On Trains & Buses

First Potteries have shared details of their bus services for all of the bank holidays in April and May. Good Friday sees a Saturday service and it mainly is a Sunday service on other bank holidays, albeit with an hourly service to Stone on route 23.

On the last Sunday of the month, Lothian Buses are introducing a number of service changes. Most are minor but some services such as on route 43 are seeing withdrawals. On a more positive note, others like service 5 are seeing frequency increases. There route changes around Penicuik and Tranent as well as NightBus improvements. Put together, there are a lot of changes so a look on a bus time planner might be no bad idea even with the summary information that is available.

With the way that Cheadle gets clogged with traffic, a new road between the A6 and Manchester Airport may be what is needed and there is one coming, at quite a cost though.

Changes are coming to First’s services around Stoke-on-Trent later in February, partly due to the withdrawal of financial support for service 37 to Lymedale Business Park. There are changes to other services being slipped in too so their details are worth a look.

You MUST NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement in London, and should not do so elsewhere unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or with visual impairments and people with prams or pushchairs. Law GL(GP)A sect 15

Until today, I had thought it was completely illegal everywhere in Britain but there is a private members bill being debated in the U.K. parliament today that extends the London prohibition elsewhere in England and Wales. Foe me, wonders never cease and it is good to have organisations like Living Streets campaigning on behalf of us pedestrians.

From next Sunday, D&G are taking over the following services from BakerBus:

Service 9 between Biddulph & Hanley

Service 17 between Newcastle & Bradwell

Service 74A between Newcastle & Audley

Service 94 between Biddulph & Newcastle

Service 99 between Biddulph Moor & Newcastle

Service 101 between Hanley & Stafford

Services 423 & 424 between Mow Cop & Leek

Most of the above will be taken over with only timetable revisions. Major one include renumbering of the 17 as the 17 and 17C along with the last journey of the day from Mow Cop to Leek only running on college days. Service 74A gets a revised route while the service 99 get minor route tweaks too. BakerBus service 26 between Newcastle and Meir is being cancelled. It is Sunday evening services on route 101 that D&G will be operating instead of BakerBus.

During the past few months, Hertfordshire County Council has solicited feedback from users regarding bus services and are considering cuts in the light of the feedback. The usual suspects of evening and Sunday services are at risk and they have details of their next steps on their website.

Bus pass funding must be costing local authorities a good deal of money so it is not surprising to see Devon County Council reviewing how it does things in order to save money. The sums involved are not large yet there is a lot of good comments made on the page that are well worth reading. If people thinking thoughts like these were to be united, the easy option of cutting bus services might not have been so easy for councils to take.

They were revoked at the start of September but it has taken time before I removed entries for Cheap Evening Return fares from my sample U.K. train fares page. Here they are for sake of posterity (along with the dates when I reckon that I last encountered them in brackets at the end of every entry on the list):

Glossop to Manchester: £2.05 (2013-04-06)

Knutsford to Stockport: £3.30 (2014-02-11)

Macclesfield to Manchester: £4.45 (2014-02-11)

Manchester Airport to Manchester: £1.95 (2012-12-29)

Stockport to Macclesfield: £3.30 (2014-01-07)

Wilmslow to Alderley Edge: £1.15 (2014-02-11)

Wilmslow to Stockport: £2:25 (2014-01-07)

They were good while they lasted so the cost of train travel has gone up with their demise. The world has changed a lot since I first discovered these in August 2000 on the way home from Buxton.

Today, PassengerFocus’ update email dropped into my inbox with a few interesting headlines. One of these is regarding a report that they had done on bus service punctuality. This is not the only item they have on the subject since there is a sample action plan too. With the way that traffic levels and incidents affect the timeliness of buses, it all makes interesting reading and that this is a busy time of year with long nights and often challenging weather conditions makes it even more so.