Scotland still is catching the brunt of storm force winds and heavy rain as I write this. Bridges are shut (Tay, Erskine and Forth) and public transport services heavily affected. West Coast Motors are not running buses in Oban and Bute; the latter being due to a power failure. Sticking with the west of Scotland, the last Scottish Citylink departure for Fort William has been cancelled and that tells its own story. Glasgow and Edinburgh too have seen service changes as operators struggle with the weather. Even with that, most services seem to be running and keeping an eye on announcements from the likes of First Glasgow or Lothian Buses would be no bad idea.
Trains do not seem to have got too badly though there were some line closures around Glasgow earlier. Nevertheless, tomorrow will see the aftermath of what is battering Scotland so things may not be operating as smoothly as usually is the case. After all, there has been some structural damage done to buildings and infrastructure with a wall falling on a car in Aberdeen. At times like these, the only hope that can be expressed is that everyone is safe.
Update: National Rail Enquiries have on their website a page describing train running in the current adverse weather conditions. It looks as if there is more disruption than what I suggested above, such as between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. There’s quite a list of cancellations there with services such as the Caledonian Sleeper from Fort William and local ones around Glasgow being examples.
Update 2012-01-03: Yet another storm has hit Scotland again and with much the same effects too.
Tags: Aberdeen, Argyll, Bute, CrossCountry, Edinburgh, First, Fort William, Glasgow, Lothian Buses, Oban, Rain, Road Conditions, Scotland, Scotrail, Scottish Citylink, Scottish Highlands, Storm, Trains, Weather, West Coast Motors, Wind
Last week, the 18:39 130 bus service from Wilmslow to Macclesfield was early both nights that I happened to use it. It was an observation that set me to thinking whether we need a change of timetable for those times of year when the schools are not open. After all, it’s amazing quite the difference on the level of road traffic that you see at mid-term breaks compared the times leading up to and following them.
Some operators who mix in schoolbus services with their normal passenger workings do have different times of operation according to school term times and holidays. If you want some good examples of that, just take yourself off to the remoter reaches of Scotland. Argyll, Lochaber and Skye especially come to mind and it’s all down to the sparse population densities caused by history and geography.
Around more populous parts like Cheshire, it’s a different story because bus companies are not as dependent on schoolbus contracts for their businesses as happens around Argyll. You get the same service level for normal passenger workings regardless. What is the point of my piece is that variation in traffic levels have such a variation in bus journey times that I am left wondering if learning how timetables could be changed might be a good idea. There was a time when the I blamed the school run for all of this but I now recognise that there is more to the quietening of roads of this. In fact, it seems that timing of holidays from work by parents makes up the greater share of this.
Having different timetables for school term and holiday times sounds like causing a certain amount of upheaval for passengers but there are precedents for this in the form what is offered on bank holidays and around Christmas and New Year (sorry to mention those at this time of year, by the way). We have become accustomed to having different bus times for those occasions so why not have them more widely so long as bus companies don’t go using the exercise to curtail bus services as well. There is logistical overhead in doing this and some thought is needed when it comes to providing the timing information at bus stops. However, this is the sort of thing that goes on already and harmonising the term and holiday timings might even make it easier for the travelling public. These days, we have internet journey planners in the Traveline too and there’s also the ongoing GPS tracking of buses. All in all, the more that I think about instating school holiday bus timetables, I start to wonder if it hasn’t been suggested before.
Tags: 130, Argyll, Arriva, Buses, Cheshire, England, Lochaber, Macclesfield, Manchester, Scotland, Skye, Timetables, Traffic, Wilmslow
Out of curiosity, I decided to explore the Megabus website for the U.K. and it surprised me to see how low some of their prices were. Apparently, there’s a seat sale on at the moment too so that may explain some of those less than £5. However, it’s easy to see the attraction of what aren’t so infrequent services from Manchester to places such as Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow and London. With the recent increases in train fares, even a ticket costing less than £20 has to look tempting. Is that why the though of savouring their services to see what they’re like has entered my head?
While checking out express coach services, I also decided to take a look at what Greyhound offers to the U.K. traveller these days and it looks as if things have expanded beyond the London services to the south coast of England with which they started. For instance, regular services between Cardiff and Swansea are now on offer with the frequency making them look like the Welsh version of the Scottish Citylink service between Edinburgh and Glasgow or the National Express one between Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. It looks a good move forward and I hope that it’s attracting a good level custom. Also coming within the Greyhound fold is the overnight service between London and Scotland (Hamilton, Glasgow, Edinburgh) that First Glasgow took over from Silver Choice. All the while, it’s south of England tally of destinations increases with Winchester being a recent addition to those like Portsmouth, Poole, Southampton, Bournemouth, Fareham, Ringwood (for the New Forest) and the Isle of Wight. All in all, Greyhound is growing in Britain so there must be some success being had somewhere. Maybe the attractive prices might have something to do with it because I did glimpse a few going for £1 plus booking fee.
All in all, it looks as if express coach travel might be on the up and it would not be a bad thing if a decent network built up in England and Wales, even if it meant travelling with different operators on a single journey. The looming increases in train fares are presenting an opportunity and I wonder if anyone is out there waiting to take it. Now mightn’t be a bad time to spend a little longer travelling in order to save a little cash when it is a scarcer commodity than used to be case a few years ago.
Tags: Bournemouth, Cardiff, Coaches, Edinburgh, England, Fareham, First, Glasgow, Greyhound, Hamilton, Isle of Wight, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Megabus, National Express, New Forest, Poole, Portsmouth, Ringwood, Scotland, Scottish Citylink, Southampton, Stagecoach, Swansea, Ticketing, Wales, Yorkshire
From the travel point of view, 2010 got a very dramatic ending with the cold temperatures that brought us snow and ice. While it was the airports that bore the brunt of the weather, train and bus services suffered too, particularly in the first round of the cold weather. With the temperatures set to drop again in the next few days, we’ll have to see what happens. After all, it was in January of the year ending tonight that we really saw the snow cause trouble around eastern Cheshire. Who knows what lies around the corner?
Speaking of what may come our way in the future, we have what comes from any public spending cuts in Britain and Ireland. Warrington, North Yorkshire and Derbyshire already have shown signs of what may be precipitated by cuts to council budgets. There’s no word on anything like that from Cheshire but that may change.
Still, rail has seen some announcements regarding investment and can be said to have done better than expected. However, that has to be tempered by the prospect of sizeable hikes in ticket prices beyond those we have seen in recent years.
All in all, 2011 could become more interesting than some among us would rather. It could be one where we have to stand up for what services we have so that total savagery is avoided. Still, not everything has to be sacrificed so we’ll have to enjoy using what we can. Hope the new year is good to you and that you come through it untouched by any economic torment.
Tags: Air Travel, Buses, Cheshire, Derbyshire, England, Fares, Ireland, Road Conditions, Scotland, Trains, Wales, Warrington, Weather, Yorkshire
One thing that we’re never told about those magical white Christmases that we’re often sold is that there’s a darker side to them too. Just ask anyone trying to fly before Christmas this year and they may have a thing to say about the weather that we saw.
What visited Heathrow and Gatwick on the last Saturday before Christmas Day caused enough disruption but it was the repeated showerings of snow that caused havoc at Dublin’s airport. All that was needed was a single hefty shower and runaways were shut for several hours. The result was many panicky travellers with some booking ferry crossings as a backup plan.
Rail travel became tricky as points suffered in the cold weather with many needing defrosting. It didn’t matter whether it was Euston station or Heuston station in Dublin because delays and cancellations were made more likely; London saw more cancellations than Dublin, it has to be said. Then, London Midland train passengers were to discover how it felt to be crammed into a smaller than usual train because two couldn’t be joined together due to frozen couplers. Special timetables with lower service frequencies saw introduction in Wales, Merseyside and Scotland because of the conditions.
Buses in the south of England saw enough disruption to set Twitter alight with a multitude of status updates. That wasn’t all because the same comments applied to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Wales. Seeing the flurries of updates was enough to remind me of the action of snow blizzards.
All of the above information provision was heartening to see but not everyone was as good at keeping passengers up to date. For instance, I spent several hours in a plane, diverted from Dublin, sat on the tarmac in Shannon and the lack of speed in making anything happen was enough to try your patience. Decisiveness and responsiveness weren’t characteristics of the experience and it didn’t help that the I had to return to a snowy Dublin when my final destination wouldn’t have been far from Shannon anyway; it was nearer than Dublin anyway. If buses and trains did this type of thing, you could foresee uproar…
All in all, the whole experience makes me appreciate the service offered by bus and train operators all the more and neither Dublin Bus or Irish Rail left me down on the day in question anyway. My observations and experiences of what the snow did this year have me wondered why I have been pondering outings to savour the snowy hills of Scotland and Wales during a spell of cold weather. It’s no wonder that I have been sticking to enjoying what’s close at hand when snow visits.
This is our second really cold winter in a row and my only hope is that lessons are being learnt. One climate scientist has suggested we are in a run of a few of these so we all needed to be doing some learning, myself included. With regards to dreams of white Christmases, we need to live in the real world and that’s even when somewhat surreal weather comes our way like it has done this year. Let’s hope that everyone stays safe and that the stranded get to their intended destinations as soon as possible.
Tags: Airlines, Airports, Buses, Christmas, Dublin, Dublin Airport, England, Ferries, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, Ireland, Lancashire, London Midland, Merseyside, Northumberland, Road Conditions, Scotland, Shannon Airport, Snow, Trains, Wales, Weather, Yorkshire
