Lancashire County Council sponsored a range of new and improved bus services throughout its area starting on 19th July, several of which serve Lancaster and the surrounding district. It no doubt hopes that the additional money it is providing will be well spent and will no doubt be monitoring the financial performance of the services concerned, whilst hopefully making allowances for the effects of Covid-19 on travelling habits and patterns.
But to stand a chance of success the services need to be well promoted and here the Council is largely reliant on the efforts of the bus companies actually running the services. The usual means of promoting bus services are: printed timetable leaflets and maps, bus stop displays, online timetables and journey planners and the Bus Users' Group has been having a look to see how well these tools are being used to promote the new services in Lancaster, these being the Sunday journeys on Lancaster City local routes run by Stagecoach and the Lancaster to Kirkby Lonsdale Sunday buses now run by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire.
Printed Leaflets
In normal circumstances either the operators or the county council would have produced printed timetable leaflets for the new services. Stagecoach would have re-issued its Lancaster Local Services "Bus guide", whilst Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire, which introduced extra Monday to Saturday journeys in the Lune Valley from the same date would have re-printed its "Craven Connection" leaflet.
These leaflets are normally relatively easy to get hold of (with a bit of help from the BUG), being available in the Bus Station Travel Office (Stagecoach only), Libraries and Visitor Information Centres as well as on buses. However, with all these outlets currently closed due to Coronavirus the BUG has not seen any new leaflets and even if they have been produced, which we doubt, they are not contributing to the promotion of the service. Verdict: FAIL (but not really anyone's fault).
Maps
Printed bus network maps are, sadly, largely a thing of the past,
although the BUG does have plans to produce one when the local bus networks stabilise. Stagecoach produces a "North lancashire services" bus map online and its timetable leaflets usually include a map of the service or services concerned, but if the leaflets themselves aren't reprinted then neither are the maps. In any case, Stagecoach's maps don't show other operators' services so would be no good for promoting the new Lune Valley Sunday buses. Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire does not produce maps. Fortunately, the Bus Users Group has updated and republished our online maps, which now show the new Sunday routes to Kirkby Lonsdale, Verdict: FAIL (except for BUG!)
Bus Stops:
One of Lancashire County Council's strengths is its lavish provision of departure lists at bus stops. Most bus stops in urban areas and all important rural ones have them. Fortunately, after a pause during the early stages of lockdown, the council has started to update them again, just in time for the improvements to be shown. Verdict PASS (although of course the departure lists themselves will only be seen by passengers that have got themselves to the bus stop in the first place, so are of limited use in promoting new services).
The BUG is, however, very pleased that after approaches to Stagecoach and Lancaster University the electronic departure board in Lancaster bus station is now working again after being switched-off at the start of lockdown.
Online Timetables
The excuse usually given for not producing printed material is that "it's all online" and the BUG will admit that it is easier and cheaper for operators and councils to do it that way, although it's not necessarily more effective. Both our local operators and Lancashire County Council produce online timetables, so how what have they been doing to promote the new Sunday buses?
The County Council has updated its online timetables and produced new ones for the Sunday buses to Kirkby Lonsdale which have different service numbers (81A and 81B) to the weekday buses (81 and 582). The problem with the County's website however is that to be able to see a timetable you have to enter the service number into a search box, or select an individual bus stop by following a lengthy and convoluted process, so if you don't already know that there is a new service 81A or 81B then you arre unlikely to come across it.
Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire's website contains a full set of the company's timetables but whilst the company has posted the new Sunday services on its Facebook page, and included a link to the Facebook pages from its website, it has not updated the timetable pages on the website itself. The 81A and 81B are not listed as current services and anyone following the link to the weekday service 582 to Kirkby Lonsdale will find a copy of an out-of-date timetable that explicity says "No Sunday Service".
Surely Stagecoach can do better? In its case there are no "new" services, just Sunday journeys added to the existing 7, 10, 11 and 18 routes in Lancaster, so surely calling up these services in the "Timetables" section of the website will show the new journeys? Well, no, actually it won't! At the time of writing, no one at Stagecoach has thought to update the timetable files, so the service 18 timetable (for example) on the company's website looks like this
(Note the "No Service on Sunday" bottom left!)
It's not rocket science, even the BUG has managed to show up-to-date timetables on our website, even though we have had to link to Traveline or to files sent to us by others to do so. Our "Maps and Timetables" page has up-to-date links to ALL services in the District.
Verdict: FAIL (except the BUG and, within the liitations of its system, LCC)
Journey Planners
Despite its failure to produce new timetables, someone at Stagecoach obviously does know about their new Sunday journeys as they appear on the company's journey planner. Similarly, they also appear on various third-party planners such as Traveline or Google Transit. Verdict PASS (although one of the limitations of planners in promoting new services is that you have to know exactly what you are looking for to be able to find the answer in the first place,
The Bus Users' Group hopes that the County's initiative will succeed (after all, we have been asking for these Sunday journeys to be reinstated ever since they were withdrawn on 2016) but in the current circumstances they are going to need a lot of help. At the very least, both Stagecoach and Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire should ensure that up-to-date (and ONLY up-to-date) timetables appear on their websites, whilst LCC might want to look at its own site and see if it can be improved as a tool for promoting new services as well as those that people might already know about. We, of course, will continue to do our bit too.
Summer in the Lakes Anyone?
Meanwhile, anyone looking for details of the "Summer" services in the Lake District, including the 555 and 755 from our area, that are now due to start on Monday 3rd August can find them buried away in the small print at the bottom of Stagecoach's website. To save you the trouble of looking for them, here's a link. Lake District Summer Buses 2020
Summer in the Lakes Anyone?
Meanwhile, anyone looking for details of the "Summer" services in the Lake District, including the 555 and 755 from our area, that are now due to start on Monday 3rd August can find them buried away in the small print at the bottom of Stagecoach's website. To save you the trouble of looking for them, here's a link. Lake District Summer Buses 2020
