Mrs fbb's Prayer-full Progress ...

... when Public Transport doesn't Behave.

'Twas just over a week ago, Thursday 13th October [13th? No, not really; we Christians don't have anything to do with superstitions!] when Mrs fbb set off for a Women's Prayer and Bible Study day in Basingstoke.

Standard procedure is for fbb to kiss-and-ride to Ryde Pier Head, thence Wightlink to Portsmouth Harbour, thence South West Trains to Basingstoke. Simple.

Bad news! It wasn't simple. Mrs fbb was scheduled on the 0710 departure on the "Fast Cat" ...

... but at the entrance to Ryde's half-mile-long pier was a notice cancelling the sailing "due to technical reasons". Later investigations revealed that the first boat of the day had caught fire; well, not the boat, but the engine. The fire had been extinguished by the crew before the fire brigade arrived but the boat was well and truly busted.

The 0747 would, of course miss the next connection in Portsmouth, so; potentially, at least an hour late for the knees up. As fbb approached Ryde Pier Head at 0700 he espied the dead ferry parked; but, mysteriously, a very live one just approaching.

Good news! It turned out that this was the 0647 running about 15 minutes late.

Bad news! The queue was enormous, being an amalgam of delayed 0647 passengers and pitifully hopeful cancelled 0710 passengers. Ferries don't like standing passengers (apparently?) so, would she get on? Would it be the next boat, the 0747 still running late, and thus a possible TWO hours late at Basingstoke.

Good news! She was about the last on.

The "do" was here at ...

... with its adjacent bus stops ...

on the Stagecoach "Jazz 1" route.

This service runs every 12 minutes to Brighton Hill ...

 

... from the bus station, about 5 minutes walk from the train. Or, Mrs fbb could have caught the "Jazz 2" from outside the station (Stop S11) ...

... with a 5 minute walk at Brighton Hill. You pays your money and takes your choice; but only if you know the secret code of public transport information.

Sadly, the organisers of the day had not deemed it necessary to provide public transport information, so the three arrivals by train were actually picked up by car.

But all was well that ended well.

Bad news! It wasn't. Mrs fbb's train home was cancelled "due to technical reasons"; it was in a coma in a siding at Basingstoke Station, as busted as the morning's ferry. And so it all started again.

More bad news! Mrs fbb would have even missed the next train because, although there was an apology for the cancellation and a "next train to Portsmouth" announcement, nobody bothered to tell anyone that the next Portsmouth train would leave from a different platform. By the time it was announced, Mrs fbb's companion, registered disabled, would never have struggled through the underpass in time.

Good news! Mrs fbb had the sense to ask [have a good house point : fbb], and a station person looked it up in her book and offered the necessary directions.

Good news! There was a caff and, blissfully, plenty of seats on the revised platform.

Bad news! Connections missed, anticipated lengthy waits for the reduced boat service and a late arrival in the ever loving arms if fbb (?).

Good news! Wightlink had, by then, hired in Mark Rayment's "Ali Cat" [jolly jocular name; Ali(son) is MR's daughter.] to fill the peak hour gaps.

Good News! A good Bible Study about disabled Mephibosheth [try pronouncing that with loose false teeth! Try pronouncing it with a good set!], OT character and descendant of King Saul . King David blessed and cared for him, despite his disability and despite the fact that Saul had tried to murder David. There's a lesson for us all there.

Good News! fbb couldn't resist adding a picture of Basingstoke Station when Merchant Navy and Battle of Britain "spam cans" ruled the main lines. Ahh, blissful memories.

Bad News! Public transport can be great when it works. Sadly, and all-too-often, little things go wrong (a minor engine fire on a boat, and a busted floggle-toggle in a train) and our disintegrated system can so easily forget that many passengers will be confused and disorientated.

They need extra care and a much better standard of information.

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P.S. Re: yesterday's blog on Chaos at Kingsthorpe (read again).

The Chronicle and Echo, local rag for Northampton, has letters

complaining about motorists using the village and

housing estates to "rat run" round the chaos.

Now who would have thought such a thing would happen?
***********

 

First have introduced revised timetables for their

Kingsthorpe routes starting tomorrow, 23rd.
Printed leaflets? You must be joking! 

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Next blog : due Sunday October 23rd    

Money, Time & Effort Wasted!

fbb is appealing!

Investigating the revised service 53 from Sheffield to Mansfield gives fbb the opportunity to look at how public transport information is processed.

Bus companies are required, by law, to submit "registrations" for "local services" to the Traffic Commissioners eight weeks before the service starts. For a view on what a "registration" is, see "how to Save Money" (read again). So the revised timetable, incorporating the withdrawal of evening and Sunday journeys should have arrived before 5th September. Unless Stagecoach is very casual, the structure of the service would have been pretty-well fixed well before that.

The registration was officially published in "Notices and Proceedings" on 23rd September, having missed the 9th September issue ...

... but "N&P" really only tells you that something is happening but not exactly what. Nevertheless, Stagecoach is obliged to send copies of the timetable etc. to all local authorities through which the route passes, in this case Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. So these folk have eight weeks to do something about publishing a revised timetable if they wish to do so.

It is worth remembering that the counties have no obligation to publish any timetables at all; indeed neither has the bus company any legal requirement other than to send the details off as indicated above. Incredibly, a bus company does not have to tell Joe Public when its buses will run!

So how do these various organisations perform?

Traveline East Midlands got it wrong at first ...

... but were quick to correct it. The full timetable change was in place in good time but suffers from the inability of the "system" to separate out old and new times. Very messy and difficult to follow. See the full version (here)

Derbyshire  went live with the evening and Sunday 53A change, then published a "2nd edition" with the Monday to Saturday daytime alterations. It is the ONLY version to include the useful connecting times for Sheffield and Mansfield when these are unserved by through journeys. Well done fellas; you can read it in full (here).

 

South Yorkshire's leaflet popped up on line, also in good time. It has a map (of sorts) and a typically weird description of the route. IF these two failings could be sorted out and IF connections were added it COULD be the best offer of all. Have a gander (here).  

Traveline Yorkshire doesn't provide full timetables although the data is in their system. You are limited to little bits like the example (here). The site does link to South Yorkshire's timetable set, so, once this is all in place, you can get the info.

Now things become less happy!

Nottinghamshire was still showing a timetable from 2010 with a hourly bus between Mansfield and Sheffield. The service went two-hourly from April 1011.  With just less than a week to go to the latest change you can check (here).

Astoundingly, in parallel with Nottinghamshire, Stagecoach, operator of the Monday to Saturday daytime service was still showing the old HOURLY 2010 times with (on Friday 21st October) not a word about either the April 2011 or the October 2011 revisions. (Here) the current timetable isn't.

T M Travel, operator of the new evening and Sunday 53A remain equally silent, but even if they did give advance notice it would only be a link to either South Yorkshire or Derbyshire. Their paltry effort is (here).

Can you believe that Stagecoach,  the company that runs the main service, can't even get the right current timetable on-line? Unbelievable!

Can you believe that Traveline can't get its revised data to work correctly?

Look at that 1804/1807 connection. Is it "official"? Will the 53A wait? You would hope so, or it's two and a half hours in sunny Bolsover. This is how traveline doesn't cope with the minimal 3 minute connection time shown above:-

Despite the definite delights of a dubious Derbyshire diversion, fbb would really prefer to arrive in Eckington at 1837 rather than 1921.

But the crunch question is this ...

There are many people, in headless chicken mode, desperately pushing bits and bytes into their confusers  all over the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. There are lads and lasses at Stagecoach, Traveline East Midlands, Traveline Yorkshire, T M Travel, Derbyshire, South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire; all working their little socks off to deliver different timetable layouts, different print styles and, in two cases, hopelessly wrong information.

Money, Time and Effort all wasted.

fbb IS appealing ...

... for ONE single national timetable library, available free to view, to download and to print. It can simply (?) be funded via the registration system and any individual, county or enquiry service can access it within a couple of days of a bus service's registration.

If you, dear blog reader, agree, please forward this blog to your local bus company and/or local authority. In today's straitened times they are all supposed to be saving the pennies.

The xephos people would run it willingly, efficiently and cheaply, wouldn't they? 

Next blog : due Saturday October 22nd

Chaos and Confusion ...

at Kingsthorpe

Kingsthorpe is in Spolhoe Hundred, 2 miles north of Northampton. It had, in 1831, a population of 1344. There is a town hall in the village for the meeting of the trustees of the manor, which is a royal demesne, held in trust for the benefit of the townsmen; there are also a dissenting meeting-house, and some trifling remains of a former hospital or almshouse, incorporated in the walls of cottages of later erection. There are considerable stone-quarries, extensive lime-works, and a brick-kiln in the parish, in which a considerable number of labourers are employed. The church is spacious, partly of Norman character, partly in the later styles; it consists of a nave, north and south aisles with chapels, and a lofty western tower and spire.

 

Thus was the Northampton village described in 1839. But what of Kingsthorpe today?

Apart from being the birthplace of the late Joan Hickson ...

 

... arguably the best of the many manifestations of Miss Marple, the unsuspecting reader might revel in the ... 

... idyllic Norman Church ...

... and quaint cottages clustered round the village green.

But today, in the real world, the main roads will look like this! 

Whereas, except at peak times, the junction should look like this.

 

Alan, our Northampton correspondent writes:- 

Over the last forty or so years there has been a great amount of development on the north side of Northampton including a large number of houses, a large industrial estate and a university campus. Any traffic wishing to go to or from the west or Northampton town centre in the south has to pass through one short section of road in Kingsthorpe. There is no viable diversionary route despite there being a nearby parallel area of derelict railway land on which a relief road could have been built or perhaps something even more exciting such as a misguided busway or an urban light rapid transit system. [That's what we used to call a tram: management speak golden rule, never use one short word if three or four longer ones are available.] Result; significant traffic congestion at busy times.

May Gurney ...

 

... the nice girl who looks after the roads in Northamptonshire and also, once a month, organises the tea and biscuits for the council's Libraries, Public Baths and Cemeteries sub-committee (?) has decided that she is going to "improve" this piece of road.

May does not hurry so she is taking six months until Christmas to do the job. Result really really awful traffic congestion at all times.

Stagecoach service X7 provides a useful link for anyone using public transport to travel between Northampton, the East Midlands and the whole of North and Eastern England. It normally takes 80 minutes to travel from Greyfriars Bus Station in Northampton to St. Margaret's Bus Station in Leicester ...

... so three buses were needed to provide an hourly frequency. However such have been the delays caused by May digging up the road that a revised timetable starts on Sunday October 16th. The journey time is now 100 minutes

with between 18 and 23 minutes allowed for the two miles from Northampton Bus Station to Kingsthorpe Shopping Centre and an extra bus is needed. Higher costs? Unviable service? Timetable cuts? Eventual withdrawal of service?

The road works also delay First Northampton local services 4 and 4A.

The Firstbus dinosaur is a large slow moving beast but the message from the tail in Northampton to the brain in Chelmsford is on its way and First has excelled itself and put a man with a clip board in the bus station! But only for three of the six days a week that there is a problem!

fbb comments: Who would run a bus service under these conditions? Of course, road improvements are needed and they will often (always?) cause disruption. But with no long term transport policy in GB, the negative consequences of a lack of planning, a lack of forethought and a lack of money may have potentially destructive results in the longer term.

Do we, as a nation, want to live with every increasing congestion or do we actually want to encourage public transport? Of course, we can all be guilty of wanting to do something as long as it's the other chap who changes, not us.

Next blog : due Friday October 21st  

Oscar Oversees Optio

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New readers, see
(read again) "Optio Red Revealed"
(read again) "Oh! Oh! Optio Orange"
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Always willing to help with Good Advice

Oscar Fitch-Gates [O] works for South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive. He is a senior information officer in the D.O.O.M. section, [that's the Department Of Obfuscation Management].

At Oscar's request, fbb has fitted him with a hidden microphone, transmitting his conversations back to fbb HQ. This is a summarised excerpt from a conversation, logged on November 1st 2011, with Sam Ranga (from India) [S], a lab assistant at Sheffield University and living in Woodhouse; whom Oscar met outside the Co-op.

November 1st? It would appear that time travel is now possible in South Yorkshire.

S   [similar to Peter Sellers' in "Goodness Gracious Me"] I am wishing to travel on your excellent buses to the most excellent University of Sheffield. I am wanting to pay little money. Please, kind sir, can you offer wise advice.

O  [in a slightly squeaky nasal voice, stereotypically] Well, the single fare is £1.30 but we do have some very useful cost-saving deals available. Which bus route would you intend to use?

S  I am noticing that I can catch a 22, a 25, a 25A, a 30, a 52 or a 123; but of these only the 30, the 52 and the 123 go near to the University.

click to see a large version

sadly neither Oscar nor Sam has access to such a map 

  

O  Yes. The 123 is quicker at 35 minutes but only runs every half an hour; whereas the 52 runs every 10 minutes but takes 5 minutes longer. The 52 runs in the evenings and on Sundays but the 123 only goes as far as the City centre at these times. The 30, of course, does not go via Western Bank so you would have to walk from Glossop Road.

S  I may choose, then; whichever bus arrives first, I could travel upon it.

O  Yes you could.  But your choice has fares implications.

S  I do not understand with full completeness. What are these "fares implications"?

O  Well, if you travel on the 52 you can buy an Optio Red ...

... weekly ticket for £9 which equates to only £1.80 a day for five days travel to work; and you can use it for other trips if you wish.

S  So, I think, tripping on the 30 or the 123 if they arrive firstly at my stop.

O  Actually, erm, no. Optio Red is only valid on the 52. You would have to buy an Optio Orange ticket to use the 123.

S  So my Optio Orange ticket could take me to the City on buses with numbers 22, 25, 25A and 30 and I could walk to the University? I see your kind company offers flexibility and choice.

O  Actually, erm, no.  You would need a Stagecoach weekly ticket for the 25 and a First weekly ticket for the 22, 25A and 30 and they are more expensive than the Optio ticket. A ticket for all Stagecoach routes in Sheffield is £10.50 for a week ...

... and if you wanted to use the tram at any time, the price would be £12.

 First Bus have a similar product but it costs £17.50.

S  Perhaps I am misunderstanding the meaning of your words "flexibility" and "choice"? And, for example, when I have bought my First bus ticket, what happens when I wish to purchase a second one? Will it be different again?

O  [slightly testily, losing patience] The Optio ticket is flexible because you can use it on both companies' buses. First Bus runs a 52 bus, so does Stagecoach.

S   This sounds better already. So I could catch a First bus company 52 bus from the University back to the extremely co-operative shop here at Woodhouse.

O  Actually, erm, no. First's service 52 runs to a different part of Woodhouse.

S   This gives much confusion. There are two Wooden Houses in Sheffield?

O  [backing away hurriedly] If you require total flexibility, you could buy a Travelmaster network ticket which is valid on everything; but it is, naturally, much more expensive. 

S  So I could travel with only a little flexibility on a Red Ticket for £9, or perhaps with less flexibility on an Orange ticket for much the same amount of pounds, or if I decide which lovely bus company to use, exclusively to boot, I could pay £10.50 or even £17.50. But if I require really flexible flexibility I must pay £23.90?

O  [shiftily] Well, yes, I would be forced, reluctantly, to agree.

S  I am muchly confused by your bus fares; flexibly flexible £23.90 is highly expensive compared with feebly flexible £9 ...

... I think I will need to choose some really flexible flexibility.

O   [triumphantly] Then Travelmaster is for you! 

P   But alas no, kind sir; I shall purchase a motor car with both my first and my second hand ...

... that is, assuredly, the most utterly and complete flexibility, is it not? .... 

But, mysteriously, Oscar has suddenly rushed off to buy some aspirins in the Co-op. 

In recording this future conversation, fbb wishes to stress that there are no racially insulting implications implied or intended in choosing Sam Ranga's little anagramatic chat.

The episode does, however, serve to show that travel choices, with fares options, are far too complex for an innocent enquirer. In most European cities and even some in UK there are universal day, weekly and monthly fares at sensible prices. It is a sadness of history and commercial "freedom" that impedes such a simple product in Sheffield.

The final word : There will  be 24 (that's twenty-four!) different One-Day tickets on sale in South Yorkshire from 30th October 2011, ranging from £3 to £10.50.

Next blog : due Thursday October 20th  

Optio Red Revealed

More cosy joint working?

News is filtering slowly into Travel South Yorkshire's web site of the next stage (the final stage?) in the happy huggy agreement between First and Stagecoach in Sheffield. Optio Orange was a significant step forward in co-ordination with inter-available ticketing on a whole heap of services to the Mosborough district, and joint operation of service 120 through to Crimicar Lane.

By comparison, Optio Red is decidedly underwhelming.

Put at its most basic, from 30th October, the service 52 operator-specific day and weekly tickets have been stuck together with a bit of sellotape and called Optio Red.

 

The previously-baffling separate timetables for First's 52 and Stagecoach's 52 have been merged into one, but remain less than clear ...

... because the opportunity has been missed to clarify what goes where in Woodhouse. The two operators' 52s go to different Woodhouse termini via different routes; they go in opposite directions through Badger Road estate on their way into City and the timetable implies a significant difference between two Woodhouse station stops.

There isn't one, they are next to each other.

The map in the printed timetable leaflet helpfully attempts to show the different routes ...

 

... but, as usual, with no road names as a definitive guide. And with the name "Woodhouse" in an unhelpful place! That's (sort of) at Woodhouse Mill, TSY. The similar map in the Optio Red leaflet is actually better, showing key road names, despite very poor quality on-line reproduction ...

... a telling comment on the Kartor (Swedish) software? 

And that's it for Optio red (Yawn!)

The headline news, but confusingly outside of the Optio scheme, and with specially expensive fares, is of Sheffield's first EVER all night service; Friday night and into Saturday morning then Saturday night and Sunday morning: but every 30 minutes. Not quite up to London's 24/7 services but still a first for Sheffield.

fbb wonders how many will try to use their Optio ticket on the night service; the restriction is just a tiny little note at the foot of the N52 times:-

For the pedantic, Sheffield used to have late night buses and early morning buses, and the gap between the two blocks of service was quite small, but routes were never as frequent as every 30 minutes.

T M Travel had a bash at three night services a short while back, but TSY did not print any publicity, so, surprisingly, they were not a huge success.

Of course, only TSY's publicity machine could mess up the timetable so spectacularly well. According to the leaflet ...

... the N52 follows a different route through the City!

N52 omits stops at "Attercliffe"

Actually 12 O'Clock Court (that's what "12 O Clock Ct" means in the above table) ...

 

... isn't at Attercliffe, anyway, nowhere near. The best "traditional" Sheffield descriptor would be Havelock Norfolk Bridge [corrected from a comment, senior moment again!], although even that name may have dropped from regular usage over the years.

This tram is almost at the site of "12 O'Clock junction", where Savile Street joins Attercliffe Road. The "junction", where the Brightside tram route once left the routes to Tinsley and Handsworth, took its name from a long demolished pub at the apex of the two roads [by the "V" of Savile Street, below: 1960 map].

It's a huge one-way system now.

 

With Wicker Arches just round the corner in the background it's certainly some considerable distance from Attercliffe. Even dafter, Google Maps thinks it's in Burngreave. fbb wonders who told them that piece of nonsense. But to continue with N52 ...

N52 stops on Waingate whereas the 52 doesn't

N52 omits the busy central stop in Sheffield High Street

N52 stops on West Street whereas the 52 doesn't

All 100% wrong!   According to the maps in the leaflet the N52 has exactly the same stops as the daytine 52; this is further confirmed by Traveline.

Apart from that, TSY have got it about right (?); assuming that you realise that Friday N52 journeys are actually Saturday journeys and Saturday N52 journeys are actually running on Sundays. And while we're at it, please note data management people, Kelham Island is NOWHERE NEAR the Wicker.

It is always best, TSY, to have separate tables for night services, then potential confusion can be mitigated; best also to avoid a mix-up with Optio Red ticket offers.

But the biggest bludner with Optio Red 52 is at Woodhouse village where it collides, embarrassingly, frustratingly, but hopefiully not literally (?), with Optio Orange's service 123. But that's another, much more entertaining, story. Log on tomorrow for a wry comment or two.
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blogging background about Woodhouse in Sheffield
(read again) A Lesson for Little David
(read again) A Lesson for Little David (continued)
(read again) The Madhouse at Woodhouse [1]
(read again) The Madhouse at Woodhouse [2]
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Next blog : due Wedesday October 19th