Bus Travel : Enter A confusing World

Hard For High Green

High Green is a large residential area of Sheffield, developed as a small "suburb" of Chapeltown from the mid 1960s, but now a substantial residential ommeunitty. Like many such areas, it lacks local facilities so most residents would need to travel to Chapeltown for much of what they might need and, possibly, for evening socialising. And there are plenty of houses in High Green.

In the silly days of competition, both First and Stagecoach ran reasonably frequent services from Sheffield up the hill from Chapeltown. Under the Sheffield Bus Partnership for Cutting Services these were merged into a "joint" 1 and 1a combo with First going no further than Chapeltown leaving Stagecoach with the business from the estate. It warranted (apparently) a half hourly evening service.

From High Green the through service finished early, but there were later buses from the estate running back to the Stagecoach depot just south of Chapeltown. On the whole it was not too bad.

Until now, that is.

Stagecoach have cancelled the whole of the evening service! It has been replaced with a tender won by First; and here (pause for excited bus watcher anticipation) is the current evening service.

Yep, just two buses and it is equally minimalist in the other direction. Clearly that sort of offering is not going to encourage "going out" and in a few months (?) the total withdrawal of the evening service seems inevitable.

Of course, there are plenty of cars and car parking places ...

... although High Green would not be described as a high car ownership area of the city.

And, in case you suspect fbb of exaggeration, there is nothing else in the evenings, except foot, bike or taxi; none of which is ideal for pocket or human stability after a good night out!

Meanwhile, down south ...

Hertfordshire Happiness
FOUR significant new bus services have started over recent months. These are NOT like the one-bus-in-steam manifestations of Oxfordshire's generous bounty for the bus as reviewed in a recent blog ...

... where readers may remember the quality of the vehicle provided by Red Rose!

The Hertfordshire novelties are proper hourly bus routes providing  new services, mainly to communities that already had a bus service! They are paid for with money from HMG (that's money from us) under the Bus Service Improvement Plan. Here is Roger's intro.

In what was a mysterious and illogical lottery, some counties were given a huge bad of gold, whereas others got not a bean. South Yorkshire got nowt! Hertfordshire got oodles and it is the new services there that fbb will examine.

Needless to say, Roger French has already been there and fbb will gratefully rely on his earlier impressions for the first of these new routes introduced earlier in the year.

When Rog rode, there was no roadside information, no printed information, no updated map and the main stop in Stevenage was closed!

The 907 bus was, however, stopping there but you would never know! But, be reasonable, it was the first week of operation and you wouldn't expect either the operator or the county to be rushing to promote their brand new shiny three-bus service. That would be asking too much!

But the 907 has now appeared on the county's excellent network map, so fbb can work out where it goes.

Ot can he?

The map ...

... shows that plenty of buses serve the Lister Hospital in Stevenage ...

... but it would appear that only the new 907 ventures into Saintsbury's.

Is that a shelter under those trees?  The Stevenage local map tells us more.

We know from Roger's blog that the 907 stops outside the bus station on the main road at the railway station if you are going to Saintsbury's or Hospital but at stand K IN the bus station for far distant parts!. Either way there are plenty of local buses to/from  both termini,

So off we jolly well go to Bragbury End and (maybe?) Watton at Stone.

The Stevenage local map shows service SB18 along the main Hertford Road to Bagbury End, a detail not included on the full network map.

The SB18 and the 907 provide two buses an hour along this thoroughfare.

At Watton at Stone, the 907 uses the by pass except for one journey southbound and. oddly, THREE journeys northbound which call at the station. Then its a nip down the main road via Tonwell ...

... also served by the 383/384. These are a motley collection of bits and bobs ...

... and cartographically confusing. 

Surely this is simply a daft way to illustrate a bus route?

Users will be glad of the new, hourly, 907!

Cartographically (again!), it is harder to know where at Ware the 907 goes.

There is, for example, no stop shown at Hertford bus station!

To really understand, fbb has turned to the computer generated map on the Intalink web site and hoofed up the enlargement,

So that tells us that the bus serves all stops along the main road between Ware and Hertford then runs almost non stop for quite a while. 

The exception is a stop at Pinehurst. Although other services wiggle round this new-build estate, the 907 only calls at the edge doing a U turn at an "entry" roundabout ...

... before continuing non stop to Hoddesdon.

There are plenty of buses south from Hoddesdon ...

Including the Central Connect 410 ...

... which is copied by the 907. Like the 907, the 410 runs hourly and, like the 907 does not go to Cheshunt! It really is annoying when timetable compilers and presenters strive to confuse the user.

Brookfield Centre ...

... includes a hyper Tesco on the edge of Cheshunt. 907s (and 410s) do not  make it to the town centre. So why call it Cheshunt?

So we can conclude, as did Roger French, that the 907 serves no new communities - everywhere on the route already has a bus service. There are some frequency improvements on various sections of the route together with some additional longer links to shopping facilities.

The only conceptual improvement is between Hertford and Hoddesdon where the 907 runs almost non stop.

... but, centre to centre, the 641 (Uno who!) is one minute quicker!

Drat that diversion via Pinehurst; but, at least, the 907 serves a bit more of Hoddesdon.

As fbb seems to be saying again and again, it will be "interesting" to see what happens when HMG's bag of financial support becomes, inevitably, empty.

Perhaps buses will be re-nationalised before then?

Hopefully, the rest of the big route additions to the Hertfordshire network will be easier to follow?

 Next Intalink blog : Friday 24th November 

Cardiff Ciutbacks Considered (3)

Bemused By Buses In Barry

Once the home of Western Welsh Transport (later National Welsh and, yes, it is confusing), with a depot in the town, fbb seems to remember that post deregulation an expansionist Cardiff Bus created a first strike onslaught on the town's bus network. Whatever the history,hb Barty and neighbouring Penarth are now very much orange territory.

The National bus company, inevitably, ran minibuses.

They made sure everybody knew!

Didn't National Welsh go spectacularly bust?

The Bus Depot is now the home to the Cardiff preservation group ...

... and they've got a  Bustler!

The preserved South Wales bus at the head of this blog is at the stop outside the depot. 

Commercially, Cardiff Bus ultimately won the Battle of Barry, decisively.

In Barry, the forthcoming changes are, arguably, less drastic than in Cardiff itself. Indeed he main drag ...

... 92, 93 and 94  via Penarth, are unchanged in frequency ...

... and, despite the horror of the 20 mph speed limit, are speeded up by two whole minutes.

Then there is the 95/95A

This basically half hourly service via Dinas Powys ...

... becomes a simplified half hourly with no variations and no extensions to Heath Hospital. The 95 no longer runs to Barry Island of former fantastic funfair fame.

The 96/96A tuns via Wenvoe as 96 ...

... with the 96A being an evening variant. The revised route is, once again, simply the 96.

Ancients like fbb will remember the name Wenvoe as one of the TV transmitters for good old 405 line BBC. It opened in 1952 ...

... and was replaced in 1980.

Maybe we should now have a current (until 3rd Sept) map.

Which leaves the 97 and 98 ...

... best thought of as Barry locals, not running through to Cardiff. The 97 wiggles to Gibbons Down with alternate journeys going "the other way round" offering a bus every half an hour to equidistant points on the loop.

On Saturdays, only the 97A runs.

The 98, shown here for both directions in close proximity ...

... gives up early in the afternoon and runs not at all on Saturdays,

Now look at a close-up on the new network map from Sunday onwards.

The 97, 97A and 98 are replaced by B1 and B2.

B1 and B2 each run hourly so Gibbons Down retains its half hourly headway! Clever, eh?

Highlight Park now has a "proper" hourly service Monday yo Friday but only the B2 runs on Saturdays, similar to the 97 before it; but now only hourly to the estate.

Barry Island also has its service halved and provides no link from Cardiff to the fun factory as was.

Under the circumstances, fbb must congratulate Cardiff Bus. Broadly all Barryites keep their bus service with only minor reductions and, hopefully some costs have been squeezed out of the teetering budget.

Of course none of this would have been necessary if Cardiff Bus were not trying to balance its books. A franchise deal would allow better cross fertilisation between profitable city routes and socially desirable marginal services.

But, worry not in the medium term. If the Welsh Government takes over responsibility for the buses as well as the trains, taxes can rise, fares can drop and bus services will be secure for ever and a day.

Hmmm?

A good day out?

P.S. fbb always thought that the doomed National Welsh livery was one of the better privatised NBC efforts; and just that little bit "different".

Tomorrow we are going here ...

... and sampling its buses. It is a franchised network.

 Next Cross-Channel blog : Thursday 31st August