Studying at St Andrews [4]

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An anonymous blog commentator upbraided fbb for moaning about overbearing security in bus offices compared with "the good old days". "Have you never heard of crime and terrorism?", he challenged. Of course fbb has, but yesterdays "Peace Report" shows that such horrors are significantly reduced in the UK.

What has increased, of course, is 24 hour "rolling news" which always reacts spectacularly to the rare horrors, leading to an increase in mis-placed paranoia. Just for the record, paedophilia has not increased at all since records began, so our children are no more at risk from attacks from "funny men" than they ever have been. Despite increases in traffic they (and we) are no more at risk on the roads.

So why do we panic?

Or is the reduction of risk a consequence of heightened paranoia?

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In less contentious vein, fbb continues his delve into the dynamics of local buses in St Andrews, Fife.

All is revealed on fbb's redrawn version of this Fife Council map ...

... but not quite! So lets start with the 99s themselves, but using the fbb redraw of Fife's map as a basis.

99A? Pretty straightforward, eh? A large clockwise one way loop, out via Town and St Mary Street, wiggling via Tom Morris Drive and Morrisons and back via Bogward.

Tom Morris Drive?

Thomas Mitchell Morris, Sr. (16 June 1821 to 24 May 1908), otherwise known as Old Tom Morris, was a pioneer of professional golf.

He was born in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, the "home of golf" and location of the St Andrews Links, and died there as well. His son was Tom Morris, Jr. (died 1875), best known as "Young Tom Morris."

A season timetable reader might now be looking for the route in the opposite direction. But what makes St Andrews interesting (or impossible!) is that there isn't one! So we move on:-

The 99B runs via the Town Centre, then Langlands Road which is totally ignored on the Fife map. Looping round via Morrisons, the bus return to town via St Mary Street.

The 99C rusn out via Bridge Street and the Botanic Gardens on Canongate ...

then runs to the Bogward roundabout and back before returning to the Bus Station on the same route as a 99B. This means that there are no buses from town direct to Kilrymont

Finally, the 99D nips out of the bus station, up to the town centre and back, then off to Boward sort-of direct.

Continuing via the inevitable Morrisons and Tom Morris Drive, it re-enters town via Bridge Street as the outward 99C.

Most roads get at least two buses an hour, one in each direction, but often at uneven intervals. Bogward gets 3, Morrisons and the Hospital get 4 an hour and Langlands Road, Lamond Drive and Kilrymont are unidirectional. fbb presumes that Stagecoach have done their homework and that this is really the best way to serve the town; BUT it is not an easy network to understand. Would Stagecoach earn more pennies if the routes were simpler? Are they partly tendered by Fife Council?

For the record, in the evenings theres is only an hourly 99A and 99D and these two stalwarts are joined by an hourly 99C during Sunday daytimes.

Of course, fbb has ignored the non-Stagecoach 92 ...

... which runs from Tayport sporadically to St Andrews then via Longlands Road to the Hospital ...

... again not shown correctly on the Fife map.

And he has ignored the Stagecoach 92 which is quite different.

This is not on the Fife map because it doesn't run from Leuchars which is where the diagram is displayed. Now how wonderfully helpful is that! Two completely different 92s.

There is a 94 on the Fife map, shown as serving the hospital; but fbb can find no journeys on any timetable except for some school oddments which don't appear to serve the hospital

Then there's the 9B, again operated by Moffatt and Williamson:-

It does yet another version of a Morrisons loop, giving the unidirectional Lamond Drive residents their direct service back to town. And, of course, the 9B doesn't enter the dragon-infested world of the bus station; that's Stagecoach territory, pardner! And, of course, the 9B is not on any map.

Surely there is an opportunity to tidy things up here, to make it easier for a potential new customer to understand and, hopefully to generate a modicum of extra moolah.

But, to recover from an aching brain, let us gaze lovingly on a magnificent Stagecoach vehicle on one of the Fife Express services that so successfully criss-cross the Kingdom.

It is about to turn left into the bus station. Before we leave St Andrews, however, a quick tour of its terminus facilities is in order.

 Next Blog :  Friday 26th April 

Studying at St Andrews [3]

When you count you begin with 1, 2, 3,
When you sing you begin with Doh, Ray, Me,
When you go to St Andrew's, it's A, B, C!
And a fourth route, a 99 plus D.

From Leuchars station (red dot top left) to St Andrews bus station, Stagecoach 99 runs every 10 minutes during Monday to Saturday daytimes. Yesterday we saw the this generated 5 separate timetables in the opposite direction (from Leuchars to Dundee) although the route of the 99. 99A, 99B, 99C and 99D were identical. See "Studying at St Andrews [2]" (read again)

Likewise southbound from the station to the bus station in the celebrated golf and university town, all five are the same and, once again, there are five separate timetables; sorry NO timetables, just departure lists.

99 (unadorned) runs just St Andrews (presumably the bus station), but with each of the lettered routes continuing to provide a network of town services; 99A, C and D to Bogward and 99B whisking the shopaholics to Morrisions.

Would that it were as simple as that!

You would need to have an intimate knowledge of the street layout of St Andrews to understand exactly what is happening. With this supreme geographical and cartographic insight a skilled omnibologist might be able to unravel the truth, based on the route descriptions on each separate list.

As a starter, note that the only DIRECT bus to Bogward ...

Bogward stops : 99A, 99C, 99D

... (via Buchanan Gardens, B939) would appear to be 99D**, and that ALL buses (except 99, of course!) serve Morrisons ...

... on John Knox Road, south of the town and just off the continuing A915.

Befuddled students of bus routes have two maps to help them. The stagecoach offering is more-or-less geographically accurate but, arguably, difficult to interpret because, whilst road names are OK, the location of side-road named time points is not shown.

click on the map for a readable enlargement

Where is Madras College on South Street? What or who is "J Anderson" on Scooniehill Road? And is the Madras College on Kilrymont Road something to do with the other one of South Street? A better match-up would help. Maybe our readers are better equipped intellectually than fbb. Have a try!

A click makes the timetable bigger but no less challenging.

Or, a visitor to the town could use the diagram on display at Leuchars station.

This introduces some further un-timetabled mysteries, namely Byre Theatre, Bridge Street, Botanic Gardens and Lamond Drive (west and east, of course). Our patient and inquisitive readers may like to match up the Fife Council diagram with the Stagecoach map; but should allow themselves several cups of black coffee and a tub of tranquilisers. Perhaps, like fbb, they could visit the town, sit in the sun, enjoy a cup of Costa Lot coffee and watch the buses trundle merrily by.

And they would probably be no nearer understanding the network. That's a 99D, by the way, going direct to Bogward, except that it does a loop via the town centre first, not shown in the Fife Council map. So perhaps not quite so direct**.

And, if you do accept fbb's challenge of sorting this out, you might well start by ignoring the 92, 94, 96 and 96A on the Fife map; just stick to the simplicity (!) of the various 99s. And remember (how could you ever forget) that plain unadorned 99s don't go any further than the bus station.

Never one to shrink from danger, your chubby author will reveal the results of his long hours of late night research tomorrow.

** In fact the QUICKEST timetabled bus to Bogward is the 99C because of the time penalty of that tour round the town; but it all depends on where exctly you think "Bogward" is!

 Next bus blog : Thursday 25th April 

Studying at St Andrews [2]

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Just came across this blog from Leon Daniels ...

... very big cheese with London Buses. Even if you don't usually follow his (occasional) blog, this one is worth having a look at.

The link is (here).

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Back to the Kingdom of Fife ...

Continued Computer Created Confusion

Until 1966, to get from Dundee across to Fife (and thus to St Andrews), you would need to go a very long way round or take a ferry.

At Newport-on-Tay you could change from ferry to bus. All this changed in 1966 when the Tay Road Bridge opened ...

... speeding journeys southwards considerably. Originally charging tolls, these were removed in 2008 as part of the Scottish government "get-rid-of-tolls" policy.

 It is this new road that is taken by route 99 as it whisks the passenger between Dundee and St Andrews via the A914 (bottom right), ...

... Pickletillem, St Michaels, Leuchars and Guardbridge.

In May 2006 the route was improved to run every 15 minutes complete with ceremonial tape-cutting and picture of assorted important people.

The service was branded Taylink 99 and was presumably super-successful because it now runs every 10 minutes.

But the column headings for 99, 99A, 99B, 99C and 99D might lure the unwary into thinking that the ten-minute service followed different sets of roads between St Andrews bus station and Dundee railway station. But, be not alarmed, cautious and fearful blog reader, these five routes are exactly the same, as shown above.

The only anomaly in the information system appears to be Dundee Council's "interactive" map which doesn't seem to have quite grasped the fact the the buses run to and from Dundee's railway station.

The little confuser-generated orange line starts unceremoniously at Seagate bus station.

Why? Possibly because the 99 "terminates" in a loop via the railway station (inwards only) and, as we see all too often, computer systems don't like loops. Although, to be fair, Traveline Scotland gets it right!

So looking at the poster in the frame at Leuchars station, you would expect something to encourage you into trusting information about that excellent 10 minute frequency with its surprising selection of suffix-supplemented service numbers.

But instead ...

You are invited to catch the hourly 99B to Dundee ...

... or, perhaps, the hourly 99C to Dundee ...

... or, if you would like a change, the hourly 99D to Dundee.

Sadly, fbb did not notice "timetables" (i.e. departure lists) for the hourly 99A to Dundee bus station OR the half hourly 99 to Dundee bus station. A quick email to Fife council, however, suggests that they were in an adjacent panel not snapped by fbb.

A regular Leuchars interchanger might be able to confirm this. Equally sadly, the identical route descriptions miss out the delightfully named Pickletillem ...

or is it pickletillUm

or is it pickletillEm

or is it pickletillUm

or does anyone care?

... nor does it mention that the bus runs via parts (at least) of Leuchars village.

Of course, the differing route numbers may well be important in the other direction, i.e. towards St Andrews, as we shall see tomorrow.

 Next bus blog : Wednesday 24th April 

Studying at St Andrews [1]

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Eclipse Busway between Fareham station

and not-quite Gosport is one year old today

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Back to our Scottish "studies" ...

Looking at Leuchars

Once upon a time, if you wished to travel to the Scottish golf and university town of St Andrews, you could alight from your train from Edinburgh and the south at Leuchars Junction and there, gently simmering in the bay platform, would be your connecting train. A short chug south via Guardbridge would deliver you to your desired destination.

Now, as previously blogged in "Exciting Edinburgh Experiences [2]" (read again), you nip across the much improved footbridge and catch a service 99 bus.

The Monday to Saturday daytime frequency is every 10 minutes, so it is unlikely that you would want to consult a timetable. Indeed fbb and Mrs, on their recent visit, had no time at all to investigate, so helpful were the connections. Indeed (again?), a recently-built sort of Leuchars by-pass road brings the buses slickly into their stance at the foot of the footbridge.

The former branch now shows only as a little dotted line from cutting to river bridge south of the place name "Milton."

Despite the shortage of time, fbb did manage to snap a few bits of transport infrastructure at the junction. There was this splendid ground signal (called a ground signal because it's up the  pole)  but now disused (?) 

And there was the timetable frame at the end of the long shelter for waiting bus passengers. Interesting, thought fbb, but nothing special; just the usual unhelpful departure lists and a route diagram (with the station shown top left on this clip of the downloadable version).

The diagram looked a bit twiddly, but further investigation was needed.

fbb did consider that moaning about the lack of actual timetable information might be regarded as tediously repetitive by his regular blog readers, so parked the picture in the dark and dismal recesses of his confuser pending its utter destruction and expunging from the multiple giggle-bytes of memory.

But, just before "hitting the delete key", the old chap had another look.

And, oh dear! Oh dreadful dear! Oh doubly dreadful dear.

The whole thing is a shambles; of which more tomorrow.

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For the record and very very scary! After a feeble attempt to de-clutter, the house agents came and took their photos on Monday 8th April, posted details on their website that evening. They had the first enquiry at 0900 on Tuesday 9th, the prospective purchasers visting that afternoon. They made an offer which the fbbs accepted at 1600! A quick nip to Seaton, Devon on Wednesday 17th to re-visit a property examined back in January. fbb's offer accepted Thursday 18th at 1000! Move scheduled for May 31st.

PANIC!

But, seriously; having prayed long and hard about what is a momentous move after 30 years on the Island, the fbbs can only thank Him for sorting it so quickly and so well.

 PRAISE GOD 

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 Next Bus Blog : Tuesday 23rd April