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Unnecessarily long bus routes in the UK

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RT4038

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All the Northampton-Wellingborough-Rushden-Raunds ones are certainly quite slow as serving roads in Northampton and Earls Barton. I wondered if there was a market for one/two routes to run more direct between the two towns.

I believe the X4 takes a more direct route from Northampton to Wellingborough, and, no, I doubt there would be enough trade for direct buses on the X46 and the X4
 
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RT4038

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This is quite a bizarre thread. I am unsure what the definition of 'unnecessarily' long is - I think one poster in 6 pages has referred to unreliabilty of long routes, with much of the rest giving details of long routes with no opinion of their necessity or otherwise.
Presumably it all depends on whose view 'unnecessarily' is - I expect the bus company sees it as 'necessary' to either cut costs or provide through journeys over overlapping sections or the entire route. If reliability is compromised the company will soon find this out and balance the cost of unreliability (lost custom/Traffic Commissioner action) with the cost ( additional resources, loss of through custom)of shortening the routes.
There is no arbitrary optimum or maximum length of bus routes, as it is very much 'horses for courses' depending on passenger traffic/location of depots/crewing and vehicle efficiency/reliability.
Nobody is forcing any passenger to travel on what they might consider an 'unnecessarily' long route - get off and catch the one behind if you want a break.
 

PaulMc7

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This is quite a bizarre thread. I am unsure what the definition of 'unnecessarily' long is - I think one poster in 6 pages has referred to unreliabilty of long routes, with much of the rest giving details of long routes with no opinion of their necessity or otherwise.
Presumably it all depends on whose view 'unnecessarily' is - I expect the bus company sees it as 'necessary' to either cut costs or provide through journeys over overlapping sections or the entire route. If reliability is compromised the company will soon find this out and balance the cost of unreliability (lost custom/Traffic Commissioner action) with the cost ( additional resources, loss of through custom)of shortening the routes.
There is no arbitrary optimum or maximum length of bus routes, as it is very much 'horses for courses' depending on passenger traffic/location of depots/crewing and vehicle efficiency/reliability.
Nobody is forcing any passenger to travel on what they might consider an 'unnecessarily' long route - get off and catch the one behind if you want a break.

The way I meant it as was more to do with buses that are continually late and have long routes that could be altered to minimise that problem with other nearby buses that could fit into other areas but not hamper them either. I left the term "unnecessarily" open though as we all have different reasons for finding things as unnecessary and I think it's a good benefit to see things from another perspective so this thread has worked for that
 

AlbertBeale

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The way I meant it as was more to do with buses that are continually late and have long routes that could be altered to minimise that problem with other nearby buses that could fit into other areas but not hamper them either. I left the term "unnecessarily" open though as we all have different reasons for finding things as unnecessary and I think it's a good benefit to see things from another perspective so this thread has worked for that

"Unnecessary" doesn't mean undesirable. Something might not be necessary, but it might nevertheless have reasons why it's a good thing to do. Such as 5-year-olds enjoying a long, unbroken bus ride with their dad....
 

PaulMc7

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"Unnecessary" doesn't mean undesirable. Something might not be necessary, but it might nevertheless have reasons why it's a good thing to do. Such as 5-year-olds enjoying a long, unbroken bus ride with their dad....

Tbh when I was about 5 or 6 that's what I done with my gran an awful lot lol
 

RT4038

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The way I meant it as was more to do with buses that are continually late and have long routes that could be altered to minimise that problem with other nearby buses that could fit into other areas but not hamper them either. I left the term "unnecessarily" open though as we all have different reasons for finding things as unnecessary and I think it's a good benefit to see things from another perspective so this thread has worked for that

You are quite right. In some places it won't be a good idea to have a route lasting much more than 30 minutes (say going through the Blackwall Tunnel in London) because traffic conditions are so volatile, whereas Inverness to Thurso, or Glasgow to Portree is perfectly sensible and reliable.
 

Alan Williams

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Got to be firstbus X5 gosport to Southampton 2 hours and only 15 miles years ago they had the 72 and only took 1 hr 20 max then they decided to launch solent ranger and extend the route
 

AlbertBeale

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"Unnecessary" doesn't mean undesirable. Something might not be necessary, but it might nevertheless have reasons why it's a good thing to do. Such as 5-year-olds enjoying a long, unbroken bus ride with their dad....

In the days of the National Bus Company, there were some long routes inter-operated by adjacent regional NBC companies, which were far longer than normal bus routes, but operated as ordinary bus routes rather than as longer distance coach routes. The one that always struck me was one run, as I remember it, by Southdown and East Kent, between Brighton and Gravesend, right across Sussex and Kent, which I think took hours. I was in Brighton for some years and always meant to spend a day doing that journey and back, stopping at local bus stops all over the place ... but never got round to it.

That raises the question of whether it was "unnecessarily" long - maybe not many people went end to end, but there would have been very significant chunks of it providing easy direct connections where there wasn't a simple rail alternative. But I have no idea how that compares with the length of present-day bus routes in the south-east (or indeed anywhere that's not wholly rural)?
 

Get Out There

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Has anyone mentioned the 374 in Glasgow? http://www.spt.co.uk/cms/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/service-374-210818.pdf

It takes a winding suburban route to connect two points (Silverburn and Shawlands) in as long as 1 hour 10 minutes peak time. First's Service 3 links these points in less than 20 minutes, but does not link the intermediate points.

Colchri's Service 1 is the opposite issue, in that it is very short (about 1.5 miles long)
 

PaulMc7

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Has anyone mentioned the 374 in Glasgow? http://www.spt.co.uk/cms/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/service-374-210818.pdf

It takes a winding suburban route to connect two points (Silverburn and Shawlands) in as long as 1 hour 10 minutes peak time. First's Service 3 links these points in less than 20 minutes, but does not link the intermediate points.

Colchri's Service 1 is the opposite issue, in that it is very short (about 1.5 miles long)

Didn't even think of the 374 tbh. The 395 too is pretty bad
 

Get Out There

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The 374 used to run from Shawlands to Glasgow Airport via Clarkston, the old Pollok Centre and Paisley.
 

Statto

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In the days of the National Bus Company, there were some long routes inter-operated by adjacent regional NBC companies, which were far longer than normal bus routes, but operated as ordinary bus routes rather than as longer distance coach routes. The one that always struck me was one run, as I remember it, by Southdown and East Kent, between Brighton and Gravesend, right across Sussex and Kent, which I think took hours. I was in Brighton for some years and always meant to spend a day doing that journey and back, stopping at local bus stops all over the place ... but never got round to it.

That raises the question of whether it was "unnecessarily" long - maybe not many people went end to end, but there would have been very significant chunks of it providing easy direct connections where there wasn't a simple rail alternative. But I have no idea how that compares with the length of present-day bus routes in the south-east (or indeed anywhere that's not wholly rural)?

It's not so much those going end to end, it's providing links to communities that otherwise wouldn't have a bus route, it's sometimes more convenient to run direct, than splitting the route thus adding to operating costs, one example Cross Pennine 685 Carlisle-Newcastle which i was on yesterday, that links up a few villages, especially Hexham-Brampton section, that wouldn't otherwise have a bus route, even though there's a parallel railway, that doesn't serve some of the communities on the 685 route, & Brampton station looks miles away from the actual village.
 

Typhoon

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In the days of the National Bus Company, there were some long routes inter-operated by adjacent regional NBC companies, which were far longer than normal bus routes, but operated as ordinary bus routes rather than as longer distance coach routes. The one that always struck me was one run, as I remember it, by Southdown and East Kent, between Brighton and Gravesend, right across Sussex and Kent, which I think took hours. I was in Brighton for some years and always meant to spend a day doing that journey and back, stopping at local bus stops all over the place ... but never got round to it.
This route - the 122 - was a joint operation between Southdown and M&D who, I believe, had a garage in Gravesend. It actually predates the NBC and was one of several joint operations between the two companies. I don't know when it stopped operating but the section north of Tonbridge represents distinctly unfriendly bus territory.
 

AlbertBeale

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This route - the 122 - was a joint operation between Southdown and M&D who, I believe, had a garage in Gravesend. It actually predates the NBC and was one of several joint operations between the two companies. I don't know when it stopped operating but the section north of Tonbridge represents distinctly unfriendly bus territory.

Aha - yes, M&D not East Kent - I beg their pardon. (It was a long time ago...)

It still operated for a least a while after I lived in Brighton (late '60s, early '70s), but I have no idea when it stopped.
 

Get Out There

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374 got curtailed around 2005 would be my guess since I'm sure SN04 Darts ran on it at the end? Airport to Pollok was a commercial staple-on to facilitate driver changes in Paisley from Colchri's then Renfrew Westway depot. I don't know if Tony or Chris were in charge at that time.

395 is made up of 4 seperate tenders end to end and overlapping. The strangest aspect being that circa 2009, the peak journey omitted the Broom loop. The reason it was combined into one route is so that Henderson of Hamilton could perform driver changes at EK Bus Station using their car derived Vauxhall Corsa van (Corsa not Combo). It is why McGill's ran it commercially from Lanarkshire.
 
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