 |
| Service 80, seen here leaving Ingleton, with end in April |
Bus services between Lancaster, Kirkby Lonsdale and Ingleton are in line for major changes which will see Stagecoach withdraw its services 80 and 81 and replacements being provided by another operator.
The changes from Monday 4th April follow Stagecoach's decision to cease operating the services concerned on a commercial basis, leaving Lancashire County Council to step in to replace them through a contract with local operator, Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire (KLCH).
 |
| Service 582 at Kirkby Lonsdale |
KLCH already operates service 582 between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale via Gressingham and Arkholme as well as the Sunday services (81A/B) via both sides of the valley. These services, as well as Stagecoach's 81 from Lancaster to Kirkby Lonsdale and Ingleton via Melling will be replaced by two new services operating seven days a week.
- 81 Lancaster - Halton - Hornby - Wennington - Melling - Kirkby Lonsdale and
- 82 Lancaster - Halton - Hornby - Gressingham - Arkholme - Kirkby Lonsdale
Each service will operate two-hourly and following a suggestion by the Bus Users' Group, the timetables have been adjusted to give a regular hourly interval service on the common section of route between Lancaster and Hornby as well as between the two terminal points. The new times are also better co-ordinated between Lancaster and Halton with service 49, at least in the southbound direction.
Both the 81 and 82 will run via Halton, leaving the section of route along the A683 between Jc 34 of the M6 and Caton unserved.
The current series of no less than five different service numbers will be replaced by just two, whilst other improvements requested by the Group are the extension of the first Lancaster-bound journey on a Saturday morning to start at Melling rather than Hornby and the conversion of the last journey of the day to Kirkby Lonsdale on service 81 to run the whole route on a guaranteed basis rather than being "on request" beyond Hornby. Not requested by the BUG, but nevertheless very welcome, is the addition of a later bus at 18.50 from Lancaster to Hornby which will continue on request to Kirkby Lonsdale via Gressingham making the last departure to that side of the valley over 90 minutes later than now.
Most KLCH journeys on service 82 will still continue to Settle and Skipton as at present.
A draft of the new timetable (excluding the extensions to Settle and Skipton) can be viewed or downloaded here. 81 82 Lancaster - Kirkby Lonsdale
Bentham and Ingleton
Things are not so rosy on the Yorkshire side of the border. Normal practice for non-commercial services that cross a county boundary is for the cost of providing the service to be shared between the authorities concerned. Service 80 crosses from Lancashire into Yorkshire halfway between Wennington and Low Bentham with over 40% of the route being in the latter county.
North Yorkshire County Council is understood to have declined to contribute towards the cost of maintaining service 80 and as the vast majority of the Lancashire part of the service is duplicated by service 81 that council also feels unable to pay for a service that would be of very maginal benefirt to its residents. Service 80 will, therefore, disappear in its present form, although KLCH is understood to be in discussion with North Yorkshire about providing some form of service to Bentham and Burton-in-Lonsdale, which would otherwise be left without buses.
Bentham is served by trains between Lancaster and Leeds, which have had their timetable improved in recent years, whilst Ingleton will continue to be linked with Lancaster via Kirkby Lonsdale by KLCH buses on services 581 and 82.
Concerns over Fares
The documents the Bus Users' Group has seen contain no details of fares, which at present differ slightly between the two operators. Due to the high level of single and return fares, most Stagecoach passengers travelling beyond Brookhouse can benefit from buying a "Bay Plus Day Rider" at £7.10 even if only making a simple out-and-back journey.
Regular passengers can buy a weekly Megarider for £23, which allows savings to be made from as near to Lancaster as Caton if travelling five days a week can save money. Day and weekly ticket prices from Halton to Lancaster are lower.
Passengers travelling betyond Lancaster city centre, perhaps to Morecambe or the University, can use Day and Megarider tickets to complete their journey at no extra cost, but these tickets are "Stagecoach only" and cannot be bought or used on KLCH buses except on the Sunday buses operated under contract to the county council. KLCH advertises "great value day tickets" in its publicity without mentioning a price, but again these are operator-specific and of no use to anyone travelling on from Lancaster. The company currently offers a weekly ticket at a price of £22, also operator-specific and of no use to anyone travelling beyond Lancaster city centre.
The BUG notes that Lancashire's Bus Service Improvement Plan, produced under the "Bus Back Better" National Bus Strategy for England, promises a range of multi-operator tickets and an integrated fares and ticketing scheme for the council's area. Obviously this will take time to develop, but we hope that LCC and the operators concerned can introduce perhaps a pilot scheme or some form of joint ticket for Lancaster so that passengers from, say, Caton do not find it cheaper to travel to Kirkby Lonsdale or beyond than to Morecambe or the University
Contrasting Fortunes
 |
| A Pennine bus leaving Lancaster for Skipton on service 580 in 1984 |
Service 80 once formed part of a trunk service between Skipton and Morecambe operated by Ribble Motor Services (who numbered it 580) and Pennine Motor Services of Gargrave, which was established as a joint service in 1931. At the deregulation of bus services in 1986 it was split at Ingleton with Pennine running the eastern leg to Skipton and Ribble westwards to Lancaster, the Morecambe extension being abandonned. At this stage the service operated roughly hourly throughout the day with a limited evening ans Sunday service.
Ribble becambe part of the Stagecoach empire in 1989 but by then service 80 was in decline. Evening and Sunday buses disappeared sometime in the 1990s and the service became part-supported by the two county councils as passenger numbers fell.
North Yorkshire County Council withdrew financial support in 2014, but as Lancashire continued funding for the section within its boundary, Stagecoach opted to continue the full route. Lancashire's support ended in 2016 as part of a major cut back in funding for public transport, but again Stagecoach continued the service, albeit with a reduced timetable of just four journeys a day.
The services between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale are also long-established routes. A short-lived service between Lancaster and Brookhouse is believed to have been authorised in 1922 whilst County Motors of Lancaster, later taken over by Ribble, began running to Kirkby Lonsdale in 1928. The service, however, never developed to the same extent as the 80 and in 1970 there were just 5 journeys a day all via Melling, with the other side of the Lune Valley served by an equally infrequent service between Kirkby Lonsdale and Carnforth.
At deregulation in 1986 there were still 5 buses a day between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale but now shared between both sides of the valley, with no service to Carnforth. Some journeys ran via Melling or Gressingham according to the day of the week and the Saturday service was reduced to just two round trips, one on each side of the Lune.
The Rural Bus Grant, introduced by the Government in 1997, brought many improvements to rural bus services throughout the country and the Lune Valley was no exception. In the years that followed the Lune valley saw the best service it had ever had, with hourly services, split evenly between each side of the river and, for the first time ever, a full evening and Sunday timetable. It was too good to last and although Lancashire County Council managed to keep it going after the incoming government cut funding for buses in 2010, by 2016 it was struggling for funding itself and forced to make major cuts to the bus service support budget.
 |
| Service 81 in Halton. The service, along with the 80, was re-routed in 2019 to provide a service to the Low Road area of the village. |
Following the withdrawal of council funding, Stagecoach found itself able to continue a two-hourly service along the south-eastern side of the valley via Melling, albeit without evening or Sunday buses, but the route via Gressingham and Arkholme became a bus desert served only by a solitary school bus.
A change of administration in County Hall saw a change of approach and funding for buses was increased. The Gressingham side of the valley gained a two-hourly service operated by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire, which continued to Settle and Skipton by being linked to services already operated on the Yorkshire side of the border. Further funding from central goverment allowed the restoration of the Sunday service, for which the Bus Users' Group had been campaigning.
The proposed services 81 and 82, to be introduced in April, continue to provide a two-hourly service to either side of the valley, which will operate seven days a week and the service is still better than it has been at any time in its history apart from the heady days of the Rural Bus Grant. Service 80, on the other hand, once by far the more important of the two services, will be no more!
