really go far enough south ...

... and the route number graphics are far too small. Both F70 nd F77 leave Milton Keynes via the eastern edge of Bletchley's Lakes Estate. The F70 now goes no further than Leighon Buzzard and a new F77 tuns through to Luton.

The one thing that cements passengers' willingness to travel by bus is some sort of consistency and consistent this service is very much not!

But here is an extract from one on-line timetable for today's F70 and F77.

Two buses at 1300 but going different ways? Believe fbb, the Monday to Friday timetable is even dafter. The cause of this mess is ably shown by the Arriva version of the table of times.

The buses serve a different time point in Leighton Buzzard on Tuesdays, when it is Market Day and the High Street is closed. Do you really need TWO duplicate sets of times, Arriva, to communicate that? A simple explanatory note would have prevented timetabular misconceptions.

Either it no longer happens or this version of the timetable doesn't care!

Whatever, the F70 still tuns via Tisworth etc whilst the F77 runs vi Stoke Hammond, hence the different routes out of Bletchley on the map above.

Of course you are confused.

There is a concerted effort by the UK bus industry to spread mayhem and bewilderment to the passenger and thus persuade them to stay at home.

But, nowadays, from Dunstable, both the F70 and F77 use the Busway.

This diagram is a bit crude but it is all that we have for the whole of the F70/F77 ...

... with the busway bit continuing off the map to the right.

And this picture might give a clue as to what the F means.

Yes, F is for Fast - well, fast once it hits the busway!

The F appeared in 2015 when the service consisted of 70 (as before) and Fast70.

By the way, that dedicated F70 livery has long gone!

But we now need to move on to the really fast buses or coaches between Milton Keynes and Luton, maybe faster that the 66 from the late seventies!

 Next X1 blog : Thursday 18th July