Having subscribed to news alerts from Staffordshire County Council regarding bus services, I always have fancied distilling the news for publication on here, only for the time or inclination needed to prepare the digests never to appear. The emails are split by district so there is some overlap between them. Rather than preserving that, I am going to present a county wide summary here and Traveline should let you in on any new bus times.
From 2016-01-03
Services 1 & 2: Huntington - Walsall (Arriva Midlands)
Revised route and timetable.
Services 3 & 3A: Cannock - Walsall (Arriva Midlands)
Revised timetable.
Service 6: Stafford - Rickerscote (Arriva Midlands)
Revised route and timetable, with Stafford to Doxey to be served by new service 12. Service 6A journeys cancelled and Merrivale Road no longer served.
Service 12: Stafford - Doxey(Arriva Midlands)
New Monday to Sunday service with an hourly frequency on Sundays and a half-hourly one on other days of the week.
Service 24: Rugeley - Brereton (Arriva Midlands)
New half hourly Monday to Saturday service that replaces part of the cancelled X70 service.
Service 26: Rugeley - Etching Hill & Springfields (Arriva Midlands)
New half hourly Monday to Saturday circular service that replaces part of the cancelled 826/828 service.
Service 60: Cannock - Lichfield (Arriva Midlands)
Revised route and timetable. X60 will be cancelled and the Lichfield to Tamworth section replaced by new service X65.
Services 61 & 62: Cannock - Lichfield (Arriva Midlands)
Minor timetable revisions.
Services 70 / 70E: Rugeley - Wolverhampton
Revised route and timetable. X70 journeys will be cancelled, with Brereton to be served by the new service 24, and Wedges Mill and Hill Ridware will no longer be served.
Services 74, 75 & 75A: Cannock - Stafford (Arriva Midlands)
Revised route and timetable, with Beaconside MOD no longer served and 75 terminating in Stafford town centre.
Service 74B: Cannock - Stafford (Arriva Midlands)
Service cancelled.
Services 76 / 76A / 76B: Stafford - Wolverhampton (Arriva Midlands)
Revised timetable.
Services 824 & 825: Lichfield - Stafford (Arriva Midlands)
Revised route and timetable, with 825 now terminating at Stafford Hospital.
Services 826 & 828: Lichfield - Stafford (Arriva Midlands)
Service cancelled, with Etching Hill section replaced by new service 26.
Services 877 & 878: Stafford - Wolverhampton (Select Bus)
Revised route and timetable.
From 2016-01-04
Service 3: Keele - Crewe (First Potteries)
Revised timetable due to roadworks.
Services 8A, 28 & 98: Newcastle - Ball Green (First Potteries)
Revised timetable.
Service 9: Clayton - Biddulph (D&G Bus)
Revised timetable, with 9E evening journeys cancelled and Sunday journeys renumbered to 9.
Service 12: (D&G Bus, Stone - Meir Heath)
Revised timetable, and route around Meir Heath.
Services 13 & 13A: (D&G Bus, Stone - Stafford)
Minor timetable revisions.
Services 14, 14A & 14B: Stafford - Hanley (D&G Bus)
Revised route and timetable, with new 14A and 14B journeys, replacing cancelled X14 and X14A services.
Services 16 & 16A: Hanley - Buxton (D&G Bus)
Revised route and timetable with some Sunday journeys extended to Buxton to replace service X15.
Service 31: Leek - Hanley (D&G Bus)
Revised route and timetable.
Service 35: Newcastle - Chesterton (D&G Bus)
Revised route and timetable, with Meadow Avenue no longer served.
Services 73 & 74: Newcastle - Audley (D&G Bus)
Revised route and timetable. Service 74A will be cancelled, and 74 re-routed to serve Lower Milehouse Lane. Evening journeys 74E will be re-numbered as 74. These are service changes delayed from 2015-11-16.
Services 94 / 94A: Newcastle - Biddulph (D&G Bus)
Revised timetable.
Services 785 / 786: Lichfield - Austrey (Arriva Midlands)
Revised timetable.
Service 842: Stafford - Rugeley (D&G Bus)
Revised Saturday timetable.
Services 877 & 878: Stafford - Wolverhampton (Select Bus)
Revised route and timetable.
Orange ONE: Newcastle - Meir (D&G Bus)
Revised timetable
Services X14, X14A & X14B: Stafford - Hanley (D&G Bus)
Service cancelled and replaced by 14, 14A & 14B.
Service X15: Hanley - Buxton (D&G Bus)
Sunday service is replaced by the revised 16. Monday to Saturday timetable is unchanged.
Service X16: Tamworth to Birmingham (Central Buses)
New Monday to Friday service that replaces the current X73 service.
Service X55: Lichfield - Tamworth (Central Buses)
Revised timetable.
Service X65: Lichfield - Tamworth (Arriva Midlands)
New half hourly Monday to Saturday service that replaces part of the cancelled X60 service.
From 2016-01-10
Service 2: Newcastle - Hanley (First Potteries)
Revised timetable with service 2A journeys cancelled.
Service 3: Hanley - Crewe (First Potteries)
Service spilt with service 3 operating from Hanley to Crewe and the section to Keele operated by the new service 25.
Services 4 & 4A: Hanley - Kidsgrove (First Potteries)
Revised timetable.
Service 6A: Hanley - Blythe Bridge (First Potteries)
Revised timetable.
Services 8A, 28 & 98: Newcastle - Ball Green (First Potteries)
Revised timetable, with additional evening services from Keele on service 98.
Service 25: Keele - Hanley (First Potteries)
New frequent Monday to Sunday service that replaces part of the service 3.
Services 32 / 32A: Hanley - Uttoxeter (First Potteries)
Route change between Spath and Uttoxeter.
From 2016-01-11
Services 74A & S74: Stafford -Huntington - Walton-on-the-Hill - Cannock (Social Travel)
New hourly Monday to Friday service with one S74 journey in each direction serving Brocton village. Start delayed from 2015-11-30.
Service 123: Cheadle Town Circular (Bennetts Travel)
New operator with the same route but a revised timetable.
From 2016-01-17
Service 22: Newcastle - Longton (First Potteries)
Revised timetable.
Services 97 & 99: Newcastle - Wolstanton / Bradeley (First Potteries)
Revised timetable.
From 2016-01-31
Service 18: Leek - Hanley (First Potteries)
Revised Sunday timetable.
The new Northern and Transpennine Express franchises have been awarded and the government is celebrating the changes that are promised by the successful bidders whose terms begin next April. For Northern, it will be Arriva and First will be continuing its involvement with Transpennine Express without its current partner Keolis.
So much is planned that you have to ask if all of it will come to pass even if it fits in well with the government’s Northern Powerhouse idea. The list of improvements is so long that consulting what the government has published for Northern and Transpennine Express is worthwhile. Initially, I was going to confine myself to aspects that piqued my interest but I went beyond this to be more comprehensive. Still, there is so much to come that the linked sources are worth surveying too.
The remit of the Transpennine Express has been tweaked a bit with their routes to Blackpool, Barrow-in-Furness and Windermere passing to Northern. That leaves their Anglo-Scottish services as their sole involvement on the West Coast Mainline and some new journeys are to serve Liverpool so this is no longer solely based at Manchester Airport as its southern terminus. The southern route via Sheffield to Cleethorpes is to get extra capacity and more frequent services. The same is to come to the northern route too with an hourly service to Edinburgh via Morpeth. Train refurbishment is on the agenda and we are supposed to see new five-car 125 mph trains on the northwestern and northern corridors too.
The new Northern franchise is where the improvements mount up and it was supposed to be a no-growth franchise when it was let in 2004. That is not something to be repeated so there are a lot of changes planned and I will step through a lot of these. In summary, there are more services, updated and new trains as well as newly staffed stations. There is a lot to cover.
Firstly, more Sunday journeys are to be offered. Of particular interest to me is the upgrade of Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester route (it goes via Macclesfield) to an hourly service instead of the current three to four trains per day. Others mooted for an hourly service include the mid-Cheshire line between Manchester and Chester that goes via Knutsford and Northwich, Bishop Auckland to Darlington, Hull to Scarborough, Hull to York, Hull to Sheffield, Scarborough to York, Leeds to Bridlington, Bradford to Skipton, Bradford to Ilkley, Leeds to Doncaster, Leeds to Sheffield, Sheffield to Huddersfield, Lincoln to Sheffield, Knottingley and Pontefract to Leeds, Chester to Manchester and Leeds via Warrington and Colne to Preston. Some lines are going to see two trains per hour on Sundays with that from Buxton to Manchester being one of these. Others include Leeds to Harrogate and Knaresborough, Bradford to Manchester and Wigan to Manchester via Atherton. If this all comes to pass, it will a major increase in Sunday service level and that only can be good.
Weekday services are also set to increase with two trains an hour between Macclesfield and Manchester, Buxton to Manchester, Middlesbrough to Newcastle, Newcastle to Carlisle, Knottingley and Pontefract to Leeds, Greenbank to Manchester and Blackburn to Manchester. There are myriad of other improvements too with more evening services on some lines and some Leeds to York via Harrogate getting four trains per hour. All this is going to boost capacity and the sooner that comes, the better.
New trains are to come too (281 new carriages in total) and the dreaded Pacers are to be withdrawn by 2019 while the remainder of the fleet is to be refurbished. Some of the new trains will be electric so existing electric ones like those on the Hadfield to Manchester, Skipton and Ilkley to Leeds and Doncaster to Leeds will be replaced to add capacity beyond what is there now. This comes alongside increased staffing of stations with 45 unstaffed stations to get staff and another 54 to have extended opening hours. Stations are to be improved too.
Northern also is to operate a network of semi-fast services with new and reconditioned (class 158) trains. The routes are Middlesbrough to Newcastle, Newcastle to Carlisle, Hull to Sheffield, Leeds to Nottingham, Lincoln to Sheffield, Bradford to Manchester Airport and Liverpool, Chester to Leeds, Blackpool to York, Blackpool to Manchester, Barrow-in-Furness to Manchester Airport and Windermere to Manchester Airport. Some of these replace existing Transpennine Express routes and that may explain how the brand has been created. All in all, this will be quite a network once it is in place though it is disappointing to see Leeds to Carlisle and Leeds to Lancaster omitted, even if these too see their modest improvements.
New routes are to be undertaken by Northern that are not part of what they have taken on from Transpennine Express or Northern Connect so it is worth highlighting them. These are Leeds to Bridlington and Scarborough to York. Currently, Transpennine Express are the only operator on these lines so the addition of Northern will complement those journeys to increase the service frequency.
One is left wondering how all these new trains and extra services are to be funded. After all, Transpennine Express has to pay a premium for their franchise and Northern needs to operate with a reduced subsidy. One would like the reality to match the intent without extra restrictions on off-peak ticketing beyond what we have now. If that could be managed, the overhaul would be both welcome and long overdue.