Arriva X1 Brighton 1X Comparison (4)

Faster Than F70/F77?

To add to the mix, fbb is grateful to correspondent Julian for this timetable. It shows Buffalo Travel ...

... (with the quality of its operation clearly indicated by its vehicles) operating an X66 between Milton Keynes and Luton. From the point times, the route is straight down the A5 to Dunstable then across to Luton. For a time the same company operated on a 66 to Buckingham. This table dates from 1994.

But then ...

Here is Luton and District (later to be Arrva) running the self-same X66 ...

... and, by way of conformation, another X66 actually going to Milton Keynes.

Did L & D tyke over Buffalo? Dunno. Maybe this note will prod Julian's memory a bit further?

But, for another twist in this convoluted tale, we need to move to Railway Privatisation. 

Some bidders for franchises were so keen to get the job that they made what seem now to be some outlandish promises. So it was that Stagecoach with South West Trains and Virgin West Coast offered a whole collection of bus links with through fares.

One such was route VT99 from Milton Keynes to Luton. It was operated by Virgin Trains liveried coaches ...

... including at least one with a yellow splodge on the front ...

... just like the trains! Sweet!

Not sure who that bloke is leaning against the front of the train or what became of him. Neither could fbb find an actual timetable of the VT99; but the leaflet ...

... implies the most limited of limited stops.

So it would have been Fast! Coaches ran every hour seven days a week.

Of course Virgin did not operate the coaches; that was down to their partner Stagecoach ...

... who had a 49% share in Virgin's rail operations anyway.

Slowly but surely the train link buses either just fizzled out or were taken  over by the bus operator (Stagecoach) in their own right. The VT99 became Stagecoach 99 and for a time it was operated with boundless enthusiasm and branded coaches.

As the years ticked inexorably by, even that enthusiasm faded and late you would, more than likely, find yourself on a very ordinary (and probably elderly) single decker.

To make the service LESS prestigious, Stagecoach started adding extra stops in the Milton Keynes City area. These varied over the years and which variant came in which order has done fbb's head in!

So here is just a sample in no particular order.

via Kingston Industry and ...

... Simpson Close.

In case you didn't know, Simpson Close is the stop after leaving the M1 at Luton ...

... here on the left!

Bet there were queues for the 99 there!

Kingston and Simpson Close stops renamed.

Now via Eagle Farm Amazon

And what a joy and delight that is!

Actually , the buses stop right outside B&M with Amazon just down the road.

But we wouldn't want constancy, would we? So the 99 becomes the MK1 (which readers will, of course, remember was the very first MK numbered bus route running from Stony Stratford to Bletchley along the old A5.)

Bus watchers found the MK1 development more than usually crazy, so crazy that Roger French wrote a whole blog about it!

Ir is an arbitrary joining of a route from Bedford to Luton Airport with what used to be the 99 from Milton Keynes to Luton Airport. 

fbb will not attempt to tackle the Bedford side of the "V" but can report that the Milton Keynes side is unchanged in route and stops.

What a nice ride of two hours and fifty minutes from Bedford to MK - let's hope no innocent abroad decides to take it! The X5 takes just under 60 minutes so, whatever you do, don't get on the wring bus in Bedford unless you really want to!

But the MK1 takes 57 minutes from station to station. Not at all bad.

Arriva's new X1 takes 1 hour and 15 minutes from station to station.

X1 Timetables

Our first journey leaving Milton Keynes is at 04:45 on weekdays and 06:00 on Saturdays. Coaches run hourly from Milton Keynes Rail Station to Luton Interchange between 08:45 and 18:45, Monday to Friday. And between 07:45 and 18:45 on Saturdays.  

The X1 bumbles via Dunstable, hence the extra runnng time. Attractive, eh?

Tickets

Single fares are still available for £2. But our season tickets can offer even better value for regular travellers with an Adult Annual Orbit ticket working out to £2.95 a day for unlimited travel in the Orbit region. To see all our ticket options visit here  

Onward travel

Customers can get a free transfer to London Luton Airport.

  

Simply let your X1 driver know you want to go to Luton Airport. They’ll issue you a ticket for onward travel. Then connect at Luton Interchange and show your ticket to the driver on services A, F70, F77 or 100.

Helpfully (?) The X1 does NOT run to the airport but you may travel on other Arriva buses to meet up with your flight for free; but adding even more time to your journey. (meet for free not fly for free!!

And the map?

There isn't one! The above link takes you back to the timetable.

Basket Case is a horror movie from 1982.

fbb had to hide behind the sofa as the trailer was so scary!

Arriva's X1 would appear to be a similar horror story from 2024. fbb predicts its demise before Christmas.

 Next ???? blog : Saturday 20h July 

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 

Mysteries Manifesting At Millsands (4)

And There's More Near Millsands

Around 20 years ago, the area to the west of Millsands was mainly warehouse businesses butt for most of the 20th century it had been small industrial manufacturing companies, eg Dixons. 

The first bit of development was the building of Sheffield's new Crown Court building (above aerial shot, bottom left). This stood on a road called West Bar which runs across the bottom of the above view.

Historically, this was narrow inner city clutter, boty residential and retail.

Of course by the mid 1900s auch property was long-since condemned and demolished and the opportunity was later taken to widen West Bat with two lanes in each direction.

Fashions and traffic management change over the years and the land on the right was further cleared for the aforementioned courts building.

But having widened the road, the later decision was taken to narrow it! It is now just one lane in each direction ...

... plus greenery. The reason that the road could be narrowed is the completion of the northern bit of Sheffield long-time-a-coming inner ring road (map below in RED).

It was planning in 1945 and still isn't finished on the south east side of the city centre!

One other things changes and that is district names. Sheffield, for example, took the name of a former island in the River Don and gave it to a museum and later to a much expanded district.

Thus it is that the rough isosceles triangle of land between Corporation Street, Bridge Street and West Bar ...

... now has a district name (or maybe it might be a "quarter"?).

It is called - ahem - West Bar! We have already had a glimpse of the district in preparation when looking for today's Love Street ...

... but things have moved on since Streetview gingerly tootled down Bridge Street. This is a more recent view of the junction of Corporation Street and Bridge Street, i.e. the north of the development.

This is what those two blocks will look like; actually probably do look  like today!

Here is the full site plan:

... and here is what the block, now known as No 1 West Bar, (above the Crown Courts on the site plan) will look like.

But the good news is that the development will be all touchy-feely and cosy whilst saving the planet.

It announced that, wowsers, 1 West Bar will have a "green active ravel plan". That usually means "bike racks" nut it almost certainly doesn't mean a well considered bus travel plan.

The only bus stops serving this vast development are the aforementioned Millsands with the 83 bus TO city only and the SC2 from and to.

Outside the courts building there are frequent buses via Hillsborough outbound and inbound to the city and beyond.

Buses from both stops will get you to the main shopping areas and the railway station. 

There are no buses on Corporation Street and we have already seen that the 83 is of use only into town with the outward route being significantly further away.

You would guess that most will have to walk unless something very different is created.

It is called "Planning For Public Transport NOT the Car"; and doesn't seem to have happened in this case.

Ideally there should be a turning circle for "something" bang in the middle at that "green" green space called West Bar Square.. You could easily run an upgraded SC2 into there.

There will need to be access there for all the bars and cafes that will be provided as part of the development.

Of course?

The Sheffield Connect 2 ...

... might then need bigger buses.

The mean green green machines are very nice, thank you, but inadequate for, say a lunch time rush from West Bar Square into the city centre to stock up with Prosecco and trendy nibbles!

14 seats?

No, 16 - there's and extra two with a splendid view of the panel behind the driver's seat.

Depressing Destructive News

The damage was to the driver's side front corner and some of the side paneling.

The debris was left at the site of a collision with another vehicle at about 0530 on Monday last.

A second vehicle was entered but not, apparently, driven away. Because of the damage and the police investigation, the SC1 frequency has been reduced from every 7/8 mins to every 10 with an apology from the South Pennine manager.

The SC2 to Millsands remain at every 20 minutes!

An fbb Bludner

The new bridge allowing access to Millsands from Nursery Street did NOT replace the "Iron Bridge" as was illustrated yesterday

The original bridge can be seen at the junction of Corporations Street and Nursery Street as pictured below.  It is, however still fenced off!

The old footbridge is upper left on the map below amidst the road junction ...

... the new bridge is lower right.

fbb punished himself by having only one choccy biccy instead of two with his afternoon cuppa yesterday - such sacrifice in the face of adversity!

 Next Cobo Boco Loco blog : Friday 19th April