Great Western Coffee Shop

From 1949 - interavailability of tickets between trains and buses

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/roadrail1949.jpg)

How did we come to loose most of these facilities?

They existed for a long time after that. I remember getting a bus transfer ticket at Birmingham New Street to travel back with my family to Redditch as the last train back was before 1800.  This would have been late 1970s, early 1980s.  I suspect the facility disappeared with the demise of the National Bus Company.

I gather the service improved around 1980, so maybe it was a case that the option wasn't needed any more?

I've wondered whether Grahame's "problem" of too early a finish to Melksham could be solved by making rail tickets valid on late buses.  Or even GWR hiring and running a bus service itself if the cost of running the service is too expensive as you have to pay the crew for a whole shift (which is nonsense, and suggests to me that at best GWR is not trying or at worst is looking for reasons not to improve the service). I'm sure a bus operator wouldn't charge for 8 hours of driving to go to Melksham and back to Chippenham.

Of course if GWR does have to pay for a whole shift it could run an extra couple of services earlier in the evening and actually get full benefit out of the staff and offer a much better service.  But I'm digressing now, so best stop there. 

There was a time when GWR Oxford-PAD tickets were valid overnight on the FirstGroup London-Oxford coach service....

Go-Ahead rather than First: they owned both Thames Trains and the X90 coach route (aka "Oxford Espress" [sic]). It persisted for a while when First got the franchise as FGW Link.

We negotiated for bus tickets to be valid on the late bus on service 234 from Chippenham to Melksham and Trowbridge from January 2014. However, First bus withdrew their route 234 on 1st August 2014, telling people to catch the train which for that month ran to late evening - Portsmouth to Swindon - but to engineering works at Bathampton in preparation for electrification. The when the train services reverted to normal, people were less than happy at the removal of the trains! Frankly it looked like a piece of opportunism to shift the blame away from the bus operator and / or the county who had withdrawn the subsidy without - so far as we can tell - and consultation.

I would like to see rail tickets to Melksham accepted on the 21:30 and 23:20 buses from Bath Spa. But you would, no doubt, have a nightmare of easement and contractual issus to sort out, and the current train to bus connection times at Bath seem - well - designed to fail / make you wait an age.

The French ue a mixture of trains and buses ... I suspect Lee may be able to tell us if there's a useful model there.

P.S. Last bus Chippenham to Melksham now 17:35 ... connection off 16:30 train from Swindon.   22:16 bus left Chippenham station with double figures on board often in early 2014, but problem was that earlier evening services were not much used.

Ultimately what we need is a bus around 22:30 from Bath to Melksham, and probably a similar one from Chippenham following the X34 route. Ticket interchangeability would be the icing on the cake!

I’d go a step further. Ultimately what we need is a later train from Swindon to Westbury.

We tried to get First bus to run a late X31 that ended at Chippenham in passenger service to Trowbridge as they're depoted in Westbury.   Adding a single run in one direction only was not attractive to them!  Agreed with the 22:30 - but I don't think there's a "spare" bus and driver.


Yes, and the rolling stock is available for a later round trip.

Ah, but how about spare crew...always best!

Presumably this is the big problem with commercially run services. There will be a demand for people to go out early and come back late, but much less demand in the intervening hours of mid evening.

Some of these rail+bus (not PlusBus) tickets still exist today in 2019.

Looking at Taunton it's still possible to get a through ticket to Watchet, Dunster, Minehead.

But that's the exception rather than the rule. Go back just a few years and there were rail+bus tickets where you changed from a train to a bus at Taunton for destinations such as Wiveliscombe, Bampton, Langport, Somerton, Ilminster, Chard...

I can remember the time when you could get Rail, Bus and Steamer inter available tickets.

Those were the days when the White Funnel fleet of paddle steamers ran from Hotwells but due to tide constraints couldn't return to Hotwells so you could return by the most convenient bus or train service from places like Weston, Clevedon, Penarth, Cardiff, and Barry Island.

You still can get combined Rail - Ferry tickets, have done Reading to Sandown via the Portsmouth - Ryde ferry, walk-up ticket at Reading. Do similar Reading - West Cowes via Southampton (Note; jet ferry only takes folding bikes), and Reading - Yarmouth via Lymington Pier. All with "carta geriatrica" discount.

Whilst there are numerous examples of routes with combined bus and rail timetables across France, in Brittany where I am, the way the overall network has been co-ordinated has seen a decline in this way of doing things in favour of routes that are either all-rail or all-bus.

Currently we have one route that has a permanently combined bus and rail timetable:

Quimper-Brest (https://cdn.ter.sncf.com/medias/PDF/bretagne/SNCFBretagne_FH31-Web-Hiv2019_tcm55-209660_tcm55-209645.pdf)

We also have 2 routes that currently have combined bus and rail timetables while they await officially confirmed line renovation work:

Dol-Dinan-St Brieuc (https://cdn.ter.sncf.com/medias/PDF/bretagne/SNCFBretagne_FH24_Phase2_tcm55-212182_tcm55-212179.pdf)

Rennes-Janze-Chateaubriant (https://cdn.ter.sncf.com/medias/PDF/bretagne/SNCFBretagne_FH09-Web-Hiv2019_tcm55-209671_tcm55-209631.pdf)

The rest are either one or the other.

In terms of integrated bus/rail ticketing, we have the Uzuel+ range, available in weekly or monthly versions, which combines unlimited train travel (this can be on TER local trains only or both TER and TGV express trains depending on your ticket option choice) between 2 points (eg Callac-Rennes) with unlimited travel on an urban public transport network of your choice from the following - Brest, Morlaix, Landerneau, Lannion, St Brieuc, Lorient, Vannes, Pontivy, Quimperlé, Quimper, Rennes or St Malo. You get up to 75% discount compared to normal fares, and your employer can cover up to 50% of the cost. Also, those bus services that are classed as equivalent to rail services (such as St Brieuc-Loudeac-Pontivy-Vannes/Lorient or Pontivy-Rennes) count as actual rail services for the purpose of this ticket range.

There are also specific bus/rail integrated tickets for the Rennes area, for the Rennes-Janze-Retiers route, and for the Brest-Quimper route.

There is also a network of rural/interurban bus services that dont have integrated ticketing with rail. However as a standalone add-on they can provide excellent value as they are dirt cheap at a flat single fare of 2 euros, including a change/connection if its made within an hour of initial validation, on routes that can be as long as Carhaix-Brest, Carhaix-Lorient, Carhaix-Morlaix and Carhaix-Loudeac to name a few examples from my neck of the woods. The exception is Morlaix-Roscoff where you can take advantage of the 2 euros fare AND/OR have through ticketing from the rail network.

Finally, where I specifically am in Callac, we have around 5 trains each way per weekday to Guingamp and Carhaix, but no regular bus services. However, we do have a transport on demand service that operates on Monday-Saturday and will pick you up and either drop you off in the town centre or at the railway station to connect with trains. This has a flat fare of 2 euros, which may not sound like great value compared to the same price for rural/interurban bus services, but is still execellent value compared to taxis, which are very expensive round these parts.

I use PlusBus quite regularly, not the same as the train + bus tickets at the start of this thread. For work I will sometimes get a PlusBus for Reading, and a Travelcard for London. Also use it at the weekends when I am not taking the bike, although there is no reason why you can't take a Brompton on a bus (allowing for some First Bus services wanting you to put it in a bag so the seats don't get dirty??).

What are the criteria for a town/station getting on the PlusBus list?

Half the year I live in the Cotentin area of Normandy. The early and late trains on the Paris - Cherbourg route connect with buses at Lison for St Lo (and possibly Coutances). The buses are always very well patronised, and probably give a far faster service than the daytime connection into the Caen - Rennes local trains which connect (in the vaguest sense of the word) at Lison.

They also advertise a 'transport on demand' service as Lee describes above from some small towns (with closed stations), but I have never met anyone who has used it. They are all advertised as connecting with local TER services and not the main line trains to Paris. This probably meets local demand. Our fairly frequent day trips by rail to Paris are met in the village with wonder, similar to our reaction in the UK when a family sets off on a 6 month round the world cruise.

By the way, non-rail travellers may not travel on these buses.