Areas with no Sunday bus provision

[Taunton]

Staying in Somerset, Taunton has no town buses on a Sunday. The only services running (all by First) are 21 to Burnham-on-Sea, 22 to Wellington and 28 to Minehead.

Those have always been the only "good" bus services from Taunton, so not surprising.

On a related matter, I knew back in the 1970s the local urban buses in Perth, Scotland. This quite substantial network had a Sunday timetable quite up to weekday intervals, except it started much later. However, it pretty much never ran. Sunday work was wholly voluntary, and nobody volunteered, if anyone wanted overtime they did so in the week. Given the extremely thin level of publicity as well, almost nothing beyond a bland bus stop sign on a lamp post, everyone expected there were no buses on Sundays, so nobody waited. Sort of self-fulfilling. I believe a special effort was made to run a bus to and from the Royal Infirmary at visiting times, driven by an inspector.

 

[SCH117X]

Thirsk has no Sunday bus service October to April inclusive. Moorsbus M5 provides a limited service May to September - a morning local loop that is repeated after 5pm plus a working to Hemsley returning 5 hours later. Nominally served by Trans Pennine Express the railway station is a good mile and a half from the centre.

 

[Simon75]

That's really surprising for a town of Taunton's size, especially as the town keeps growing. Harlow's town buses are all 2 hourly and often mini-buses on a Sunday. May as well not even bother if that's the best they can do! Doesn't help that one company runs the commercial services and another runs the contracted ones on the same routes, which in the mad world of deregulation means tickets aren't valid on both, even though the route is the same.

No different to when deregulation started, you had the same situation