Cities with duplicated bus numbers

Dai Corner said:

I've just remembered that Bristol Omnibus used to use a C suffix when a journey on a route which was normally cross-city terminated in the city centre.

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And L for anything else not working the full route, and J for Shadow Factory or Severn Road and F for Rodney or Smelting Works!

Mutant Lemming said:

Liverpool has two 14's and two 61's (Arriva and Halton)

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Arrivas 61 is an outer city route which runs from Bootle Strand to Aigburth. It crosses the Stagecoach/Arriva 14 at Broadway,the Halton Transport 61 at Queens Drive/Thingwall Road and the Halton Transport 14 at Queens Drive/Childwall Fiveways.
In Queen Square Bus Station in the City Centre Halton 14 stops in Bay 1, Halton 61 in Bay 2 and Stagecoach/Arriva 14 in Bay 7.

The Halton 61 is derived from the old J61 which was Whiston Hospital-Runcorn, after D-Reg Halton renumbered it to 61, eventually extended it to Liverpool City Centre via the old 76.
Halton 14 may have been a local route in Widnes which was then extended to Liverpool after Crosville[may have been North Western] withdrew the H30 from the Liverpool area.

Statto said:

The Halton 61 is derived from the old J61 which was Whiston Hospital-Runcorn, after D-Reg Halton renumbered it to 61, eventually extended it to Liverpool City Centre via the old 76.
Halton 14 may have been a local route in Widnes which was then extended to Liverpool after Crosville[may have been North Western] withdrew the H30 from the Liverpool area.

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I think that Halton 14 was Widnes-Hough Green Farm.

Deerfold said:

One of the benefits of indigo (and previously the R5) is it's replaced all the other numbers these routes used to have.

The included duplicates of 1, 3, 10, 14, 54, 506 as well as the unduplicated 3C, 310, R5, R5B, R5C, R5X.

NCT no longer run their FastLine 506.

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It's good that they eliminated duplicates with NCT routes, but less good that it results in buses having the same route identifier serving (at one time) three different branches. What's wrong with indigo 1, indigo 2, indigo 3?

The East Midlands Airport branch of Indigo is now Skylink Nottingham and takes a slightly faster route avoiding Beeston and Derby Road. Skylink Nottingham itself has two branches beyond the airport, both of which take fairly convoluted routes through various villages. So a passenger from the airport to Diseworth can use a Skylink Nottingham on its way to Coalville but not Loughborough, or a Skylink Derby on its way to Loughborough bot only if it doesn't go via Kegworth.

For a company that prides itself on being user-friendly, this is a real mess.

edwin_m said:

It's good that they eliminated duplicates with NCT routes, but less good that it results in buses having the same route identifier serving (at one time) three different branches. What's wrong with indigo 1, indigo 2, indigo 3?

The East Midlands Airport branch of Indigo is now Skylink Nottingham and takes a slightly faster route avoiding Beeston and Derby Road. Skylink Nottingham itself has two branches beyond the airport, both of which take fairly convoluted routes through various villages. So a passenger from the airport to Diseworth can use a Skylink Nottingham on its way to Coalville but not Loughborough, or a Skylink Derby on its way to Loughborough bot only if it doesn't go via Kegworth.

For a company that prides itself on being user-friendly, this is a real mess.

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It could be clearer, it's true. They do have suffixes on routes like the 3s and colours on some routes to indicate the route taken which would seem to be a logical thing to do here, although indigo has got simpler as Skylink has got more complicated.

Indigo buses do list all the major places they pass through on the destination board, not just a final destination.

The Skylink Derby one is potentially the most confusing as it's the only one you can't work out where it goes from the final destination.

When I first came to Newcastle I got on the wrong "1" on Market street when going to visit someone at coach lane. Driver informed me of my mistake though. My inner Londoner hadn't considered the possibility of same numbered routes on the same street before this.

Statto said:

The Halton 61 is derived from the old J61 which was Whiston Hospital-Runcorn, after D-Reg Halton renumbered it to 61, eventually extended it to Liverpool City Centre via the old 76.
.

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The J61 route number actually came from Crosville who jointly operated the service with Widnes Corporation and later Halton Transport. Widnes and Halton didn't use route numbers and their vehicles had nowhere to display them only showing destinations and via -

http://www.bus-photos.net/picture/show/16285/Widnes-38

Not sure when Halton eventually started using route numbers.

I remember seeing a site detailing the history of Hants and Dorset some years ago and noted that their lowest-numbered route in the early 80s or so was 30 (the Southampton-West Totton route), with the numbers going right up to 3xx for the Basingstoke area. A lot of the Blue Line route numbers used in the 1990s were inherited from these old numbers, e.g. the 52 to Petersfield or 48 to Fair Oak appeared to be long-standing rather than post-privatisation numbers.

I wonder if starting at 30 was a deliberate plan to avoid route clashes with Citybus in the Southampton area?

These days, by contrast, the main desire when numbering buses appears to be to get the number as low as possible. Difficult to find any three-digit routes these days, though I think (last time I looked, anyway) that the ex-Badgerline network in the Bath area still uses many of the three-digit numbers that were in use back in the 1990s. Not sure why high numbers for bus routes are deemed difficult to understand now when people appeared to make sense of them in the 1980s when they appeared to be commonplace... for instance, Alder Valley, London Country and Southdown services in the Chichester-Guildford general area _all_ seemed to be three-digit.

To be fair, thankfully I haven't seen duplicates from the same operator (until recently, we had two 1s in Southampton but one is Bluestar and one was First - now gone) though you do get some things like Stagecoach Hampshire having different route 1s for Winchester, Basingstoke and Andover. Probably won't cause confusion as they never run in the same town but even still, it seems conceptually 'neater' to have one operator (e.g. a local division of Stagecoach, etc) use unique numbers across its network.

Actually, if you look at the pattern here (in Hampshire) there has been a progressive lowering of numbers since privatisation. The first step was to eliminate the three digit numbers, so Stagecoach Hampshire for instance generally ran buses in the range 1-99. For a while, IIRC the Basingstoke services got numbers between about 50-70 for instance. Fair enough as it was a smaller company/division than the old Hampshire Bus/Hants and Dorset. More recently, though, even those numbers seem to be too high: the fashion on town services for the past 20 years or so definitely seems to be avoid going above about 10 where possible!

nickw1 said:

Actually, if you look at the pattern here (in Hampshire) there has been a progressive lowering of numbers since privatisation. The first step was to eliminate the three digit numbers, so Stagecoach Hampshire for instance generally ran buses in the range 1-99. For a while, IIRC the Basingstoke services got numbers between about 50-70 for instance. Fair enough as it was a smaller company/division than the old Hampshire Bus/Hants and Dorset. More recently, though, even those numbers seem to be too high: the fashion on town services for the past 20 years or so definitely seems to be avoid going above about 10 where possible!

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And it continues, sometimes for the second or third ''reduction".

One of the Bristol - Thornbury routes used to be the 309/609 (commercial/subsidised), it then became just the 309 (commercial & subsidised), then it became the 78. At the end of this month it will become the T2.

Not really a Town/City but County of Lancashire had duplicate numbers in across the County & LCC issued timetables were sorted by leaflet number rather than bus number, in Lancs you had Ribble which was the main company then municipals in Blackpool-Fylde-Preston-Lancaster & Morecambe-Blackburn-Burnley & Pendle-Rossendale, because of this all the Towns/Cities had there own local number system, Lancashire maybe winner of the County that had most Municipals.

In the Glasgow area, there are:
First 3: Drumchapel - Glasgow - Silverburn - Govan
First M3: Milton - Glasgow
First X3: Cumbernauld - Glasgow
McGills 3: Glasgow - Silverburn - Neilston

First 4: Newton Mearns/Muirend - Glasgow - Broomhill
First 4A: Eaglesham - Glasgow - Broomhill
First M4: Anniesland - Partick
First X4: Knightswood - Glasgow
McGills M4: Anniesland - Partick, Saturday morning journey
Stagecoach 4: Glasgow - Kilmarnock - Ayr

First 6: Clydebank - Glasgow - Calderwood
First 6A: Drumchapel - Glasgow
Glasgow Citybus 6B: Duntocher - Glasgow

The proposed revision of the NXWM Hagley Road services goes ahead in Birmingham, NXWM will have 2 number 13s in Dudley, proposals are to renumber the 127/128 to 13/13A to fit in with the other renumbering proposals, the other 13 is Dudley-Walsall which was 313.

Statto said:

The proposed revision of the NXWM Hagley Road services goes ahead in Birmingham, NXWM will have 2 number 13s in Dudley, proposals are to renumber the 127/128 to 13/13A to fit in with the other renumbering proposals, the other 13 is Dudley-Walsall which was 313.

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Not quite, as the 127 (13A) is cut back to Blackheath, meaning it won't operate to Dudley.

edwin_m said:

To my mind the use of duplicated numbers within a county isn't a problem but routes that touch each other anywhere or go into the same city/town centre should be forced to use different identification. I include in that the practice of Trent Barton to use a brand name like "indigo" but no other distinguishing feature other than the destination, for a route that has a common core but fans out to multiple termini.

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I do like NCT's A(lternative), B(efore), C(ontinues), X(press) number which seems to have dropped a bit out of use over the years as more journeys seem to run the full route nowadays.

SCH117X said:

Nottingham City Transport tried a similar number system when they first tried cross city service back in late 70s. It did not go down well as people were confused by having a number of differently numbered buses into the City but needing a completely different numbered (one route number only) bus to get home

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CT4N Remember - they have the 22 and 23 taking some very convoluted routes across the parts of the conurbation south of the Trent, with the 22 going one way and the 23 the other. On NCT the old red line services (44,45) were the last examples of that weren't they? Preston Bus used to have the 88A and 88C (IIRC) operating anti-clockwise and clockwise along the same (very long) route in opposite directions, with the 89 running both ways on part of it at one side of town, and IIRC the 87 doing the same at the other side of town.


Nothing's as confusing as Trent Bartons let's not use numbers but names and colour blobs which all look the same from a distance and aren't displayed on the real time departures screens and then run to wildly different destinations with the same name - come out the airport half asleep unfamilar with the area, get the Skylink and end up god knows where for the best example... Heading to say Ikea it's unclear of which Rainbow 1's (or whatever it's called nowadays) actually serve that side of town - IIRC only about 2/3 of the Rainbow 1's did and even looking at a map it's not clear which is which. Knowing that 101, 102, and 104 (for instance) will get you there, but not 103 is simple. Know that Rainbow 1, Rainbow 1, and Rainbow 1 will get you there, but not Rainbow 1 isn't. It's preferable to jump in the car than gamble on a Trent Barton bus getting you where you want to go.

Well in Greater Manchester you have
1: x3 (Bolton-Blackburn, Manchester Circular and Wigan Circular)
2: x3 ( Bolton-Trafford Centre, Wigan Circular, Manchester Circular)
6: x2 (Wigan circular, Rochdale circular)
7: x2 (Wigan-Bolton and Stockport-Ashton)
8: x2 (Wigan-Leigh and Bolton-Manchester)
10: x2 (Wigan-Leigh and Salford-Manchester) and a 10A route variation on Wigan-Leigh
18: x2 (Wythenshawe-Trafford Centre and Middleton-Manchester Royal Infirmary)
34: x2 (Leigh-St Helens and Manchester-Bryn)

You also have completely different 5 and 5A, 7 and 7A, 8 and 8A

Then after that only minor route variation A and E letters up to 100 with no more duplications but I lost the will to check the next 500 bus routes for duplications.....

edwin_m said:

The East Midlands Airport branch of Indigo is now Skylink Nottingham and takes a slightly faster route avoiding Beeston and Derby Road. Skylink Nottingham itself has two branches beyond the airport, both of which take fairly convoluted routes through various villages...

For a company that prides itself on being user-friendly, this is a real mess.

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And calling the Long Eaton service Skylink Nottingham is misleading when Skylink Clifton provides a quicker journey time between the city and the airport (40 mins v 58 mins), the Clifton route would be better as called along the lines of Skylink Nottingham Express.

kevjs said:

CT4N Remember - they have the 22 and 23 taking some very convoluted routes across the parts of the conurbation south of the Trent, with the 22 going one way and the 23 the other. On NCT the old red line services (44,45) were the last examples of that weren't they?

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NCT 8 and 9 have loops at both ends - they both go anticlockwise round the City Loop and the loop around Compton Acres and Musters Road is clockwise for the 8 and anticlockwise for the 9. In the evenings only the eastern half of the loop is served, with buses running outbound as 9B and inbound as 8. This loop also has a projection to Ruscliffe School where both routes serve stops in both directions, and to compound the confusion a couple of stops nearby are served by NCT's 9 and also by Kinch's!

SCH117X said:

And calling the Long Eaton service Skylink Nottingham is misleading when Skylink Clifton provides a quicker journey time between the city and the airport (40 mins v 58 mins), the Clifton route would be better as called along the lines of Skylink Nottingham Express.

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It used to be Skylink Express before they added the Clifton diversion. The one time I used it the diversion through speed-bumped suburban streets seemed interminable, to serve a batch of stops which would mostly have been within five minutes walk if it had stayed on the A453. So "Express" would probably be challengable under the Trade Descriptions Act!

kevjs said:

Nothing's as confusing as Trent Bartons let's not use numbers but names and colour blobs which all look the same from a distance and aren't displayed on the real time departures screens and then run to wildly different destinations with the same name - come out the airport half asleep unfamilar with the area, get the Skylink and end up god knows where for the best example... Heading to say Ikea it's unclear of which Rainbow 1's (or whatever it's called nowadays) actually serve that side of town - IIRC only about 2/3 of the Rainbow 1's did and even looking at a map it's not clear which is which. Knowing that 101, 102, and 104 (for instance) will get you there, but not 103 is simple. Know that Rainbow 1, Rainbow 1, and Rainbow 1 will get you there, but not Rainbow 1 isn't. It's preferable to jump in the car than gamble on a Trent Barton bus getting you where you want to go.

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Last time I used the rainbow one the 'doughnuts' were all different colours depending on the route out of Nottingham and there all blue going into Nottingham which did help. This does help when i try to het my bus home and its a spare bus as the stop that i can use has three other Trent routes use the stop so I just need to look for the yellow bus or red bus with yellow doughnut. Although some brands don't use the doughnuts like the ex indigo buses.

Derby has two route 4s. One by arriva via the ring road to Alveston and the other being a Notts and Derby uni bus. I think there is also two 7s (simular routes)

Despite Glasgow being mentioned a few times here i'm surprised no one has brought up the use of the number 1.

Especially given that Glasgow have the 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, C1, CB1, M1, 1 & X1, X1A!

Jordan Adam said:

Despite Glasgow being mentioned a few times here i'm surprised no one has brought up the use of the number 1.

Especially given that Glasgow have the 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, C1, CB1, M1, 1 & X1, X1A!

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And Bristol has the 3, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3X, X3, X3A, m3, m3x, T3, Y3 AND AG3. And the A3 at Bristol Airport!

-Colly405- said:

And Bristol has the 3, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3X, X3, X3A, m3, m3x, T3, Y3 AND AG3. And the A3 at Bristol Airport!

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Especially when you consider the 3 and 3C both trundle through Clifton on Whiteladies Road, operated by two different firms and with no connection between the two routes!

It is quite odd that the 3A 3B 3C and 3X are all variations on a 3 that no longer exists, and all have absolutely no link to the current 3!

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atraindriver said:

Do "the threes" still display A, B and C for the different routes? Meaning that if you get the, seemingly ever-increasing, flotilla of plain red buses coming round the corner you have a "threes" card at the bottom of the windscreen and the destination showing a route letter.
Why TB can't just show "3A", "3B" or "3C" I don't know, but they seem to have a real hatred of route numbers - unless they're the "cool and trendy" six-point-one etc., of course (which I've heard passengers in Derby bus station calling the sixty-one).

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I grew up in Derby in the 1950s where Corporation & Trent numbers were duplicated. Those were 2, 4, 11, 14, 31 and 42 at least and no-one was confused. Now, Trent seem to hate route numbers and this can lead to confusion for potential passengers and those who are unfamiliar with the area. There is no reason for Trent not to use numbers now as Arriva has mainly renumbered Derby routes as 1 - 9, a few 20s and a 38. Trent could easily renumber / redesignate their routes from 40 upwards in Derby and 100 up in Nottingham area.

Mal said:

I grew up in Derby in the 1950s where Corporation & Trent numbers were duplicated. Those were 2, 4, 11, 14, 31 and 42 at least and no-one was confused. Now, Trent seem to hate route numbers and this can lead to confusion for potential passengers and those who are unfamiliar with the area. There is no reason for Trent not to use numbers now as Arriva has mainly renumbered Derby routes as 1 - 9, a few 20s and a 38. Trent could easily renumber / redesignate their routes from 40 upwards in Derby and 100 up in Nottingham area.

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I suspect the same numbers went from different areas however the big difference would have been the colour of the bus, people knew if they wanted a corporation bus or not.

Trent moved away from numbers as a marketing move and, I suspect, wont be reintroducing them without a lot of the current management leave.

atraindriver said:

Do "the threes" still display A, B and C for the different routes? Meaning that if you get the, seemingly ever-increasing, flotilla of plain red buses coming round the corner you have a "threes" card at the bottom of the windscreen and the destination showing a route letter.
Why TB can't just show "3A", "3B" or "3C" I don't know, but they seem to have a real hatred of route numbers - unless they're the "cool and trendy" six-point-one etc., of course (which I've heard passengers in Derby bus station calling the sixty-one).

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I'm not sure about the threes bit as i use the buses round derby a lot more. The slipboards have gone from the windscreen so the only info is on the destination blinds. I have heard quite a few times the sixes being termed as six one or six two.