Better bus links at Moreton?

[whole diary]

[willc]

Moves are apparently afoot to make Moreton-in-Marsh station the starting point for local bus services, though it's not clear yet whether this will include all the main services from the town - 801 to Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water and Cheltenham; 855 to Stow, Bourton, Cirencester and Kemble station; 21/22 to Blockley, Chipping Campden/Broadway and Stratford-upon-Avon.

The 21 and 22 used to run from the station car park - as they replaced a Gloucestershire County Council-sponsored minibus shuttle service, connecting well with the trains, that only served Blockley and Chipping Campden - but switched to the adjacent Budgens supermarket delivery area in recent years, as there was more room to turn round there, but this practice has now ended and at present all the services run from the High Street.

While it's a good idea in principle, the co-ordination of the rail and bus timetables will need tightening up and there will need to be some rearrangement of car parking bays to make room for buses to turn and park. Maybe the empty goods shed (undistinguished 1950s BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) brick box) could be demolished to make space for more car parking to compensate, though new tenants are being sought after a local carpet shop stopped using it as a warehouse.

[willc]

Well, we now have a bus shelter, though it's just been plonked down in the station car park, with no sign of any new markings for bus bays and revised car parking, and some proper lighting in that part of the car park wouldn't come amiss either.

Gloucestershire County Council has issued a traffic order to make Station Road and New Road into one-way streets to assist the passage of buses, so fingers crossed it might happen some time in the new year.

Now that the Kingham and Charlbury railbus times have reappeared in the latest Cotswold Line pocket timetables, let's hope this improvement at Moreton gets due publicity as well, as it will offer some good connections to Stow-on-the Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water and the Blockley/Broadway/Chipping-Campden/Stratford route times still reflect its origins as a rail link, even if it requires a walk to the High Street at the moment.

[willc]

Further progress towards the change, in the shape of new one-way and no-entry signs going up in Station Road and New Road to clear the way for the buses, though covered up at present and I can't see any notices saying when the change will be made.

Our county councillor informs me that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) and Network Rail are in discussion about the car park lighting - or rather the lack of it in much of the car park - including the spot where the bus shelter stands.

[willc]

As of this morning we have the one-way streets - just no buses.

[willc]

According to the new issue of the CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about)'s Cotswold & Malvern Line News, the buses will start running to and from the station during the summer.

[Oxman]

and after the six week summer blockade! (Car park needed for replacement coach transport). Additional car parking is being sought.

[gwr2006]

According to the new issue of the CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about)'s Cotswold & Malvern Line News, the buses will start running to and from the station during the summer.

The buses won't start using the station car park until 14th September at the earliest according to Gloucester County Council.  They've been postponed (again) due to the summer engineering work.

Discussions are taking place about FGW^▸ (First Great Western) using the British Legion car park as an overflow car park during the line closure in July and August.

[willc]

Not really sure about any need for extra parking, to be honest, even though the RBL Club is shut down and the car park is doing nothing at present.

They managed perfectly well without it when there was a fortnight-long blockade a few summers back for track relaying, even though every spare coach and driver that First South Wales could muster seemed to descend on Moreton for the duration.

London business and commuter traffic falls of a cliff in August anyway and you can still park all day free of charge in Moreton High Street on the parts controlled by the county council, even if the town council has, after a decade or more of prevarication, put a time limit on their section - local government coordination at its finest.

[willc]

Have been told by Mike Obst, the rail development officer at Gloucestershire County Council, that Monday September 14 is pretty much set in stone now as the start date for the buses. Some extra parking restrictions are being put in place at the junction of the station access road and adjacent streets to make sure the buses can get through without difficulties, with the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) rail replacement buses being monitored in July and August to make sure that the arrangements will work properly in the long run.

[willc]

What I was told last year didn't actually happen but finally, almost two years after the bus shelter arrived, the main local bus routes, 21/22, 801 and 855, will start operating from Moreton-in-Marsh station on Monday, October 25. Johnsons' 21 and 22 are already using it on an unofficial basis. FGW^▸ (First Great Western) stations manager Teresa Ceesay is planning a launch event that day.

Should add that the shelter and the surrounding part of the car park still lacks any lighting, which is pretty poor.

[gwr2006]

Should add that the shelter and the surrounding part of the car park still lacks any lighting, which is pretty poor.

But does it now have a bus stop sign and timetables?  The last time I was there it was an anonymous looking shelter plonked in the car park!

[willc]

It has a timetable holder ready and waiting but not sure you really need a sign - hard to miss 10 tons of bus, as I can attest from the days when the 21 and 22 used to run from the station forecourt.

[willc]

A bus stop sign has arrived at last, just as well with the buses now serving the station but whoever put it up didn't have a supply of stick-on route numbers, so that will need another visit...

[inspector_blakey]

...or an enterprising local with a three-tread aluminium stepladder and a Sharpie!

[willc]

The new bus timetables for routes 21, 22, 801 and 855, showing arrival and departure times at Moreton-in-Marsh station, are online here http://ww5.gloucestershire.gov.uk/Bustimes/Cotswold.htm

I would like to say they had been recast somewhat to make connections between bus and rail easy, but that wouldn't be true. While there are several good 10-minute or so connections into and out of trains, there are other cases where buses arrive 10 minutes after trains leave, or at exactly the time trains depart and certainly rather too many where the 'connection' allows 2 or 3 minutes between bus and train and vice versa. Fine if you're Linford Christie and know where the bus stop is, or which platform the train goes from, but not great if you're anyone else, have luggage, etc.

I'm not saying it is easy to organise this, as you do have the erratic rail timetable to contend with and the buses don't simply run as a hub and spoke operation around Moreton. They are required to meet all sorts of other demands, like covering schools journeys (hence the yawning gap in services from about 07.30 to 9am, fitting in with work and college times in Cheltenham, meeting trains at Kemble, etc, but when connections are being missed by a few minutes either way, it does beg the question of why a little more effort wasn't put into fine tuning to make things work just slightly better for the passengers. And even with extra trains from next year, a quick comparison of a draft rail timetable with the bus ones suggests only a handful of extra connections.

Anyway, should you fancy a Cotswold excursion, Rail & Bus tickets are available via Moreton to the likes of Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Broadway and Chipping Campden, although for some mysterious reason FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s website does not give a list of the 102 destinations around its network that it says these are available to, instead inviting you to contact customer services. Is it really so hard to set up a web page with the full list? Especially when many of these places are presumably served by a certain bus operator, meaning yet more money in First's coffers, if people were given the encouragement to use these tickets.