Largest Town with No Sunday Bus Services

[Mutant Lemming]

I was contemplating a trip to Newark to visit the AEC Rally and on checking up on getting from the station to the rally site found no available bus service. On checking the public transport guide for Newark I found only one route operating on a Sunday at 2 hourly intervals to Nottingham. Am quite surprised how poor Sundays (and evening) services are for a town the size of Newark but suspect there are probably worse examples for provision of bus services on a Sunday (although apart from no services they couldn't be much worse).
What is the largest town with a Sunday 'curfew' for bus travellers ?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I was contemplating a trip to Newark to visit the AEC Rally and on checking up on getting from the station to the rally site found no available bus service. On checking the public transport guide for Newark I found only one route operating on a Sunday at 2 hourly intervals to Nottingham. Am quite surprised how poor Sundays (and evening) services are for a town the size of Newark but suspect there are probably worse examples for provision of bus services on a Sunday (although apart from no services they couldn't be much worse).
What is the largest town with a Sunday 'curfew' for bus travellers ?

Answered several times on this forum

It is Shrewsbury with a population >70k. Yeovil is also bereft with >45k without a Sunday service. Of course, all of these do have rail services so some connectivity with the real world, as do Newark's 27k inhabitants.

Middlewich with >13k natives has no bus or rail (AFAIK) so may be the largest place without anything. Tredegar with 15k was the largest but now does have a few sporadic links on the X4.

 

[daodao]

Answered several times on this forum

It is Shrewsbury with a population >70k. Yeovil is also bereft with >45k without a Sunday service. Of course, all of these do have rail services so some connectivity with the real world, as do Newark's 27k inhabitants.

Middlewich with >13k natives has no bus or rail (AFAIK) so may be the largest place without anything. Tredegar with 15k was the largest but now does have a few sporadic links on the X4.

From April 2018, it is proposed that most East Cheshire towns (including Macclesfield), not just Middlewich, will have no Sunday (or evening) services when East Cheshire reduce bus service subsidies. Commercial services 3, 84 and 85 may continue to serve Crewe (and Alsager/Nantwich) on Sundays, and the 199 via Disley will remain. However, all East Cheshire towns (bar Middlewich) have Sunday rail services.

Winsford (in West Cheshire) also has no Sunday bus services, despite its relative social/economic deprivation, although it does have a rail station (albeit poorly sited for the town centre).

Most towns in Salop also have no Sunday bus services, and Market Drayton, Ellesmere and Bridgnorth have no Sunday public transport at all (except for the SVR in the case of Bridgnorth).

 

[ivanhoe]

Shrewsbury really surprises me in respect of its bus services. I take Loughborough which is similar in size, but on Sunday has at least hourly services around town and to Nottingham during the day. Arriva has two an hour during the day from Leicester. I have a mate who lives in Shrewsbury and he tells me that many parts of town don't see Services after 7.30 during the week. This is Arriva territory but I have good experiences with Arriva in Loughborough. What is it about Shrewsbury that has so little to offer in terms of bus travel? Is its relative isolation when comparing with say Loughborough?

 

[Rich McLean]

Boston is another one (not sure about IC7 by Stagecoach) but Brylaine run nothing on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Shrewsbury really surprises me in respect of its bus services. I take Loughborough which is similar in size, but on Sunday has at least hourly services around town and to Nottingham during the day. Arriva has two an hour during the day from Leicester. I have a mate who lives in Shrewsbury and he tells me that many parts of town don't see Services after 7.30 during the week. This is Arriva territory but I have good experiences with Arriva in Loughborough. What is it about Shrewsbury that has so little to offer in terms of bus travel? Is its relative isolation when comparing with say Loughborough?

The latter point. Loughborough has Nottingham and Leicester on the doorstep. Shrewsbury has Telford and Oswestry!

 

[Mitch in Notts]

Boston is another one (not sure about IC7 by Stagecoach) but Brylaine run nothing on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Add in Gainsborough, Sleaford, Stamford, Market Rasen all in Lincolnshire. Retford in Nottinghamshire has two Sunday departures on the Nottingham service and is only slightly smaller than Newark.

Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire has two departures on the Leicester service. The County of Rutland has no Sunday bus services.....

 

[overthewater]

Why is England so bad at providing a Sunday bus service? Again going back to English council who seem to dislike paying for them, Many Scottish council continue to pay for such routes. Also you would think First/ Stagecoach / Go Ahead would be trying to get more shoppers on these busy days. Again this is why people partly refuse to take the bus, Many people now have shift that include Sundays and if you to pay for taxis on top of the weekly ticket its not worth it.

 

[Taunton]

I wonder in these places, before the Sunday services were finally withdrawn, how many actually used them.

Many Scottish council continue to pay for such routes.

I do recall, 40 years ago, in Scotland, that there would be quite a generous bus timetable on Sundays, possibly surpassing what you get today on weekdays. However large amounts of it were never operated, because Sunday work had been agreed as "voluntary" with the crews, and it proved impossible to get more than a fraction to ever volunteer for it. As a result, if a bus did occasionally turn up, nobody was waiting for it. There were a small handful of "priority" runs, to hospital visiting and such like, which were normally driven by long-suffering inspectors or depot managers.

 

[me123]

In Scotland, there's no archaic trading laws on Sunday so there's quite a lot of demand throughout the day for travel to major retail centres.

That said, I suppose that in England and Wales it would be relatively easy to provide a Sunday service to the shops; as they only open for six hours a day most routes could easily be covered by a single shift of drivers.

 

[Robertj21a]

Why is England so bad at providing a Sunday bus service? Again going back to English council who seem to dislike paying for them, Many Scottish council continue to pay for such routes. Also you would think First/ Stagecoach / Go Ahead would be trying to get more shoppers on these busy days. Again this is why people partly refuse to take the bus, Many people now have shift that include Sundays and if you to pay for taxis on top of the weekly ticket its not worth it.

Probably, too many potential passengers have access to a car on a Sunday.

 

[overthewater]

Probably, too many potential passengers have access to a car on a Sunday.

That not a good reason.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Why is England so bad at providing a Sunday bus service? Again going back to English council who seem to dislike paying for them, Many Scottish council continue to pay for such routes. Also you would think First/ Stagecoach / Go Ahead would be trying to get more shoppers on these busy days. Again this is why people partly refuse to take the bus, Many people now have shift that include Sundays and if you to pay for taxis on top of the weekly ticket its not worth it.

There are many, many more commercial Sunday services than were ever operated. That reflects the increase in Sunday trading but the number of commuters is negligible and there's no ability to run services off the back of schools services.

Of course, funding for Scotland is higher per capita because of the Barnett formula so that skews things significantly.

I'd recommend people acquire a bus timetable from the 1970s and 1990s and see how Sunday services have changed, some worse and some better.

 

[overthewater]

There are many, many more commercial Sunday services than were ever operated. That reflects the increase in Sunday trading but the number of commuters is negligible and there's no ability to run services off the back of schools services.

Of course, funding for Scotland is higher per capita because of the Barnett formula so that skews things significantly.

I'd recommend people acquire a bus timetable from the 1970s and 1990s and see how Sunday services have changed, some worse and some better.

Bernett is a poor scapegoat, Scotland has a tiny population compared to England, Many place in England have much bigger populations with more money and yet still can't afford it? Also Northern Ireland get more than Scotland.

Is Part of the problem the fact there a higher number of tiny hamlets in England compared to Scotland and thats where alot of the money is ending up? Shrewsbury -70k yet no Sunday service, Does Arriva not believe there no need for it? Council area is 482,500 that bigger than 30/32 Scottish councils. Maybe its because of the strange two tier council set up? Yet that does not apply to Shropshire since its Unitary council.

70s compared to 90s or now is mute point since its a complete different way of life, pubs are open longer, we no longer have coal mines

I dont believe commuter are negligible on sundays, shift workers, shop worker, hospital, Amazon, call centres, warehouses. Theres more and more people working and with certain job because there highly regulated it should be easy as said by others to provide effective bus service with limted resources, which has been done in many areas. But certain companies are not willing to try?

Also remember this important fact; for every penny spent in Scotland on one type of service, it most likley a different service might get fewer resources compared to doon south.

 

[Andyh82]

In urban big commercial bus areas like say West Yorkshire, go back to the 90s and 'evenings and sundays' was treat as the same thing, so whatever the frequency was it'd be the same for evenings and Sundays.

Now it is more likely that the Sunday daytime service has been improved but the the evening service reduced. So a 10 min route on weekdays would likely have been every 30 evenings and Sundays, but would now be every 20 on Sundays but hourly evenings.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Bernett is a poor scapegoat, Scotland has a tiny population compared to England, Many place in England have much bigger populations with more money and yet still can't afford it? Also Northern Ireland get more than Scotland.

Is Part of the problem the fact there a higher number of tiny hamlets in England compared to Scotland and thats where alot of the money is ending up? Shrewsbury -70k yet no Sunday service, Does Arriva not believe there no need for it? Council area is 482,500 that bigger than 30/32 Scottish councils. Maybe its because of the strange two tier council set up? Yet that does not apply to Shropshire since its Unitary council.

70s compared to 90s or now is mute point since its a complete different way of life, pubs are open longer, we no longer have coal mines

I dont believe commuter are negligible on sundays, shift workers, shop worker, hospital, Amazon, call centres, warehouses. Theres more and more people working and with certain job because there highly regulated it should be easy as said by others to provide effective bus service with limted resources, which has been done in many areas. But certain companies are not willing to try?

Also remember this important fact; for every penny spent in Scotland on one type of service, it most likley a different service might get fewer resources compared to doon south.

What are you on about? This is the fact http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04033/SN04033.pdf - local government funding in England per person £8,816 (3% below the UK average) whilst Scotland is £10,536 (16% above the UK average).

That is a massive difference. Seeing as you were comparing Scotland vs England, what does Northern Ireland have to do with anything???

As I say, the actual number of COMMERCIAL Sunday services is actually much higher than it was in the 1970s and 1990s even. Also, while you may think that Sunday working isn't negligible; well I suggest you go to a business park on a Sunday - we are still very much a Monday to Friday world even now. Even call centres have markedly fewer staff working in them. Whilst many retail distribution centres work seven days, those for manufacturers do not.

Shrewsbury is a 70k person island in what is a largely rural county. Remember that it did have Sunday services - Arriva knew the ridership. They could've kept them going but they didn't because there wasn't the demand.

I've quoted this example before but Somerset had very few Sunday services in the early 1990s. There were

• 3 x Taunton to Minehead
• 2 x Taunton to Street (acting as placement journeys only)
• 4 x Street to Bristol
• 3 x Glastonbury to Bath
• 5 x Wells to Weston
• 1 x Wincanton to Yeovil (Bingo Bus)

That was it. Now the council got their Rural Bus funding and laid on a massive network of Sunday services. However, that was pulled in 2011 and all subsidies were withdrawn. First did carry on and so we still have

• Street to Bristol - hourly (now increased to 30 mins)
• Wells to Bath - hourly
• 4 x Wells to Weston
• Taunton to Burnham on Sea - hourly
• Taunton local - Wellsprings - hourly
• Taunton to Wellington - hourly
• Taunton to Minehead - hourly

They withdrew some immediately and they did try to persevere with Wells to Yeovil but it didn't last. They have also tried to introduce Taunton to Somerton but again it didn't last - they have tried.

Fact is that despite the increase in Sunday trading and the increase in COMMERCIAL services, many other routes cannot survive without council funding. There is less of that in England per capita.

 

[Ginga]

The Sunday 90 Marshalls service between Nottingham and Newark used to be funded by Notts County Council not sure if it still is. Same with the Nct 100 between Nottingham and Southwell. The Kinchbus 9 which is every 2 hours on Sunday is commercial. The Trent Barton 20 service was funded but was very cheap per passenger to run. As it had average loads of 18. Which for a funded Notts County Council service was pretty high.

 

[Taunton]

What premium rates are drivers paid for Sunday work nowadays?

Taunton to Burnham on Sea - hourly

In the 1960s on summer Sundays this used to run to maybe three duplicates on the 2pm from Taunton, and at 6pm back from Burnham.

Burnham is a dreary, featureless resort (sorry, if you are from Burnham), just along the coast from the much more bustling (and better beach) Weston-Super-Mare, but the old Western National/Bristol Omnibus area boundary was always there, so no through buses. Interesting that it still applies.

 

[KendalKing]

What premium rates are drivers paid for Sunday work nowadays?

When I left the bus industry about 3-years ago, drivers were paid the same hourly rate for a Sunday, as per any other day.

 

[radamfi]

As some people reading this will already know, I've largely stopped using buses in Britain outside London. Sunday is one of the two days of the week I would most likely want to be using buses so when I want to travel on Sunday buses it makes sense to do so outside the UK. When travelling around the Netherlands on Sunday I sometimes try to find significant settlements that have no Sunday service. Buses are largely irrelevant in the Netherlands due to the overwhelming dominance of bikes for short distance travel, yet high quality bus services are provided seven days a week, and usually late into the evening, even on Sunday. The largest place I have found so far with no Sunday bus/train service is Lage Zwaluwe, population around 4,000, although there is a railway station about 2 miles away which takes the name of the village.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

What premium rates are drivers paid for Sunday work nowadays?


In the 1960s on summer Sundays this used to run to maybe three duplicates on the 2pm from Taunton, and at 6pm back from Burnham.

Burnham is a dreary, featureless resort (sorry, if you are from Burnham), just along the coast from the much more bustling (and better beach) Weston-Super-Mare, but the old Western National/Bristol Omnibus area boundary was always there, so no through buses. Interesting that it still applies.

I agree on Burnham's charms but it seemed to founder like many resorts in the 1960s. At least it now gets year round services.

As an aside, First did transfer the 112 to Somerset so there was a through service for two years incl Sunday but it suffered from massive reliability issues. Also, in the early 1990s, Badgerline ran the X2 Bristol to Weston to Highbridge then extending every two hours to Bridgwater and Taunton, but I digress. To be fully pedantic, there was a bit of an overlap in the boundary as WNOC ran through to Burnham but BOC maintained the depot at Highbridge.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

As some people reading this will already know, I've largely stopped using buses in Britain outside London. Sunday is one of the two days of the week I would most likely want to be using buses so when I want to travel on Sunday buses it makes sense to do so outside the UK. When travelling around the Netherlands on Sunday I sometimes try to find significant settlements that have no Sunday service. Buses are largely irrelevant in the Netherlands due to the overwhelming dominance of bikes for short distance travel, yet high quality bus services are provided seven days a week, and usually late into the evening, even on Sunday. The largest place I have found so far with no Sunday bus/train service is Lage Zwaluwe, population around 4,000, although there is a railway station about 2 miles away which takes the name of the village.

You do tickle me, old fruit. "when I want to travel on Sunday buses it makes sense to do so outside the UK" - that barely makes sense

The fact is that the Netherlands pay the money to have a comprehensive service. We do not and increasingly so as the extent of government funding cuts become apparent. Of course, that could change on 9th June when Jezza is swept to power :roll:

 

[Deerfold]

In urban big commercial bus areas like say West Yorkshire, go back to the 90s and 'evenings and sundays' was treat as the same thing, so whatever the frequency was it'd be the same for evenings and Sundays.

Now it is more likely that the Sunday daytime service has been improved but the the evening service reduced. So a 10 min route on weekdays would likely have been every 30 evenings and Sundays, but would now be every 20 on Sundays but hourly evenings.

Hmm, there's been a lot more reductions than increases.

Only 11 routes in West Yorkshire have a 20 minute or better frequency on a Sunday daytime:

1 Holt Park to Leeds and Beeston
6 Holt Park to Leeds
36 Leeds - Harrogate
72 Bradford to Leeds
110 Leeds to Wakefield
126/7 Wakefield to Dewsbury
372 Almondbury to Huddersfield.
503 Halifax to Huddersfield
521 Halifax to Illingworth
576 Halifax to Bradford
645 Buttershaw to Bradford & Greengates

Of these, only the 503 has dropped to an hourly evening service - but this is accompanied by the similar hourly evening only 501.

There are many services in West Yorkshire where the Sunday service has remained half hourly and the evening service has dropped to hourly.

The 662 Bradford - Leeds Sunday daytime service was every 20 minutes in the mid-nineties, but only half hourly now.

On the other hand the 760 Keighley to Leeds has improved from hourly to half-hourly Sunday daytime to match the weekday daytime service.

The M4 Burnley to Keighley has, in recent years, doubled its daytime frequency to half hourly and improved its evening service to finish 3 hours later but still only runs every 2 hours on Sundays with no evening service.

The 66 Keighley - Skipton, which is promoted as a premium service has seen little improvement to its Sunday service (it now runs to Keighley an hour earlier, arriving at 1100!) and a few years ago lost its late evening service - the last bus from Keighley is 3 hours earlier than on a weekday at 2000.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Hmm, there's been a lot more reductions than increases.

Only 11 routes in West Yorkshire have a 20 minute or better frequency on a Sunday daytime:

1 Holt Park to Leeds and Beeston
6 Holt Park to Leeds
36 Leeds - Harrogate
72 Bradford to Leeds
110 Leeds to Wakefield
126/7 Wakefield to Dewsbury
372 Almondbury to Huddersfield.
503 Halifax to Huddersfield
521 Halifax to Illingworth
576 Halifax to Bradford
645 Buttershaw to Bradford & Greengates

Of these, only the 503 has dropped to an hourly evening service - but this is accompanied by the similar hourly evening only 501.

There are many services in West Yorkshire where the Sunday service has remained half hourly and the evening service has dropped to hourly.

The 662 Bradford - Leeds Sunday daytime service was every 20 minutes in the mid-nineties, but only half hourly now.

On the other hand the 760 Keighley to Leeds has improved from hourly to half-hourly Sunday daytime to match the weekday daytime service.

The M4 Burnley to Keighley has, in recent years, doubled its daytime frequency to half hourly and improved its evening service to finish 3 hours later but still only runs half-hourly on Sundays with no evening service.

The 66 Keighley - Skipton, which is promoted as a premium service has seen little improvement to its Sunday service (it now runs to Keighley an hour earlier, arriving at 1100!) and a few years ago lost its late evening service - the last bus from Keighley is 3 hours earlier than on a weekday at 2000.

In respect of Sunday services, both you and the earlier poster are right to highlight the disparity in the frequency of Sunday daytime vs. evenings (esp Sunday evenings).

As I've mentioned before, the decline of evening patronage is perhaps as much to do with seemingly many more private hire/taxis on the roads, the fragmentation of the evening trade with later closing times, etc. Also, the general decline of the on-trade for drinking.

Of course, through the week there is the potential for dealing with later shopping hours and getting those same shop workers home etc. Hence why services can be justified to "mid evening" (e.g. 2000/2100) and that may help in enabling a later service to be run.

The Sunday trading laws mean that 1700 is often the cut off so that shapes the service pattern unless the LAs/PTEs support the service. This is really apparent in Co. Durham where few evening Sunday services operate now since the council withdrew funding.

 

[overthewater]

I was on about if you still have more people overall you still going to have more many. Shropshire still get more money than North Lanarkshire.

I still believe its cheaper to run service for more people. My point about NI is there make even more out of the funding.

Business parks isn't where people are traveling to on Sundays, its shops and Call centres or dockyards. I know plenty of people who work Sunday - Wednesday shifts at Call Centres but refuse to use the bus service because of the poor Sunday network,

Real problem is council have one set of ideas and route, which should operate on Sundays, when in reality the council has failed to understand what it believe needs to run is pointless and neglect to operate routes which would be beneficial.

 

[anti-pacer]

In the case of West Yorkshire, I think service provision is poorer than in the 90's, certainly between towns in a lot of cases.

Back then there were services that are no longer;

Bradford-Skipton
Bradford-Ilkley
Bradford-Worth Valley villages
Bradford-Sheffield via Barnsley
Halifax-Keighley
Leeds-Sheffield via Barnsley
Leeds-Holmfirth
Leeds-Doncaster
Leeds-Bradford via Yeadon

In North Yorkshire there are no services anymore between;

Skipton-Harrogate
York-Harrogate

...but yet you can travel from Skipton to Manchester and Preston, and York to Pontefract.

 

[radamfi]

You do tickle me, old fruit. "when I want to travel on Sunday buses it makes sense to do so outside the UK" - that barely makes sense

The fact is that the Netherlands pay the money to have a comprehensive service. We do not and increasingly so as the extent of government funding cuts become apparent. Of course, that could change on 9th June when Jezza is swept to power :roll:

Thanks to easyJet, Ryanair, Eurostar, Stena Line, OUIBUS, Flixbus and Eurolines, the Netherlands is readily accessible. This thread is all about how poor and often non-existent Sunday services are in England, so if there's an alternative, why not use them?

 

[Deerfold]

In the case of West Yorkshire, I think service provision is poorer than in the 90's, certainly between towns in a lot of cases.

Back then there were services that are no longer;

Bradford-Skipton
Bradford-Ilkley
Bradford-Worth Valley villages
Bradford-Sheffield via Barnsley
Halifax-Keighley
Leeds-Sheffield via Barnsley
Leeds-Holmfirth
Leeds-Doncaster
Leeds-Bradford via Yeadon

In North Yorkshire there are no services anymore between;

Skipton-Harrogate
York-Harrogate

...but yet you can travel from Skipton to Manchester and Preston, and York to Pontefract.

Bradford to Skipton was simply split in two (and the Skipton services then split up into the 66 and 78A, the 66 being fast and the 78A going all round the houses).

Bradford to Ilkley is a bugger to do (especially with the 653 being withdrawn).

There's still one a day from Bradford to Worth Valley villages on the 698, but there did used to be 4 an hour (3 via Keighley).

However the Bradford to Skipton and Worth Valley buses used to wait 10 minutes or more in Keighley bus station - I remember missing a bus, getting the next one to Keighley and running to the next stop to catch the one I'd missed a few times.

A tendered Halifax to Keighley bus is currently being considered (with operators having submitted tenders).

I suspect most of the express passengers from Leeds to Sheffield moved onto National Express - at one point they upped their frequency to every 30 minutes on that section of route.

I'm not sure a Leeds - Bradford via Yeadon is the most obvious missing link - though there's a distinct lack of buses between Bradford and Guiseley.

Skipton to Harrogate would be a very useful link.

There are buses between Harrogate and York - with a choice of routes. No quick ones, though.

http://www.yorkbus.co.uk/cmsUploads/route/files/littleexplorerAug16web.pdf

http://www.connexionsbuses.com/content/uploads/2017/02/412-X70-York-only-07-11-16.pdf

There's also been a massive loss of express services - the X36/37 were well used by me between Halifax and Huddersfield, as was the M62 between Halifax and Leeds. I do remember

Of course many of the routes you list saw massive improvements in the parallel rail routes. Of course some people, living some distance from a station, would prefer the bus, but many passengers simply transferred.

 

[anti-pacer]

Bradford to Skipton was simply split in two (and the Skipton services then split up into the 66 and 78A, the 66 being fast and the 78A going all round the houses).

Bradford to Ilkley is a bugger to do (especially with the 653 being withdrawn).

There's still one a day from Bradford to Worth Valley villages on the 698, but there did used to be 4 an hour (3 via Keighley).

However the Bradford to Skipton and Worth Valley buses used to wait 10 minutes or more in Keighley bus station - I remember missing a bus, getting the next one to Keighley and running to the next stop to catch the one I'd missed a few times.

A tendered Halifax to Keighley bus is currently being considered (with operators having submitted tenders).

I suspect most of the express passengers from Leeds to Sheffield moved onto National Express - at one point they upped their frequency to every 30 minutes on that section of route.

I'm not sure a Leeds - Bradford via Yeadon is the most obvious missing link - though there's a distinct lack of buses between Bradford and Guiseley.

Skipton to Harrogate would be a very useful link.

There are buses between Harrogate and York - with a choice of routes. No quick ones, though.

http://www.yorkbus.co.uk/cmsUploads/route/files/littleexplorerAug16web.pdf

http://www.connexionsbuses.com/content/uploads/2017/02/412-X70-York-only-07-11-16.pdf

There's also been a massive loss of express services - the X36/37 were well used by me between Halifax and Huddersfield, as was the M62 between Halifax and Leeds. I do remember

Of course many of the routes you list saw massive improvements in the parallel rail routes. Of course some people, living some distance from a station, would prefer the bus, but many passengers simply transferred.

In the 80's there used to be an express bus that ran via the M1 between Leeds and Wakefield. I can't remember the route number.

In terms of the old 655/755 Leeds-Bradford via Yeadon buses. I used them a lot as a kid, travelling normally from right outside a relative's house on the main road (Keighley Road) in Frizinghall to the Emmott Arms in Rawdon to my grandad's. Sometimes I also used it back to Shipley station after visiting my grandad, although so generally went into Leeds to get the train back to Keighley, then bus to Colne, by way of McDonald's at the St John's Centre.

Between Bradford and Guiseley back then, there was a bus on them combined routes every 30 mins alone. There were also the Harrogate and Ilkley buses. Now there's one an hour with a few Otley buses at sporadic times.

 

[SCH117X]

Skipton to Harrogate would be a very useful link.
[\QUOTE]
The X59 between the towns along the A59 failed as a commercial service once NYCC withdrew its subsidy. Prior to that their had been various services via Otley and Ikley - the last being the Harrogate & District X50, originally started as Harrogate to York it was extended in the opposite direction and the timetable ended up with more Skiptons than Yorks. It was withdrawn to release vehicles for an enhanced 36 between Leeds and Ripon. Slightly surprised Connexions have not extended their X52 from Ilkley but then given their owners obsession with getting gone over Transdev if they did it would be to Keighley rather than Skipton