Trivia: Routes shared between depots/operators causing issues.

[Hyebone]

Background: Shown in the attached image is a bus stop timetable for the Stagecoach 77 route between Chesterfield and Worksop. This route for many years has been run as a joint operation between two operators, Stagecoach Yorkshire (Chesterfield) and Stagecoach East Midlands (Workop). Evening and Sunday journeys operate as 77A and run through two estates (Inkersall and Mastin Moor) in lieu of another route that stops running in the late afternoon (and not at all on Sundays).

A product of this shared service is that from this one route stems four different services! The Chesterfield-run 77; the Worksop-run 77; the Chesterfield-run 77a; and the Worksop-run 77A (Note the case difference there).

From the attached image, I can tell you with local knowledge that "New Beetwell St" is the Chesterfield terminus served by ALL 77/A/a services except for the one Sunday evening service terminating in Barlborough.

Half of the items in the "key" are completely irrelevant! This separation of services means that most Sunday journeys show as operating as a 77a, 77A and terminate in Chesterfield... Very informational!

I can imagine this sort of timetable is not very helpful to some passengers and could be very confusing. Is this DCC's (Derbyshire County Council, the people responsible for these streetside timetables), or Stagecoach's fault? This confusion also shows on Bustimes.org, there are many discrepancies shown there between the four routes that simply just don't exist, such as the Worksop side of things supposedly skipping some stops/using different ones.

Does anyone else have any examples of similar scenarios elsewhere in the country? I'd be curious to hear what yous have to say! Cheers for reading, I've gone on for longer than I should...

 

[pjnathanail]

This is a consequence of a Local Authority with limited budget automating something which really can't be automated. There is no substitute for good quality local roadside information put together by people local to the area who both know the local geography and know how buses run. Unfortunately those people are hard to find even in bus operators, let alone Local Authority transport departments...!

 

[mangad]

Automation could work better if the data was consistent. It looks like some of the footnotes come from the fact that Stagecoach Yorkshire services are set to terminate at stand B9 in Chesterfield whilst East Midlands terminate at B6.

77 - Chesterfield New Beetwell Street - Worksop Bus Station

Stagecoach Yorkshire

bustimes.org

77 - Chesterfield New Beetwell Street - Worksop Bus Station Bay G

Stagecoach East Midlands

bustimes.org

Then there's the fact that Stagecoach East Midlands has used a capital A for the 77A, whilst Stagecoach Yorkshire used lowercase.

77A - Chesterfield New Beetwell Street - Worksop Bus Station Bay G

Stagecoach East Midlands

bustimes.org

77a - Chesterfield New Beetwell Street - Worksop Bus Station

Stagecoach Yorkshire

bustimes.org

I wouldn't be surprised if you aligned those two pieces of data, everything would sort itself out and you'd have three footnotes - one for the the 77, one of the 77A and one for the fact that one bus terminates early.

Could be really easy to fix. I also wouldn't be surprised if no one actually had spotted the discrepancies nor knew they had an impact anywhere. After all, they've gone to the effort of creating a combined timetable and putting it on the Stagecoach website.

As an aside, on the Derbyshire CC timetable they've successfully combined them but lists operator codes SEM and SYC, both of which are listed simply as meaning "Stagecoach"

 

[RELL6L]

The Stagecoach 685 is another route shared between Carlisle and Newcastle. Previously on BusTimes some journeys were just missing, now they are all there but its a terrible mess as NE eastbound journeys are mixed with NW westbound journeys...!

 

[Teapot42]

Background: Shown in the attached image is a bus stop timetable for the Stagecoach 77 route between Chesterfield and Worksop. This route for many years has been run as a joint operation between two operators, Stagecoach Yorkshire (Chesterfield) and Stagecoach East Midlands (Workop). Evening and Sunday journeys operate as 77A and run through two estates (Inkersall and Mastin Moor) in lieu of another route that stops running in the late afternoon (and not at all on Sundays).

The system Derbyshire use seems to need a lot of manual editing and tweaking to give anything actually useful. I don't suppose they bother for individual stops. I believe Derbyshire sub-contract upkeep of timetable cases (I think to Trentbarton but I could be wrong) and I'd imagine they just log in to whatever portal the system has and print off what they are presented with.

Before all our services got culled we had a similar gripe where the times were shown in order of service number rather than chronologically. This was very confusing to look at and easily fixed. Well, Stagecoach fixed it by cancelling all but one service, but you know what I mean!

As an aside, the maps at New Beetwell Street don't appear to have been updated in a very long time, still showing services that had stopped running before I moved to Chesterfield, and that was over a decade ago...

 

[asb]

The Stagecoach 685 is another route shared between Carlisle and Newcastle. Previously on BusTimes some journeys were just missing, now they are all there but its a terrible mess as NE eastbound journeys are mixed with NW westbound journeys...!

My guess is that Outbound is considered the direction leaving their home base by both operators, but downstream data systems always combine Outbound into one direction, and Inbound the other - not unreasonably! One of the OpCos needs to reclassify their directions.

 

[43055]

The system Derbyshire use seems to need a lot of manual editing and tweaking to give anything actually useful. I don't suppose they bother for individual stops. I believe Derbyshire sub-contract upkeep of timetable cases (I think to Trentbarton but I could be wrong) and I'd imagine they just log in to whatever portal the system has and print off what they are presented with.

Before all our services got culled we had a similar gripe where the times were shown in order of service number rather than chronologically. This was very confusing to look at and easily fixed. Well, Stagecoach fixed it by cancelling all but one service, but you know what I mean!

As an aside, the maps at New Beetwell Street don't appear to have been updated in a very long time, still showing services that had stopped running before I moved to Chesterfield, and that was over a decade ago...

trentbarton only provide the cases/flags where they operate. Elsewhere I think it is down to Derbyshire Country Council.

 

[Teapot42]

trentbarton only provide the cases/flags where they operate. Elsewhere I think it is down to Derbyshire Country Council.

OK, thanks for the clarification. I'd read elsewhere they did them all under contract.

It's interesting that they seem to have permission to put up extra advertising for their own services - for example in Matlock there are posters for the Transpeak yet no timetables for the 110/111.

 

[HullRailMan]

Background: Shown in the attached image is a bus stop timetable for the Stagecoach 77 route between Chesterfield and Worksop. This route for many years has been run as a joint operation between two operators, Stagecoach Yorkshire (Chesterfield) and Stagecoach East Midlands (Workop). Evening and Sunday journeys operate as 77A and run through two estates (Inkersall and Mastin Moor) in lieu of another route that stops running in the late afternoon (and not at all on Sundays).

A product of this shared service is that from this one route stems four different services! The Chesterfield-run 77; the Worksop-run 77; the Chesterfield-run 77a; and the Worksop-run 77A (Note the case difference there).

From the attached image, I can tell you with local knowledge that "New Beetwell St" is the Chesterfield terminus served by ALL 77/A/a services except for the one Sunday evening service terminating in Barlborough.

Half of the items in the "key" are completely irrelevant! This separation of services means that most Sunday journeys show as operating as a 77a, 77A and terminate in Chesterfield... Very informational!

I can imagine this sort of timetable is not very helpful to some passengers and could be very confusing. Is this DCC's (Derbyshire County Council, the people responsible for these streetside timetables), or Stagecoach's fault? This confusion also shows on Bustimes.org, there are many discrepancies shown there between the four routes that simply just don't exist, such as the Worksop side of things supposedly skipping some stops/using different ones.

Does anyone else have any examples of similar scenarios elsewhere in the country? I'd be curious to hear what yous have to say! Cheers for reading, I've gone on for longer than I should...

Plus, Stagecoach Yorkshire and East Midlands have separate network wide day tickets available that are not valid on each others services, meaning the holder of one of those tickets can only use it on every other bus on the same route, despite them all being run by Stagecoach.

 

[DunsBus]

My guess is that Outbound is considered the direction leaving their home base by both operators, but downstream data systems always combine Outbound into one direction, and Inbound the other - not unreasonably! One of the OpCos needs to reclassify their directions.

Also of note is that the Newcastle-run journeys on the 685 split the registrations at Hexham and Haltwhistle, whilst Carlisle's ones split the registrations at Hexham and Brampton (as did Arriva).

 

[Teapot42]

Plus, Stagecoach Yorkshire and East Midlands have separate network wide day tickets available that are not valid on each others services, meaning the holder of one of those tickets can only use it on every other bus on the same route, despite them all being run by Stagecoach.

Is this definitely correct? The Stagecoach website does not mention this, just saying the ticket is valid on all Stagecoach buses within the boundary. It also specifically mentions it is valid on the Pronto which is a Stagecoach East Midlands service. Taken from the Terms and Conditions of the various tickets shown here.

 

[Hyebone]

Since my initial mithering about the 77 route, it appears to have been "fixed" on bustimes.org as shown by the attached image

 

[PeterC]

Plus, Stagecoach Yorkshire and East Midlands have separate network wide day tickets available that are not valid on each others services, meaning the holder of one of those tickets can only use it on every other bus on the same route, despite them all being run by Stagecoach.

When the One from Chesham to Wycombe was jointly operated by Arriva and Carousel I recall operator specific tickets causing companies

A lot of passengers simply don't register that the different liveries are significant.

 

[Hyebone]

When the One from Chesham to Wycombe was jointly operated by Arriva and Carousel I recall operator specific tickets causing companies

A lot of passengers simply don't register that the different liveries are significant.

When Stagecoach East Midlands ran the Pronto route joint with Trentbarton, there were many ticket discrepancies.