Are bus services now back to normal (i.e. at pre-Covid levels of service)?

[NorthOxonian]

Though in a wonderful example of bus companies' blinkered marketing you will only find this info on the Stagecoach website if you have Cheltenham or similar West area location set as the 'home' town.
It is not on any Oxford map or ticket guide and searching 853 in timetables will produce no results if the home location is Oxford.
Why are bus companies so hopeless at promoting or advertising such basic product information as a bus timetable?

Possibly even worse, it doesn't display for Witney or Burford either, despite providing the fastest service to Oxford from the former, and the only service to Oxford from the latter!

 

[geoffk]

Though in a wonderful example of bus companies' blinkered marketing you will only find this info on the Stagecoach website if you have Cheltenham or similar West area location set as the 'home' town.
It is not on any Oxford map or ticket guide and searching 853 in timetables will produce no results if the home location is Oxford.
Why are bus companies so hopeless at promoting or advertising such basic product information as a bus timetable?

Yet Stagecoach is one of the major operators in Oxford. You could perhaps understand this omission if it was First or Arriva running the city services.

 

[David Goddard]

Here in Reading we are pretty much back to normal, with a few journeys reserved for schools only, and a few journeys having relief vehicles as well.

Further south though, Stagecoach's services in Fleet are still running their reduced services, particularly on the 7 and 10 through the town.

 

[DunsBus]

Borders Buses (part of WCM) have announced this week that they will not be reinstating full pre-Covid timetables on every route, citing a lack of demand. This will be hard lines for those who relied on the later journeys offered pre-Covid, but Borders Buses are now seeing why First gave up on the Borders three years ago. You don't run buses where there is no demand and Covid has reinforced this.

 

[Robertj21a]

Borders Buses (part of WCM) have announced this week that they will not be reinstating full pre-Covid timetables on every route, citing a lack of demand. This will be hard lines for those who relied on the later journeys offered pre-Covid, but Borders Buses are now seeing why First gave up on the Borders three years ago. You don't run buses where there is no demand and Covid has reinforced this.

That's going to be much the same scenario over much of the UK.
Central London is going to be very interesting to watch, with dramatically reduced numbers, and TfL short of money.

 

[Andy Pacer]

In Leicester I'd say it's around 85 to 90% of pre Covid levels Mon-Fri (Sunday much less).

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's going to be much the same scenario over much of the UK.
Central London is going to be very interesting to watch, with dramatically reduced numbers, and TfL short of money.

I think the latter is worth its own speculative thread:

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/could-tfl-remove-or-heavily-reduce-buses-in-the-central-area.209078/

 

[DunsBus]

That's going to be much the same scenario over much of the UK.
Central London is going to be very interesting to watch, with dramatically reduced numbers, and TfL short of money.

Just prior to Covid, Borders Buses announced that they had taken on full responsibility for five routes which were previously run under contract to Scottish Borders Council and talked of developing them to promote passenger growth. Needless to say, that plan has now gone right out of the window!

 

[317 forever]

I found a similar issue with Arriva a couple of years ago. Being an ignorant southerner I rather stupidly assumed that Whitby was in Yorkshire.

Indeed, it is treated in Arriva terms as being like "south Cleveland", obviously nowhere near the Arriva Yorkshire network.

 

[DunsBus]

I found a similar issue with Arriva a couple of years ago. Being an ignorant southerner I rather stupidly assumed that Whitby was in Yorkshire.

It's a throwback to United days when the depots at Pickering, Scarborough and Whitby fell under its Cleveland area for operational and administrative purposes.

 

[Ostrich]

I can only speak for my area of North Dorset. Just before Covid, South West Coaches announced route alterations to the Shaftesbury - Gillingham service that would give Shaftesbury an enhanced town service whilst effectively scrapping Gillingham's town service. These changes weren't implemented as planned in April 2020; the old route continued to be run during lockdown but on a very much reduced frequency.

The core route frequency is now back to normal (basic half-hourly) from 1st September 2020, but the route changes have been implemented at the Gillingham end. It isn't clear from their timetable exactly what's happened at the Shaftesbury end because the Covid-pedestrianisation of the High Street "to make pedestrians feel safer" has somewhat confused matters! I think the bus service is being allowed to pass through it (as it did before) but only in one direction and not exceeding 5 mph. .....

 

[CN04NRJ]

Up here in Edinburgh/Lothians most services are back to normal. The biggest gap is no night buses, however it was just confirmed yesterday that most of them are starting again in a couple of weeks time.

Some routes in Edinburgh running a better than normal service, e.g the 30 normally every 12 minutes M-F is now every 10 M-S and earlier/later journeys on the 1/2/36/38

 

[Sprinter150]

Over in Staffordshire, most routes have been restored to pre-covid frequencies, but others are still far below that, or still not running at all. What I've outlined below hopefully gives a snapshot of how we aren't yet back to where we were in terms of frequencies.

The Arriva 1 Cannock - Walsall, previously every 20 minutes, still hasn't been restored (although there are alternative NX X51 buses on this route), whilst another Cannock-Walsall service, the 3, has been curtailed at Brownhills (no longer onto Walsall), with frequency reduced from largely half-hourly to hourly. The 70 Cannock-Wolverhampton has also gone from every 30 mins to 60 mins, although has been extended to New Cross Hospital.

D&G are still running a heavily reduced service into the county town of Stafford - whilst the 841 has been restored to a rough frequency of every 90 mins, this replaces every hour, or every half-hour on the stretch to the edge of Stafford. Meanwhile, on Saturdays this route goes from almost a M-F timetable to just 4 buses per day. The 14 to Eccleshall, Stone and Hanley goes from largely 1bph into Stafford to 1bp2h. So all is not quite as it was, although most of the town routes have been restored. This includes the 12 to Doxey, which has gone from one bus per hour (arriva) on Saturdays to 2bph (Select - previously only M-F), although arriva have also retreated on M-F, so on M-F it goes from 3bph (mixed) to 2bph (select). So more Saturday buses, but less weekday ones. Some operators (Select) have closed specific journeys to the travelling public (schools only), whilst others (First Potteries) have implemented duplicates for schoolchildren.

 

[PeterC]

We are getting close in Bucks. A handful of routes still have emergency timetables at weekends and some journeys have been closed not non-school traffic.

 

[Andy Pacer]

Over in Staffordshire, most routes have been restored to pre-covid frequencies, but others are still far below that, or still not running at all. What I've outlined below hopefully gives a snapshot of how we aren't yet back to where we were in terms of frequencies.

The Arriva 1 Cannock - Walsall, previously every 20 minutes, still hasn't been restored (although there are alternative NX X51 buses on this route), whilst another Cannock-Walsall service, the 3, has been curtailed at Brownhills (no longer onto Walsall), with frequency reduced from largely half-hourly to hourly. The 70 Cannock-Wolverhampton has also gone from every 30 mins to 60 mins, although has been extended to New Cross Hospital.

D&G are still running a heavily reduced service into the county town of Stafford - whilst the 841 has been restored to a rough frequency of every 90 mins, this replaces every hour, or every half-hour on the stretch to the edge of Stafford. Meanwhile, on Saturdays this route goes from almost a M-F timetable to just 4 buses per day. The 14 to Eccleshall, Stone and Hanley goes from largely 1bph into Stafford to 1bp2h. So all is not quite as it was, although most of the town routes have been restored. This includes the 12 to Doxey, which has gone from one bus per hour (arriva) on Saturdays to 2bph (Select - previously only M-F), although arriva have also retreated on M-F, so on M-F it goes from 3bph (mixed) to 2bph (select). So more Saturday buses, but less weekday ones. Some operators (Select) have closed specific journeys to the travelling public (schools only), whilst others (First Potteries) have implemented duplicates for schoolchildren.

Are the Rugeley town services still suspended?

 

[Sprinter150]

Are the Rugeley town services still suspended?

They were until very recently, but were restored on 30th August (half surprised they even restored them at all to be honest, as I don't believe they're tendered routes either)

 

[Andy Pacer]

They were until very recently, but were restored on 30th August (half surprised they even restored them at all to be honest, as I don't believe they're tendered routes either)

That's right, they're definitely commercial.

 

[Sprinter150]

That's right, they're definitely commercial.

Thanks for confirming