The Barricade of Brookhouse Hill (2)

The closure of Sheffield's  Brookhouse Hill (passing Fulwood Church) for resurfacing presents substantial problems for bus routes 83a and 120 as there is no way round. The back streets of Fulwood are narrow and dead ended ...

... and impassable by bus. Incidentally the  very solid looking shop on the right (Truffles) selling, erm, truffles, other chocolates and "gifts" used to be a wooden hut selling fruit and veg!

But the lack of an obvious "way round" led the powers that be to suggest that both services should terminate at Old Fulwood Road ...

... a few yards short of the closure and of the church (PW on map below) without any alternative "up the hill".

The decision to deprive a whole area of the city ...

... of its usual bus services was about as stupid at First, Stagecoach and the PTE could possibly have made - as stupid and ANY they have made previously. There would be an awful lot of potential bus passengers without a bus; and a steep long walk down, but worse, a steep walk back up.

The local yokels, led by chum and Sheffield correspondent John, and including neighbourly County Councillors, began a vociferous campaign to demand buses up the hill - somehow.

It was the electronic version of pitchforks at dawn, at lunchtime and at twilight!

The first results of this vehemence was that the hours of disruption were reduced to 0700 to 1900 Monday to Friday.

There IS a road up the hill (the yellow road just below "Fulwood" on this map extract).

It is called Slayleigh Lane. It serves posh villas (very posh!) and passes a few cottages that stood in the corners of farm fields way back when.

It also has lots of trees positioned in such a way as to make a first class job of smashing the top deck front windows of double deckers.

It also has thin bits where it squeezes past some of the aforementioned ancient dwellings.

But it offered some possibilities.

Then Stagecoach announced that it would, indeed, be running its 83a ...

... via Slayleigh Lane. Bingo. The 83a is single deck so perhaps a few dents from low hanging branches but, hopefully, no serious damage.

BUT. The First Bus and Stagecoach joint 120 is double deck ...

... and no way would they get up Slayleigh Lane unscathed.

After much posturing postulating and prevarication a workable scheme was agreed by all parties.

The 83a (RED) will run to its normal timetable but diverted.

The 120 (BLUE) will terminate as per the previous potty plan at Old Fulwood Road Woofindin Road.

A temporary 120S (GREEN) will run as a SINGLE DECK "shuttle" ("S" for shuttle - gettit!) from the Old Fulwood Road loop, via Slayleigh Lane and round the standard service 60 loop.

The "resources" for the shuttle would be provided by saving one bus on the 120's cycle because they are all turning short. Clever eh?

And everybody is happy?

Far from it. People using the buses on the top of the bottom half of Crimicar Lane (confusing isn't it), Brooklands Avenue and Moorcroft Road ...

... might choose to heave themselves up to the junction of Moorcroft Road and Crimicar Lane BUT ...

... diverted buses will descend the UPPER part of Crimicar Lane (upper left on the map above) and turn LEFT into Hallamshire Road, thus miss ALL the stops at the junction. Hopefully someone will provide some temporary "dolly-stops".

Hopefully?

But most on the unserved roads would face considerable inconvenience - even hardship.

But the poor arrangment doesn't end there. The 120S timetable has been published ...

... and it runs every 12 minutes.

But the 120 runs every 10 minutes!

They don't match, they don't connect most of the time and some residents of Upper Fulwood will have to wait up to to minutes for their onward 120.

UNSATISFACTORY

This is what SHOULD happen:-

The 120S should do a figure of eight route as shown in GREEN. This would need TWO buses each running every twenty minutes giving a ten minute service to match the ten minute service 120.

Of course this would need EXTRA resources, bus and driver, and involve extra cost rather than diverting a dribble from the 120.

The 120 is a very profitable route so it can stand extra "pain" for a short term.

And if there is a bit of "pain" it will be a lot less than the loss of passengers whose service is arbitrarily taken from them.

Short term "pain" - long term gain in PR, in stability and in retaining the loyalty of your customers.

It all kicks off on Monday so there is still time to change your minds, people. Come on ...

DO IT RIGHT!

 Next Exeter birthday trip blog : Thursday 27th February 

The Barricade of Brookhouse Hill (1)

A Tangled Tale of Traffic Trials and Tribulations

Once upon a time Fulwood was a cluster of cottages due west of Sheffield. Even in the 1920s there wasn't much of it.

Notice Fulwood Church (north west of the "F" of the village name) ...

... and the bare cross of Fulwood Old Chapel, a Unitarian Church established in 1726.

Fulwood combined a rural economy ...

... with early industrialisation along the Porter Brook (oddly a small stream which gave its name ...

... to the national rail rolling stock company!**)

The cottages above were at Wire Mill (now you wonder what they made there!). The low building at the end housed Thomas Bolsover who worked out how to fuse silver on to sheets of copper and thus invented "Sheffield Plate".

In the 1920s and 1930s Sheffield began to expand westwards and Fulwood became the home of "Middle Class" villas as here at the bottom of Crimicar Lane ...

Posher properties filled fields and gaps between the dotted rural hereditaments pre WW2 and post war right up to the early 1960s almost the whole area on the old map above was filled with residential development.

Trams arrived from Broohill and Hunters Bar; the Broomhill route became motor buses in the 1930s and the Hunters Bar route in the 1950s. The successors to these two routes remain in place today.

The BLUE line is route 120 (formerly 40, formerly 60 formerly tram via Broomhill) terminating in a large loop with its time point on Barncliffe Road.

It is a joint service shared by Stagecoach and First.

The RED line is the successor to the route via Hunters Bar and the Ecclesall Road which was once route 88 terminating just beyond Fulwood Church at the Co-op.

Later it had numerous numerical nomenclatures and is now Stagecoach 83a but much extended.

As the map shows, it ends in an even bigger loop via the Hallam Grange roads having a nominal "terminus" at the very top of Crimicar Lane.

In the distance you can see a 120 creeping out of Barncliffe Road. On Redmires Road, the 83a shares two stops with service 51 - Sheffield's oldest motor bus route - now running from Charnock via City to Lodge Moor.

But come with fbb back down the mountain that it Crimicar Lane; for many a long year fbb lived there at Number 166 ...

... to the road past Fulwood Church. This is Brookhouse Hill ...

... which wiggles down ...

... to Fulwood shops and the aforementioned Co-op.

Here the 83 goes straight on up Brooklands Avenue and the 120 turns right back up the mountainous Crimicar Lane.

From Monday 2nd March, Brookhouse Hill is to be closed completely for resurfacing work.

So, what will happen to services 120 (every 10 minutes) and 83a (every 20 minutes)?

The original plan was for the work to be carried out in January. The scheme back then, which is totally beyond belief, was that the 120 and 83 would terminate short of Fulwood Church and there would be no buses on either route beyond that point FOR A WHOLE WEEK!

Yes, really.

Here's how and where.

Oringinally Fulwood Road took a nasty wiggle at the top of the hill, just short of the Church. Now called "Old" Fuwood Road ...

... it passes the remnants of the former Fulwood village.

Old Fulwood Road forms a convenient loop where you can turn buses.

Indeed, back in the day, several "short workings" on the former service 60 to Crimicar Lane turned here. In a perverse decision, Sheffield Transport used Woofindin Road in the timetable notes but showed  NETHER GREEN  on the blinds.

The geographical Nether Green was several stops back; Woofindin Road is, and always has been, Fulwood. But you couldn't show  FULWOOD  as that was the terminus of the 88 (at the Co-op, remember?).

So, to save making an extra bit of blind, it became known as Nether Green which it never was in anyone's mind but those of "the lads" at Sheffield Transport HQ.

So that was the plan for January. Everyone would be turfed off at Woofindin Road and be obliged to use their ropes and crampons to ascend the peaks of Crimicar Lane.

Thankfully residents of Upper Fulwood began a vociferous campaign to retain something of their bus services. We shall see what transpired tomorrow.

It is still poor!

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fbb joins "the older woman" (Mrs fbb - by one month) for an exciting trip with Axe Valley Travel service 52 all the way to Exeter.

The old man really knows how to party.

P.S. Porterbrook has a new logo now ...

... not so cheerful but equally meaningless!

 Next Upper Fulwood blog : Wednesday 26th February 

Essex Airline X30 - Pathetic Publicity

Customer Service?

Sitting at his office desk in rain-soaked Seaton, fbb was only able to report the information that First Essex wanted us to know.

Roger French has more time, more money and more energy than fbb (and possibly less other commitments?) so you can understand why most of his blogs are based on actual personal experience. So it was that Rog sampled the new Essex Airlink services on an exciting expedition last week.

A few extracts from Roger's recent blog (link here) exposes the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and it is not pretty. fbb looks a little deeper.

Saarfend Bus Station

Except that it is not called a bus station, it is a Travel Centre. It is quite swish and modern ...

... but, as the Local Authority Bus Station Design Manual now requires as compulsory, it is not big enough for all the routes that serve it.

So it splurges northwards across York Road to some stands adjacent to a big car park.

First Bus departures seem to be split between stands in the bus station (sorry Travel Centre) ...

... and stands in the not quite centre bit of the Travel Centre, namely Chichester Road.

So where might the prestigious Essex Airlink X30 leave from? The good news is that there is an enquiry office in the central Travel Centre ...

... but the bad news is that it is run by Arriva, successors to Southend Corporation Transport.

And they are telling you nowt!

Not quite nowt. Obviously grossly inconvenienced by passengers wandering around seeking unsuccessfully a stand for the prestigious Essex Airlink X30, Arriva has posted another notice.

Quality!

And from which of the two bits of the "Travel Centre" does the X30 depart.

Answer, obviously, NEITHER! Roger's blog takes up the story.

And there it is on Heygate Avenue as per Google Streetview.

Really prestigious!

And there are the seats and the inadequate shelter ...

... with a good, clear view of the back of the unreal time departure display. What about information in the substantial frame at the stop itself?

Prestigiosity proliferates? Pathetically!

But at least Rog had the unreal time screen to encourage him on his onward journey to Stansted.

Before we move on, one or two observations from the screen.

What is an "Aprt" and why doesn't it say "Airport"?

Why, when there is room enough, do we have "S'end" and "Ctre"? And what use is a departure sign that tells you the next bus is going to the exact spot where you are standing.

Garbage!

But Roger is on trend, with it, techy savvy and made of resolute public transport sterner stuff. He goes "on line", "on tweet" to be precise, to ask what has happened to his prestigious 1200 X30 departure.

The reply would be farcical if it weren't so unbelievably stupid.

Traveline's timetable is incomprehensible and WRONG but it does show a stop at Southend Victoria Station Interchange Stop VJ.

And there it is, enshrouded in gloom.

But "Victoria Circus" it ain't! It used to be a roundabout.

But resilient Roger realises rubbish when he reads it on his phone. Most people wouldn't and would go searching for the non-existent Victoria Circus.

The delay had been caused by roadworks at Rayleigh but not a dicky bird was reported by the twits on First's Twitter service. That's because, according to Roger, the twits are in Leeds!

Potty

The Journey continues.

Apart from intrusive roadworks, the journey went well, just leaving problems with the on board technology ...

... and some confusion as to which way the bus is actually going as per the graphic's arrow. Excels are just as weird ...

... and, when Roger travelled, were showing the wrong date!

Chelmsford

Roger hopped off his X30 bus in Chelmsford to step back to an X10 because there (oh joyous joys of joyfulness) is a First Bus enquiry office.

BUT ...

Now fbb is one-up on Rog - fbb has in his clammy hand a leaflet for the X30 ...

... but, apparently, First are not giving any of them to members of the public. I mean to say, you wouldn't want to encourage passengers to use the buses would you? That would never do!

Potty, not prestigious.

A Conclusion?

Roger's closing comment is both sad and appropriate.

Frankly that just about sums up why First Bus struggles so much. Instead of putting out helpful information such as ‘all buses on our new ESSEX airlink branded X30 are experiencing delays of up to 30 minutes due to roadworks; we apologise for the disruption this will cause to your journey’ you get this nonsense remote from reality.

It’s about time this centralisation twitter policy was abandoned. It clearly doesn’t work.

And to promote a new brand without making any printed material widely available is just completely bonkers.

You can have all the nice new buses in your fleet but if these other issues are not addressed you’ll carry on losing passengers – and deserve to.

Amen to all that!

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This blog replaced the planned
Weekend Variety (3)
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 Next Roadworks blog : Tuesday 25th February