First bus changes from 28th July along TransWilts corridor

[whole diary]

[grahame]

As from 28th July 2013, First are making some changes to their bus services through Melksham.   I was at a meeting of the First bus customer panel in Bath last Wednesday evening, when a whole lot of changes across the Bath zone of First Bus Somerset and Avon were presented, and I'm going to extract the TransWilts and Melksham specific stuff here.

The status is currently that this data has been registered with the Transport Commissioner and is - in theory - in the public domain.  However, a search of the commisioner's website gave me no more than the fact that changes have been registered to "route 271" for example.  I made a phone call to the Transport folks in Leeds to ask "how do I get details" and was told to write in by post, sending a cheque or postal order for 3 pounds per route, and they would post me back timetables.   Or I could spend 5 pounds per route for a fax when they got my letter.  The data is NOT available online, and they do not take credit or debit cards.  First's presenter on Wednesday did not (appear to) have all the details to hand, and when questioned wasn't into the detail of new routes (or perhaps didn't want to say).  First also stated that their publicity is not fully ready in a form that's suitable for press and passengers (think I got that right).  Although it's early, I'll write some brief notes here as the information is generally available - in theory, at a price ... and follow up as I learn more; for some issues it's "wait and see the detail" at the moment.

1.  Bath to Melksham / onward to Devizes and Easterton in the evening and on Sunday.  Currently route numbers 271 and 272.  All buses will be redesignated as route 272, but they will be rerouted on a "new route" from Melksham Market Place to Bowerhill "via Melksham Forest".  Which looks close to the old route 271 to me.   The implication is a direct daytime service from Melksham Forest to Bath and the withdawl of First bus services from Melksham Hospital, Gifford's Surgery, St Damien's Surgery, and Spa Road / Coronation Road.  The presenter was not able to inform me of the details of the new route through Melksham.

2. Chippenham to Trowbridge and Frome. Currently routes 234 and 235.  Some services on route 234 will be extended to run "the full length of the route", with some retiming.  Frome Railway station to be replaced as a terminus by Sainsbury's in Frome. Route 235 (one service a day, Melksham to Trowbridge via Bowerhill) to be withdrawn, but a service on route 236 in Trowbridge to be started from Melksham via Bowerhill in the morning instead, and with two services back in the evening).

Other changes include:

Combining routes 231 and 232 (Chipenham to Bath via Corsham) into a single route running every 30 minutes (following old route 231, so leaving Pickwick Road in Corsham without a First bus service??)  and retiming services on the resultant route "to make better connections with trains at Chippenham".

Routing both 264 and 265 (Bath to Warminster) along the same route at Winsley, rather than alternating.  It's my understanding that the route taken will eliminate the sharp corners of the village centre.   And one of the two buses an hour on the route is to be extended from Warminster to Salisbury, replacing the current service 24 run by another operator.

In light of the comment about the 231 being retimed for better train connections at Chippenham, I asked if there were similar changes for the 234 to make better train connections; that route has retimings, but no statement had been made.  Timing changes on the 234, though, are being driven by its links to service 267 (which is Bath to Frome).

Comments to be added as a separate post - above is intended to inform and not to bias you with my personal views.

P.S.  It was stated that First are happy with how these services are doing and the changes are positive developments; there's a degree of contrast there tothe stories from Bridgwater, for example, where there have been sever cuts on "underperforming routes", and indeed there are other cuts being made in frequency down in Somerset.

[grahame]

OK - fresh post - personal views and effects

a) It makes sense for First to pick up extra passengers around the Melksham area for the trip to and from Bath, adding in a route via the area which has the lowest car ownership per household in the town.

b) The people of Bowerhill may not be very happy with the longer journey via Melksham Forest.

c) From a business viewpoint for us, this is not good news - it appears to remove the service from the stop outside the hotel which many of our visitors use to spend the day in Bath.  "Don't drive, take the bus" is what we have been telling people.   Yes, there will still be an hourly bus run by another company, but the quality of the First service is such that we can recommend it to guests where the other operator is doing better these days, but is still in "recovery" from a poor reputation and the buses aren't always very nice ones.

d) The current 234 timing at Chippenham station is absurd ... with one of the evening buses that could be useful leaving just 30 minutes after the previous service, and typically doing so as the train pulls in.   There's then a three hour gap. "Designed to fail" is probably unfair - just poor scheduling or other priorities, I suspect!   I'm sad that the statement that the Corsham bus has been retimed to connect with trains better didn't extend to the Melksham bus, with priority given instead to the link to the 267 at Frome (and that's an operational thing only - there will not be though passengers!)

e) These changes do not effect my zigzag proposals substantially; there's still scope to turn Melksham into a loop on the 272 and release 4 minutes through Bowerhill ... which is exactly the extra time that would be taken re-routing alternate buses via Corsham on their way to and from Bath.   See http://www.wellho.net/mouth/4111_Zigzag-bus-forward-for-the-future-or-decaying-service-.html

f) With First going though The Forest every hour, I hope that it's syncronised with the town bus (route 14) also going through The Forest. Currently that happens every 30 minutes. I can envisage 14 becoming hourly, 272 being the other half hour (the capacity will be there on the bus), and released resource on 14 allowing for a new service 15 to run an outer loop via the new housing ... just waiting for bus stops to be put in by developers, I understand.  Should have been last month ...

[Network SouthEast]

Graham, Have you tried searching the Travel Line site for more information? I find they often have information on bus services before it becomes available on operators' own websites and wondered if their source is indeed VOSA.

[grahame]

Graham, Have you tried searching the Travel Line site for more information? I find they often have information on bus services before it becomes available on operators' own websites and wondered if their source is indeed VOSA.

I have had a brief look at Travel Line ... din't yet help with 271 / 272 ... will keep an eye on it, thanks.

[Scott]

It is very difficult to find on Traveline and by no means always accurate. The only other problem is that it only advises of the actual timetable (and map), so you have to work out the differences by hand. Actually being given this informaiton by First or whoever is far useful, but it comes with the downside of not having the actual timetable data to hand until much nearer the change date - but for the most part, you don't need it much earlier than the release date...

Publicising the information isn't always appreciated by the companies themselves, so we have to be careful. What grahame has done is provide a personal opinion on what he was told (as was I) at the Bath Panel meeting on Wednesday, but that aside there is little else available at this time.

Think of it this way: Which of the following is more useful when understanding changes?

A: A timetable, which is difficult to source, and a map which is less-than-perfectly-reliable (as I know from the 21 route in my home town of Southend)

B: The general gist of the changes, which can then be analysed to a fair degree with the awareness that timetables will be ready in time for when it matters

Definitely B in my opinion...

[grahame]

Think of it this way: Which of the following is more useful when understanding changes?

A: A timetable, which is difficult to source, and a map which is less-than-perfectly-reliable (as I know from the 21 route in my home town of Southend)

B: The general gist of the changes, which can then be analysed to a fair degree with the awareness that timetables will be ready in time for when it matters

Definitely B in my opinion...

A good journalist would, of course, check both sources and make sure that they agreed before he put his name to the story.  But of course I'm not a journalist; I'm telling parts of what I understand, and being careful to ensure that most of it is stuff which is in the public domain, all be it printed on the underside of a filing cabinet on the planet Zigzog of the star Ceries in the Andromada galaxy rather than on the front page of The Guardian.

in time for when it matters

Ah!   "When it matters" will vary. 

* I could look back and find you threads where people say that a three month booking window is insufficient for train tickets - that they need to know earlier than that.
 
*We have a major event happening at the hotel on 22nd and 23rd August, with elderly (non-driving) families coming in by public transport. It matters to them - now - as they plan my trip and to say "I don't know if the bus service will still be running to the stop outside"

* The local Villager news sheet closed for articles today ... it will be appearing at the start of July, then again at the start of September.   The time it mattered for that publication - to tell bus users when to go our to the stop from the end of July -  was 11 hours ago

I could go on ... the people who are buying a house and wondering if they need to budget for a second car in East Melksham, and the people who have asked me to find out so they can respond to the Zigzag consultation which has just a few weeks to run, which potentially shares much of its route with both 272 and 234.

I will grant you that the majority of people don't need to know about a few minutes change until a few days ahead; those making close connections to other transport, and / or who have to be in work by a certain time, or will even be loosing their whole service really should be respected enough by the bus industry to be informed of changes that could serious effect them as soon as the bus companies have decided. 

At times the bus industry feels just like the train industry, where the customer may be regarded as uninformed (err yeah, if you don't tell him), disinterested, and likely to ask for changes that are impractical or impossible, expensive, and would mess up more people than they would help. And, yes, ... there are a lot of customers who fall into that category;  I'm not unsympathetic!

[JayMac]

It is very difficult to find on Traveline and by no means always accurate.

Don't knock it. It's very often a lot better at providing accurate information than the bus operators themselves.

A: A timetable, which is difficult to source, and a map which is less-than-perfectly-reliable (as I know from the 21 route in my home town of Southend)

B: The general gist of the changes, which can then be analysed to a fair degree with the awareness that timetables will be ready in time for when it matters

Definitely B in my opinion...

Traveline should not be the only publicly available (and free) option. So I'd go for another option:

C. A timetable in the public domain 56 days out from the changes. With an amendment to the statutory requirement that both the operator and VOSA have to provide the information to the public at the same time as the statutory request for a new, amended or cancelled service is made.

It's not right that the bus industry can get away with not notifying changes to the users of their services at the earliest opportunity. Why should detail of the changes be kept between them and the VOSA traffic commissioners until one or other decides to publish it? A bus company is providing a public service and VOSA, being a government department, should be working in the public interest. Charging interested parties ^3/^5 a pop per route for information is scandalous. If it's a statutory requirement for operators to inform traffic commissioners of changes to registered bus services 56 days before the change takes place, why are those operators not then informing their customers in a timely manner? What are they hiding?

As soon as a bus company makes the statutory request for a new, amended, or discontinued service, both they and the regulatory body should publish the information.

It shouldn't be down to third parties such as Traveline, or those with a little inside information, to provide the information.

[Scott]

I feel a little guilty with all of this. There is still no information available on Traveline for most of the Country services - the Norton corridor being the exception to the rule - and obviously some folks like Graham and those in Corsham need to know what they can and can't do. First have told me that could be another week before the information is ready, and then it needs to be put through quality control to ensure its accuracy...

... for which they outsource the work to, er, me. (This is how I find out the exact details in advance, and how I know the 178 etc are ready.)

As soon as I have a paper copy of the TransWilts timetables, I will let you know what you need to know. If I do not have this by the end of next week I will be asking questions.

[grahame]

Detail of changes to 271 / 272 (and further analysis) at http://melksh.am/4123 . The route is clearer, and looks to save a double-back in Bowerhill running back and forth around the same residential roads - running a loop instead, and then using the minutes saved to provide a direct daytime service from Bath to Melksham Forest.  Looks sensible, provided that the town bus a few minutes different now gets transferred onto route "15" through / past all that new housing!

[Scott]

I wish First were that fast at processing information! They still haven't given me three-quarters of the data they should have...

Anyway, I am sorry to say that I have been given evidence that shows just how poor a resource Traveline can be in some situations. Come July 28th, the Bridgwater town network will be merged into one route from Hamp to Sydenham, with the Sydenham section ending at Kings Drive (where the 3 currently terminates). Unfortunately, Traveline are of the opinion that it will terminate in Sydenham - four minutes shy of Kings Drive.

Now, this may or may not be an error on First's part - but this information is available on Traveline right now, courtesy of it not being subject to sufficient proof-reading. (Until it comes my way, but by then it's already online and I can only comment on errors and not physically change them.)

For the record, the only 200-series route I have been able to check so far is the 267 - and then it is missing its Bank Holiday service. I cannot comment on the main TransWilts routes yet, even though *some* of them seem to have data available.

[Sion Bretton]

Service 271 changes
 I have looked at draft timetable, I can see that customer will not like the fact one of the early morning services has gone, and that the early morning services do not go via Forest on trips to Bath, as there are a few that do this.
The lost of the 7:26 from the Market place to Bath will not go down well. These changes effected people in Atworth as well.
I see that the bus will now leave Bath at 20.00 currently leaves at 20:10 and before the last change it left at 20:20.
The last bus from Bath goes even later at 23:20 currently goes at 23:15.

There are changes on Sunday services I see they depart Bath at 10:00 every two hours current services leaves Bath at  10:20 every two hours.

[thetrout]

267 would be a Sunday timetable for Bank Holidays AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know).

Currently 4 journeys in each direction. However if you want to spend "the evening" in Bath. It's a bus at around 18:20 or a train at 21:07. Massive gap and of course, no through tickets

I've read that the 161 is going down to one per 2 hours. Wonderful considering as this is the only service that serves Frome Hospital (as in, the stop inside the actual complex) and the brand new Medical Centre which has cost a huge amount of money to build. They have a bus departure time on the screens inside, I'd be interested to know if they're aware of the timetable changes or if they were consulted.

It's a sod of a place to get to at the best of times but you do have the option of the X34 & 234 and alight at Bath Road/North Parade Junction, The 30, 267 and F267 alighting Berkley Road and possibly the 53 (Frome Minibuses) on Bath Road. That bus seems to have a mind of it's own however.

Also note that the 30 is being completely withdrawn on Saturdays... I sense an OAP riot...!

[grahame]

234 and 236 timetables now at http://melksh.am/4124

[Scott]

I've read that the 161 is going down to one per 2 hours.

Also note that the 30 is being completely withdrawn on Saturdays... I sense an OAP riot...!

The 161 is going down to two-hourly, but only between Shepton Mallet and Frome. The simple problem is that no-one uses it out in the Mendip wilds - the hospital is all very well but it's not exactly far from other routes, and there is nothing really important to cover. And no-one uses the 30 either from what I've seen - I did the whole loop a couple of months ago and we picked up about five passengers in total.

[Lee]

I've read that the 161 is going down to one per 2 hours.

Also note that the 30 is being completely withdrawn on Saturdays... I sense an OAP riot...!

The 161 is going down to two-hourly, but only between Shepton Mallet and Frome. The simple problem is that no-one uses it out in the Mendip wilds - the hospital is all very well but it's not exactly far from other routes, and there is nothing really important to cover. And no-one uses the 30 either from what I've seen - I did the whole loop a couple of months ago and we picked up about five passengers in total.

Scott - Based on what I have seen, I would have to disagree with you on the 30 service. I have found myself changing buses at lunchtime (ironically often to the 161) a number of times in recent months at Frome Market Place, and when the 30 pulls up the passenger numbers (as thetrout hints, mostly OAPs) always seemed to be in double figures. I'd accept though that with many such town services, there will be other periods that are very much quieter.

Unfortunately though, I think you are right on the button with the 161. I've taken it for the full length of the route from Frome to Wells a number of times, and I've never seen many use it between Frome and Shepton. As you say, there simply aren't population centres big enough to generate significant patronage along that part of the route.

The Shepton-Wells section is very different though. There always seems to be a decent queue at the Cenotaph, and the bus is very much busier into Wells as a result.

The problem with the 161 is that it is a prime example of the sort of unprofitable but strategic bus route that local authorities used to help fund on a "socially necessary" basis. However, we no longer live in that kind of world, especially not where one particular county is concerned...