Lancashire County Council has confirmed that the long-running roadworks on Greyhound Bridge in Lancaster will be completed in time for the (third) planned re-opening date of Sunday, 7th October with Stagecoach set to introduce its new bus service network the following day.
Some buses will actually be crossing the bridge this weekend as one lane on Skerton Bridge and Parliament Street will be temporarily closed at times to remove the traffic management measures put in place during the closure.
Timetables and maps for the new services have been available online for some time, but those many users who prefer a paper copy (no need for a signal, no need to keep your battery topped up) can now obtain them from the Stagecoach Travel Shop at Lancaster Bus Station.
As of today, four leaflets have appeared:
New services 1 and 2, together with revised services 4, 6 and 6A appear in one booklet, which now contains all buses between Lancaster and Morecambe, except infrequent service 41. (There is no longer a service 3). This booklet also contains all the frequent services between the city centre and the University and a map of the new routes, which is also available separately.
Services 40 and 41, linking Morecambe and Lancaster with Preston, with some journeys running via the University, appear in a separate leaflet, whilst city services 7,10, 11, 18 are contained in their own Bus guide.
Ingleton and Kirkby Lonsdale services (80, 81) are in another separate guide.
The leaflet for the 42, Blackpool, service is expected tomorrow (Wednesday) with that for Carnforth services 5, 49 and 55 to follow. The 555 is not changing and is shown in the current Lakes Connection leaflet.
Passengers for Ingleton and Kirkby Lonsdale have the choice of not just Stagecoach services, but also service 582 run by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire. Each operator produces its own timetables for these routes (although the 582 print version hasn't been re-issued following changes in September). To avoid passengers having to consult two separate documents the Bus Users Group has produced a combined timetable. We don't have the resources to print it unfortunately, but its available on the Local Bus Maps and Timetables page of our website, from where it can be downloaded and printed off. You can see a copy here.
The guides contain route maps of the services shown, but one apparent casualty - at least for the time being- is an overall map of all services. The version previously produced by Stagecoach was useful although not ideal as it didn't contain details of the various routes run by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire and thus couldn't present the full Lancaster and Morecambe bus network.
The Bus Users' Group has, however, been working on this and hopes to be able to make an announcement shortly!
Watch this space!