More details have emerged of Lancashire County Council's plans to add Sunday and Public Holiday journeys to a number of Lancaster area services from 19th July. The BUG now has copies of the proposed timetables that were included in the tender documents and whilst these are not necessarily the final versions they do give passengers a very good idea of what to expect. At the time of writing no official announcement had been made as to which bus company would run which service, but as soon as the BUG is able to tell you this then we will do so.
STOP PRESS: The BUG understands that Stagecoach will be the operator of City Services 7,10,11 and 18 and that Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire will be running the services between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale.
STOP PRESS: The BUG understands that Stagecoach will be the operator of City Services 7,10,11 and 18 and that Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire will be running the services between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale.
Lancaster City Services
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| Service 18 gains Sunday buses for the first time in several years. |
Sunday buses are being re-introduced to three city services, restoring the facilities lost in the 2016 cutbacks. A fourth service, service 18, gains a Sunday service for the first time to complement the weekday service that was introduced in 2017 following a lengthy campaign by our Group.
Service 7 Lancaster Bus Station - Vale.
An hourly service will be provided with buses leaving Vale (Shakespeare Road) at 0949 and every hour until 1849. Return buses from the Bus Station will be at 0940 and every hour until 1840
The draft timetable can be seen here: Service 7 Lancaster-Vale Sunday & Bank Holidays.
Service 10 Lancaster Bus Station - Ridge
An hourly service will be provided with buses leaving Ridge (Shops) at 1040 and every hour until 1840. Return buses from the Bus Station will be at 1025 and every hour until 1825
The draft timetable can be seen here: Service 10 Lancaster - Ridge Sunday & Bank Holidays
Service 11 Lancaster Bus Station - Marsh
An hourly service will be provided with buses leaving Abraham Heights (Coolidge Ave) at 1004 and every hour until 1804. Return buses from the Bus Station will be at 0955 and every hour until 1755
The draft timetable can be seen here: Service 11 Lancaster - Marsh Sunday & Bank Holidays
Service 18 Lancaster East Circular
An hourly service will be provided with buses leaving the Bus Station at 1005 and every hour until 1805 calling at Williamson Park at 15 minutes past each hour and Lancaster Farms Prison at 22 minutes past.
The draft timetable can be seen here: Service 18 East City Circular Sunday & Bank Holidays
Lune Valley Services
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| Service 81 was recently re-routed via Halton. Now there will be Sunday buses again. |
Both sides of the Lune Valley, which lost their Sunday buses in 2016, now get them restored and the service will follow the recently-diverted weekday route to include Halton, which also lost its Sunday service four years ago.
There are two new routes: Both run from Lancaster to Hornby via Halton, Caton and Brookhouse. Service 81A then operates via Gressingham, Arkholme and Whittington to Kirkby Lonsdale
Service 81B runs to Kirkby Lonsdale via Wray, Wennington, Melling and Tunstall.
Service 81A leaves Lancaster at 0915 and every two hours until 1715
Sevice 81B leaves Lancaster at 1015 and every two hours until 1615
There is an extra journey, nominally 81B, leaving the city at 1815 which will run as far as Hornby and then continue, by request to the driver, to set down passengers at any point on either service route.
Return journeys leave Kirkby Lonsdale for Lancaster as follows:
Service 81A 1115 and every two hours until 1715
Service 81B 1015 and every two hours until 1815
There is also an earlier journey on service 81A from Hornby at 0939
The draft timetable for service 81A/B can be seen here:
What Does BUG think?
When the county council announced it had extra funding for buses earlier in the year, the BUG put forward a number of priorities for new and improved services for it to consider.
Our top priority was to maintain the weekday service on service 18 East Lancaster Circular, which ever since it was started in response to our campaign has been paid for by developer contributions secured under Planning legislation by Lancaster City Council.
It now appears that as well as adding Sunday journeys the weekday service will be funded directly by the council once the developers cash has been used up.
Our second priority was the re-introduction of evening and Sunday journeys on Lancaster City Services as well as to Halton and the Lune Valley and evening journeys on service 42 to Blackpool.
The county council appears to be maintaining its policy of not supporting evening journeys for the time being but we have been successful in achieving the other parts of this objective. This is especially welcome in the case of the city local routes as these seem to be the only such services that are being given Sunday buses under the county's initiative anywhere in Lancashire.
Sadly, our remaining requests, including restoring the link between Skerton and Morecambe or for new services to the Quay and improvements to other services have not been met, although we must, of course, remember that even £750,000 does not go a long way when having to be spread throughout a large county such as Lancashire.
How safe are these services for the future?
That is a very good question!
The council says that the funding is expected to finance the new services until "Summer 2021" which will "allow time to properly procure and evaluate some of the service improvements to ensure the allocated funding is used to provide maximum benefit to local residents as well as tie in with the county council's existing budget provision for supported bus services."
Even in normal circumstances, twelve months is the minimum amount of time necessary to establish a new bus service and the times at the moment are anything but "normal".
With long-established services carrying as little as 5% of their pre-Covid passenger loadings and in the face of a sustained government campaign - supported by the bus industry - to persuade people NOT to use public transport this is not perhaps the ideal time to launch an initiative of this nature.
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| Good publicity will be essential |
Hopefully, the council's evaluation process will take account of this and as the restrictions on personal movement and activity are eased, along with a reduction in the social-distancing rules from 2 metres to a lower number taking effect, bus passenger numbers will begin to recover.
One major problem the new services will face is publicity and getting themselves known to the public. Lancashire County Council gave up updating its bus stop timetables on 23rd March and is only "working towards" resuming that process as we write. It has promised to issue timetable leaflets for the new services, but with libraries and visitor information centres closed there will be few outlets for them. No doubt "everything will be online", but the county council's website doesn't attempt to give advance information on bus services, so the new journeys will only be publicised there once they have started. The BUG will do what it can to help publicise the new services via this website and our Facebook page and sincerely hopes that they are successful.
