Behind the scenes of buses in the West.
Some bus services give themselves to a perfectly logical layout. Others evolve in to stability over time. Some just defy any logic and whatever you try to provide over the route ends up being a complete pudding. Yate and Bristol Yate is a dormitory town to Bristol which has grown since the second world war… Continue reading Puddings
Before we begin, this post was written prior to the announcement that Crosville had given notice to resign from providing Weston town services 4 and 4A from the start of September 2017. North Somerset Council are currently seeking a replacement service. Although i've never formally studied urban planning, my interests in how we live stretch… Continue reading Evolution of the Town
I was out driving this morning, covering a coach job for a local operator. At one stage i passed Hartcliffe Morrisons and was waiting at the traffic lights as the CATT Community Bus left the store with a considerable load of pensioners on board. It struck me that these were precisely the sort of people… Continue reading Breaking links
On Tuesday 9th May, BBC Wiltshire dedicated a significant swathe of their breakfast show to discussing bus service cuts, funding and primarily Faresaver's 33/X33 services between Chippenham, Calne and Devizes. Edited highlights are available here, or the whole thing can be found here for the next month or so. There was about 20 minutes of… Continue reading A little more on Avoiding a Crisis
The residents have been revolting. The residents are upset. The buses have changed, but nobody told them. Not that any of them actually use the service, but they're upset on behalf of the people who do use them. Both of them. Over the past few days, the residents of Timsbury (a village in B&NES) have… Continue reading The Official Citistar Guide to: Avoiding a Crisis
A couple of weeks ago, i stayed up late watching an awkward film on BBC Two. Dennis Quaid and Zac Effron starred as father and son of a dysfunctional family whose business centred around corn and farm machinery in the American Mid-West. During an opening movement which showed the business to be under threat (and… Continue reading Expand to Survive
A lot is made of the contributions of local government towards the infrastructure of bus services - the bus stops, shelters and raised kerbs are the mainstay of this, but larger schemes such as bus lanes and bus priority fall in to this category too. Over recent years schemes such as Better Bus Areas have… Continue reading On Infrastructure
A bit of numbercrunching can find some interesting results. First were gifted £240,000 by North Somerset Council in early 2017 for interurban network improvements which are to start at the end of April. Surely a significant uplift in funding such as this would only produce winners...? X1, X1A, X2: Bristol - Backwell - Congresbury -… Continue reading Winners and Losers in North Somerset
Previous reading regarding this post can be found in "The Impossible Dream", in which i made some predictions regarding North Somerset tendering. 50% of my predictions were correct, although i underestimated how keen First would be to push back against the seemingly unstoppable expansion of Crosville in Weston-super-Mare. There has since been a significant retrench… Continue reading How the neighbours do it
In May 2016, the WebberBus operation collapsed. WebberBus had done a fairly comprehensive job of spreading themselves far and wide over most of Somerset, often duplicating First routes but also taking on some other work in which nobody else had an shown an interest.Most of these odd choices were operated commercially - Bridgwater and Minehead… Continue reading A vital village (dis)service
