On Trains & Buses

Worcestershire want to save £3m on bus service support and are having a consultation on this and the proposals look very severe. In the associated questionnaire, the list of affected bus services is a long one so anyone that wishes to feedback on this needs to do it by 2014-01-17. Just when is this sort of thing going to stop? As things stand, Cheshire bus services are decimated enough already and I don’t want to see that everywhere.

Lothian Buses have published a booklet showing their Christmas and New Year services. What is apparent is that there is less of the service shutdown that is seen in places like Cheshire. In fact, some services even run of Christmas Day and there is a special effort to get folk home from Edinburgh’s famous Hogmanay festivities too. It all feels so different to what I had expected and is a world away from that fitting where I live.

Apparently, GHA are to be handing over responsibility for running Sunday journeys on bus service 130 between Macclesfield and Manchester to D&G. Also, there are likely to be some adjustments with the first Macclesfield-bound journey of the day starting from Handforth and something similar happening to the equivalent journey around 18:00 too. Other changes could be in the pipeline.

Public transport promotion may not be as lively as it once was but it has not gone away either; my efforts continue, of course. The EU does its bit too with its Do the Right Mix website. The ACT Travelwise association continues in the U.K. too.

Then, there’s Carplus which promotes car sharing. That may not be public transportation as such but, with traffic volumes getting in the way of buses, it is never a bad time to challenge single occupancy car use. Otherwise, we would need to open up more busways like the one opening in Luton next Wednesday.

There even is a website called Supemodals soliciting photos of public transport usage by running a competition with the prize of a trip to Amsterdam. Not so many have entered this already but anything trying to promote a rethink of our car use is only a good thing.

On next Monday (2013-09-16), Edinburgh gets a local public holiday and Lothian Buses mainly will be running a Saturday service. Otherwise, services X12, 35 & 45 will operate a public holiday timetable while services 61 & 67 will operate a normal weekday timetable.

Their Waverley Bridge and Hanover Street Travelshops will be open between 10:00 and 18:00 if you need to call into them. However, the Shandwick Place and Dalkeith Travelshops will be closed along with the Lost Property Office.

Northern Rail and Community Rail Lancashire are launching a Sunday train service called the Ribble Valley Rambler that runs from Blackpool to Hellifield. It starts on Sunday 15th September and connects with trains to and from Carlisle. The new service has its own dedicated website and I wish it well. Northern Rail have done their own announcement and I hope that it’s a service that I could use sometime.

North Yorkshire County Council are looking to reduce bus service subsidy from next year and have commenced a consultation. There is a summary document on their website that gives a sense of what they are thinking. They have described the plans for the respective districts as follows: Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough, Selby. There is one interesting comment about leisure use being a low priority for the council (given the presence of two national parks in their patch, it is a striking and strange statement to see) but another about retaining those used to get to and from work is more reassuring.

Bus Eireann has been operating an updated service 115 timetable since Sunday. Services 22 (Ballina to Dublin) and 23 (Sligo to Dublin) are unaffected. More details are here.

From the middle of September, the Bus Eireann express coach service between Cork and Dublin service will not call at Urlingford and Portlaoise any longer to reduce travel times so a replacement service between Cashel and Portlaoise is being organised.

Railway engineering work between Manchester Piccadilly and Macclesfield is taking place from 22:48 on 2013-08-12 to 00:35 on 2013-08-16. Late night trains will be replaced by buses and these journeys will have extended travel times.