Later this month, the long-established former Hants & Dorset 56/56A from Southampton to Lymington via Millbrook, Totton & Lyndhurst passes from Wilts & Dorset to the Bluestar brand. For a number of reasons, this is an interesting move, not least because henceforward it will be a joint operation between W&D’s Lymington garage and Bluestar’s Totton.
More than that, the five of W&D’s Lymington contingent employed on what will become the Bluestar 6 will be painted in the whey blue shade adopted by Bluestar. This means W&D crews, operating W&D buses but in Bluestar livery. And more. When the new 6s arrive at Southampton, they will immediately work short on the 10/11 to Cadnam. Crews at W&D and Bluestar enjoy different conditions and the changes bring with them some opportunities with which management will need to grapple. And, interworking will see Bluestar drivers finding their way to Lymington. That’ll make a nice change for them.
The appointment of former Transdev Yellow Buses man Ed Wills as divisional director for both W&D and Bluestar cemented Bluestar as effectively an operation of W&D. Here, we see the first outward benefit of that restructuring. Actually, it has an appealing lateral thinking behind it. For, in one swift move, the benefits to all concerned will be as follows:
- It strengthens Bluestar’s position along the Southampton-Millbrook-Totton corridor. Bluestar’s 10/11/12 currently operate clockface every 15 minutes. From 27th February, add the 6 and they will run six times an hour, without any extra resource. This will foster growth, and some.
- The Bluestar brand is much stronger in Southampton. W&D is less so. There are obvious marketing benefits.
- Punctuality will improve across the (5)6, 10 and 11. Between them, there will now also be an additional bus to help with reliability & punctuality instead of one on each individual cycle. All three suffered from problems and later this month each bus will step back. This will particularly assist with the challenging summer traffic in Lymington & Lyndhurst.
The interesting operational thing here is that the plan is that each night Totton vehicles will outstation at Lymington but will be driven by Lymington staff before returning to Totton the following day.
How can this be, when ticket machines are not inter-operable? Actually, this will be possible after the introduction of new ticket machines that can operate on across the entire Go South Coast operation.The stretch particularly south of Lyndhurst doesn’t really warrant a half-hourly service. The old H&D 56/56A used to operate half-hourly Southampton to Lyndhurst only, with hourly extensions to Lymington. Go South Coast continues to see the benefit at least operationally of two buses to and from Lymington… but might there actually be an opportunity to send one of them to Ringwood, instead? Aside from the rumpus this might cause at Lymington, this would reintroduce a Ringwood-Southampton service, a journey that is now most difficult following the fall of Dorset Sprinter’s.
10 comments:
I'd heard that Go Ahead group standard ERGs are due at BlueStar a week ahead of this change; presumably Lymington will be the first Wilts' depot to receive them.
I'd be surprised if Ringwood featured - the major traffic generator south of Lyndhurst for 38 weeks of the year is Brockenhurst College, which produces a steady flow of students using the service throughout the day. I doubt Ringwood could ever match that.
Takes me even further back to a brief period of working for Hants and Dorset just after the King Alfred takeover. The Lymington service then carried on to Bournemouth and outside of the main urban areas at each end played "hunt the passenger". The more direct limited stop services through the New Forest were much the same.
I wish this latest initiative the best of success.
might there actually be an opportunity to send one of them to Ringwood, instead . . . this would reintroduce a Ringwood-Southampton service, a journey that is now most difficult following the fall of Dorset Sprinter’s.
Good one Busing, like that idea very much!
Any more routes in the pipeline for a blue conversion ? The 65 and X7 might be two candidates, and perhaps then all the Romsey area W&D ones ?
The Ringwood situation is that now it tales over two hours to get to Southampton. Effectivley the town is cut off from anuwhere of major importance in its own county. The 35 taxibus is no good because it is morning only amd the timetable set for those wanting to visit Ringwood. The NatEx coach is an option, and attractive for journeys in to town, but risky for the return due to the coaches having started at places like Bradford. Plenty of opportunity for long delays there.
Now, could BS and WD get together a usable service that is attractive to those needing to travel between Ringwoood and Southampton and also either with through routing, or ticketing wtih quick connectionsto Bournemouth? Thoughtfully timed it might reduce journeys that are in great effect dead runs.
If this goes well, which I'm sure it will, then surely the 65 (Eastleigh-Romsey) and 112 (Hythe-Lymington) are prime candidates to go blue next. They both run between major Bluestar destinations where the brand image of W&D is certainly not as strong as it is in Salisbury or Bournemouth.
Ringwood is becoming one of those rural ghettos where, unless you have a car don't expect much choice of public transport.
The Dorset Sprinter, and attempts before that, appear to have failed because most people in Ringwood have cars and those who don't have a concession of some kind, either child tickets or free concession pass. Combined with Southampton City Council's notoriously low reimbursement rate for concession travel any attempt at inter-urban travel to and from Southampton is pretty much doomed unless there is something in between to generate trips.
Some of the comments above are utter rubbish!
Ringwood a rural ghetto - Get real!
It may not be connected to the National Rail network, but there are 3 fast buses per hour to Bournemouth and two to Salisbury, plus plenty of other more local travel options. Even on a winter Sunday there's an hourly bus to both Salisbury and Bournemouth.
There's also an excellent National Express network for longer distance travel, which would be the envy of many a larger town or city. Southampton services have been tried, boosted, marketed and just do not generate the volume of passengers needed to make money precisely because these other centres draw a significant proportion of the available trade.
Likewise this obsession that routes will become BlueStar. Why? BlueStar is a very specific product - high frequency links to/from and across Southampton.
The 112 doesn't fit this niche, neither does the 65 or the other Romsey locals. The 56 group has been incorporated as Busing stated on this blog primarily to boost the offer on the Totton to Southampton corridor, which it achieves.
I'd be very surprised if any of the other routes quoted follow; in fact they're more likely to be lost on tender to Fred Bloggs coaches.
I'm inclined to agree with Venturer about Ringwood. Transport Direct currently gives a fastest journey by public transport (bus and train) to Southampton (Rail station) of 1 hour and 19 minutes (and that seems to be repeated an hour later), by connection at Christchurch, so it is not always 2 hours. Admittedly, that is rather more than the limited stop buses used to require, but presumably National Express is quicker - there just weren't any that came up for the time I input.
Before the limited stop 27 was introduced, there would only have been the railway or the H&D 13 group of services, neither of which were particularly direct, although I suppose there would also have been Royal Blue services then (I think the 27 started around 1965). From my recollection, the amount of traffic between Poulner and Southampton on the 27 (later X27 and then X2) varied considerably, but it was clear that most of the revenue came from the Poulner-Bournemouth section. As I think I have mentioned before, the 27 timetable meant that it only involved a peak bus in the afternoons, as the first journeys left Bournemouth and Southampton around 0830. There was also usually 25-30 minutes wait at the terminus at either end, so there might have been scope for interworking - so I imagine that the operating costs would have been relatively low.
The 13/A workings became the X17, later X1, and they would have required 2 complete peak vehicles - and in my experience the traffic was similarly variable, and often light, east of Poulner. When the Salisbury-Bournemouth service was made limited stop between Ringwood and Bournemouth using the A338, this would have been a more attractive service over that section, so would probably have drawn traffic away from the Southampton routes. Later still, in the '90s, an additional service between Southampton and Bournemouth (X5) was introduced, which was virtually non-stop apart from Ringwood, but from my limited experience seemed to carry very few passengers. I cannot help but think that, at that stage, the route became over-bussed, and this presumably ruined the profitability of all of the services concerned. However, I rather doubt that there is very much scope to 'turn the clock back' - the fast Salisbury-Bournemouth service is presumably commercially successful for W&D, but an extra bus over part of the route would potentially damage that, and Southampton-Ringwood would seem not to generate sufficient demand to be free-standing.
The 56 has also had a chequered history. Robert is probably right about the level of traffic then, though I think he is slightly out with the dates - the old 19/20 group of services were curtailed to run between Lymington and Bournemouth around 1970, while the KA takeover was in 1973. For about a year, immediately after deregulation, the 56 was run by Maybury's of Cranborne, as far as I am aware on a tender, so presumably none of the major players wanted it at that time.
Venturer said "The 112 doesn't fit this niche,"
Yesterday I passed a Lymington Spectra in its splendid newly applied BlueStar livery heading to.... hang on it's going to Hythe on the middle of the day 112. That made me think of this thread again, especially as the Spectra was followed by a standard W&D Solo working the 56 (sorry 6) to Southampton then presumably taking it's turn on BlueStar 10/11 before the return working to Lymington. So conspiracy theorists what do you think?
Post a Comment