Beyond Rose Hill ...

Great For Greater Leys?

Greater Leys is an extra "layer" added on the southern edge of the Blackbird Leys housing estate in Oxford. Clearly it needed a bus service and, like everything else in the city it attracted competition between Oxford Bus and Stagecoach Oxford.

In 2021, the route became jointly operated by the her two warring partners.

The route ran along Iffley Road, but instead of turning right to Rose Hill The Oval, the 3A pressed on in a huge hook shaped route to Cowley. Its early manifestation was somewhat complex in the Blackbird Leys area ...

... seen below in more detail.

Needless to say, the complex one way sections of road were unpopular with the travelling public who couldn't understand them. Neither can fbb.

Appropriately for everyone's sanity the toute was revised ...

... and in a further outbreak of common sense, became Oxford Bus only with a tasteful route branded livery of mustard yellow and bearing the name City3/3A.

Enjogying5 the flavour of mustard we have a sample of the Monday to Friday timetable.

The 3A became every half hour Mon to Fri to Cowley and every 15 to Rose Hill. The yellow timetable was in place before the route was simplified hence a time point in the Blackbird Leys estate proper.

But in 2025 we are now blue ...

... and a new timetable joins the new route.

Buses still run every 30 minutes all the way to Cowley ...

... but an extra service is added providing a bus every 15 min to the footy stadium.

On Saturdays, perversely, buses run every 20 minutes to Cowley without the stadium extras; and on Sunday every 30 min all the way.

Note that the 3A is timed at Rose Hill The Parade (the main A4158); the 3A does not serve The Oval.

This is better shown on the on-line HTML timetable ...

... where we see that The Oval has a service 3 every 15 minutes as before.

An Apology : fbb is not an expert on the minutiae of us services in Oxford and he apologises if he has failed to grasp some of the finer detail of the 3 and 3A. But the average reader of this blog will grasp the basics.

Under the new timetable above, the service has been improved with the extras on Monday to Friday, an increase from half hourly to every 20 on Saturdays and a doubling of the Sunday service from hourly to half hourly.

Lets take a look at the extended route. First call should be at the Science Park ..

... but the current map says it doesn't until the road works are finished. Google maps suggests it was OK.

Next call is at the Kassam Stadium ...

... followed by Greater Leys estate itself. Thanks to a design that is not bus friendly, stops are on a main road with the housing hidden behind a Berlin wall.

Soon, the 3A joined the Wallington Road and its light industry and shopping with a time point at Lidl.

The terminus is at Cowley Templars Square.

It is an indoor shopping centre plus Sainsburys and it looks really appealing from near the bus stops.

Its web site is full of information about parking and taxis ...

... but mentions not a dickie bird about the extensive number of bus services.

fbb does not think that the shopping centre or the site on which it stands ever held any delights for a clutch of monks in the style of the Knights Templar, but part of the area nearby is called Temple Cowley.

People are still looking for the Temple!

What set the investigative juices a flowing for the old bloke was a local Oxford press article..

It accompanied a picture of a bus on service 5.

So fbb read more.

So if it wasn't about service 5, it was about service 3A.

Having followed up the background and the current timetable fbb wonders about the figures quoted.

At a rough guess, the increased costs of running the improved 3A service will be at least 35%. A 22% increase in passengers from Littlemore and Sandford - only a tiny part of the 3A -  might equate to, say, a 5% increase in the overall passenger numbers.

We also need to remember that percentage increase statistics are hardly reliable. A 22% increase.might be from 5 passengers to just over 6!!

So, assuming realistic numbers,  who is standing the 25% (net) increase in costs?

From memory, a chunk of one or other of the raft of bus grants has contributed to the expansion of the 3A.

Value for Money?

 Next Variety blog : Sunday 25 May