National Rail Strike - Details of alternative buses.

Service 40 heading for Preston under the railway at Galgate.

 The national rail strike, planned for 21st - 25th June next week is expected to result in considerable disruption to train services with few, if any, trains running on local lines.

The Bus Users' Group has therefore put together a useful guide to alternative bus services that will help rail passengers to get around locally in the absence of trains.

Please note that these are all regular scheduled bus services and not "rail replacement" buses.  Rail tickets and passes are not valid and the buses will not necessarily stop at or near the station at each destination.

The Guide can be read and downloaded  HERE.

Confusion Still Reigns Over Lune Valley Bus Times

 

"Catch it if you can!" a bus on the unpublicised service 583

Incredibly, over TWO MONTHS since new routes and timetables were introduced on services between Lancaster, Kirkby Lonsdale and Ingleton via the Lune Valley, the travelling public is still confused by the variety of information available on line over the new services.

Despite promises, no printed timetable leaflets have appeared either from the operator, Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire or from Lancashire County Council, which supports the services financially.  You may think that this does not matter, as we are increasingly told that public transport information "is all online" these days. But just what is the position for someone trying to find out the time of their next bus this way?

Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire's website: does now have a "Craven Connection" timetable on its website, showing details of services 81 82 and 583 as well as the extension to Settle and Skipton by services 581 and 580. It did, however, take over a month to put it there.

Lancashire County Council's website has the 81 and 82 timetables on show, but they are a different version to that shown by the operator, with variations on Saturday mornings and schoolday afternoons;  The extensions to Settle and Skipton on the  581 timetable do not reflect changes made in April and a Sunday service is shown, which is not running this year 

There are no details of 583 (Kirkby Lonsdale to Bentham via Cowan Bridge and Ingleton) on the site and, believe it or not, service 582 between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale, which ceased in April is still shown on the site.

Service 82. Nice new bus, but when does it run?

Cumbria County Council's website

Cumbria is only marginally affected by these changes, with only a small section of route in Kirkby Lonsdale itself being within its area. The Council there is also very responsive to suggestions from the Bus Users' Group and following some prompting, the 81 and 82 timetables shown on its website agree with those posted by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire (but not with Lancashire County Council).

However, the 581 timetable does not reflect changes made in April,although at least the non-existent Sunday journeys aren't shown. Service 583 between Kirkby Lonsdale and Ingleton is also missing.

North Yorkshire County Council's website.

North Yorkshire County Council supports service 581 between Kirkby Lonsdale and Settle and also new service 583 between Kirkby Lonsdale and Bentham via Ingleton, which is a partial replacement for service 80 between Lancaster and Ingleton, withdrawn in April.

"t' 583?, Nowt to do wi' us!"

For service 581 the site has a version of the Craven Connection (Monday to Saturday only) timetable, showing only journeys that enter North Yorkshire, dated 17 May 2021, which is now out of date.  There is no mention of 583 at all on the site.  The Bus Users Group is surprised that an authority with a financial stake in the services concerned is apparently unable to publicise them via its website.

Third Party websites (Traveline, Bus Times, Google Maps etc)

The details of all these services shown on third-party websites and apps is drawn from the Traveline National Timetable Database and aligns exactly with that shown by Lancashire County Council. It is therefore incorrect for services 81 82 and 581 (including the non-existent Sunday journeys) and does not show 583. The BUG suspects that the Database has not been updated to reflect the changes made in April.

Roadside Information

 Not everyone has access to the internet and even those who may do so at home aren't necessarily able to access timetable information via their mobile devices, as anyone who has ever tried to read a timetable on a mobile phone screen will confirm.  Others, noting the variations in online information, may decide to just try their luck at the bus stop.

Bus Stops

In the areas administered by Lancashire and Cumbria County Councils, the display of roadside information is controlled by the councils rather than the bus operators.

BUG's timetable updating
team in action!

Lancashire County Council did manage to update the roadside displays in its area by Day One of the new services, but the displays contained its version of the timetable, rather than that of the bus operator. The Council has now changed the displays at Lancaster bus station (and possibly the other stops en-route) to come into line with Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire's timetable.  The stops that LCC maintains on the route of the 581 and 583 have not, however, been updated.

North Yorkshire CC has given up updating stops in the Ingleton and Bentham areas but has left the cases in situ for the Friends of Dales Bus to use.  These show the summer Sunday buses into the Yorkshire Dales from this side of the hills but also include the all year round buses to the villages concerned. The Bus Users' Group assists with this work in the Bentham area and we can confirm that, despite considerable difficulty in prising the necessary information out of officialdom, all the roadside displays on the Yorkshire section of the routes concerned were updated promptly.

Electronic Departure Board at Lancaster Bus Station

The board today: No sign of the 1235 to Kirkby Lonsdale.

This very useful feature of the bus station is maintained with data supplied by Stagecoach for its own services and Lancashire County Council for other operators' buses. Two months after the April changes it still shows no departures for services 81 and 82 but continues to show service 582 journeys.

Dales Bus

Buses that run infrequently and which are designed to cater for occasional, rather than regular, users are arguably most in need of promotion and up-to-date information, but Dales Bus services 830 (Preston to Richmond) and 881 (Lancaster to Malham) are missing from ALL the above-mentioned sources of information. Again, we suspect the Traveline Database has not been updated.

Fortunately the Dales Bus organisation produces excellent printed leaflets to promote them, which the Bus Users' Group helps to distribute; timetables can also be found on the Dales Bus website (and of course this website's Maps & Timetables page).

The BUG realises that local authority staff have been under tremendous pressure and increased workload this year due to the demands of the National Bus Strategy and the setting up of the Enhanced Partnerships that follow on from  it. Bus operators also have their own challenges at present. But the fact that OVER TWO MONTHS from a change to timetables on a significant transport corridor information is contradictory or simply missing is surely unacceptable.

"Bus Back Better", the government's National Bus Strategy, was supposed to make things better and to attract more passengers to the buses by making them easier to use.  It would seem to have a long way to go in this part of the world to do that.

The bus operator and county councils were approached and invited to reply prior to posting this article.

Jubilee Bank Holiday Takes Bus Operators by Surprise!

Someone at Stagecoach knew about the Jubilee then...

The public holidays granted for the celebration of the Queen's platinum jubilee on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd June seem to have come as a surprise to our local bus companies, at least as far as timetable information is concerned.

We are constantly told that there is no need for old-fashioned paper timetables these days because "It's all Online". And yes, there is a lot of timetable information available over the internet and many people do use it as their first port of call for finding bus times, but anyone doing that yesterday or today (Friday) would be in for a shock. 

 As usual, a Sunday service is operating as it does on most public holidays, but what would anyone making an online enquiry for travel today find? 

 The Journey Planner on Stagecoach's website and on their app is showing times as if a normal Friday service was operating! 

Traveline, which draws its information from the same database, is unsurprisingly returning the same erroneous information. 

 Lancashire County Council's website doesn't have its own journey planner and links instead to Traveline (see above) 

 The increasingly useful site Bus Times website also relies on either bus operators or local authorities for its data, but is a little more circumspect. Like Traveline, it has been tricked by the incorrect data coming from the bus companies into showing today's times as they would be on a normal Friday, but it does at least realise that they might be wrong and has placed this notice on all its timnetable pages.

But a big shout out  to Google!  The bus stop departure information and the journey planner on Google Maps is, as far as we can see, the ONLY website showing correctly that a Sunday service is operating.  We know which JP we will be using in future!

And what of the passenger who just turns up at the bus station and looks at the information there?

Surely the electronic departure board that, unlike old fashioned paper leaflets, can be readily updated when things change, will be up-to-date and correct?  Well, judge for yourself. Here is the board at 10.45 this morning:

The only Stagecoach service shown is the 555 and that is showing normal Friday times. The other services are all operated by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire and NONE of them are running today. In fact, the 582 at 11.45, together with all the other 582s hasn't run since the end of March when the service was withdrawn. Conversely, two KLCH services that are running - the 81 and 82 to Kirkby Lonsdale are missing from the display.

The last time we looked at the figures, bus passengers were still at only 80% of the pre-pandemic levels and with all government emergency funding due to end in a few months time there is a desperate need for the industry to attract those missing passengers back.

Providing misleading advertising of the services on offer for two days is not the way to do it.

Greaves Road roadworks: How to find out what's happening

 

We know that passengers have been having difficulty in finding out which bus stops are being affected by the roadworks on the A6 south of the city, especially now that it is apparently impossible to telephone Stagecoach's local depot. Calls are being diverted to the new call centre in Perth, Scotland where the staff don't appear to know what's going on back here in Lancaster.

Thanks to Councillor Abi Mills we do now have contact details for the County Council's Streetworks team, who should be able to tell you which bus stops are currently closed and what alternatives, if any, are in place.

You can telephone the Streetworks team on

01772  533433

or email them at

ihsstreetworks@lancashire.gov.uk

If you do contact them, please let us know how you got on at

lancasterbususers@gmail.com

Stagecoach's new customer service centre falls at the first fence!

 Buses are local. Local people use them to make local journeys and, if the truth be known, don't unduly concern themselves with what's happening to the buses anywhere else. If they have a query or complaint about the service they expect it to be dealt with locally - and by a local person who can address their issue knowledgeably. 

For many years that is how things were, but now Stagecoach, not satisfied with closing down its local Travel Shops, has closed all its local telephone and email enquiry offices as well and has centralized everything at its head office in Perth, in Scotland.

We don't think this will work and our first experience of the new "service" seems to bear this out.

Long running road works on Scotforth Road in Lancaster have led to lane closures and temporary traffic lights, with bus stops being closed as the work progresses towards to the city centre. As usual,no attempt is being made to phase the work so as to minimise disruption to the bus service and no attempt is being made to provide alternative stopping places - passengers are just expected to walk to the next stop.

But not everyone can do this. The Bus Users' Group has been contacted by a local passenger, who needed to know whether her bus stop was affected by the works, as she has mobility problems and would be unable to walk to or from the next one if the bus could not stop there. Her call to Stagecoach was taken at the company's new call centre in Perth, where the operative was completely unable to help her because the only information they had access to was what was on their website  -and this didn't say anything about road works on Scotforth Road!

The works are quite prominent

 and no doubt everyone at Stagecoach locally is well aware of them. Even if the previous call centre at Carlisle didn't have all the details it would at least know who at White Lund depot to ask.

Our complainant says she was "quite forthright" in letting Stagecoach know what she thought of the new set-up but was told that "they had had complaints about poor service under the old arrangements" and that "people wanted a centralized service"!

In her experience the people dealing with enquiries locally have always been "friendly and helpful" and neither she not anyone we know has ever suggested that what is needed is a centralized call centre, where the staff have no more access to information than what is on their computers, most of which can be seen by passengers logging on to their website anyway.

If you do need to contact Stagecoach for local advice or information, please let us know of your experiences (good or bad) of the new system.

lancasterbususers@gmail.com 

Stagecoach Pulls Out of Mossgate Park

 

Service 1A negotiating one of offending speed humps in Mossgate Park

Stagecoach buses will be withdrawn from Mossgate Park in Heysham with effect from Sunday 29th May in what is described as a "temporary"measure due to the condition of the road and the speed humps that are apparently damaging the buses.

Introduced in 2018, following a network review to which the Bus Users' Group was invited to contribute, services 1 and 1A were diverted away from their previous terminus at Combermere Road to serve the large residential area lying just to the east of Heysham Road.

It is fair to say that in the early days of the services there was a significant amount of opposition to it from car-owning residents, but this soon abated and it is believed that it is the poor condition of the road and particularly the speed humps that have now caused Stagecoach to withdraw the service.

Crucially, parts of Mossgate Way have not yet been adopted by Lancashire County Council for maintenance purposes and therefore the responsibility for this lies with the developers who built the road. Stagecoach say that they will reintroduce the service once the defective roads have been repaired, but in the meantime services 1 / 1A will run from Kingsway via Moss Gate Lane to Heysham Road and then Heysham Towers.

Meanwhile in Higher Heysham

This is not the only "temporary" diversion in Heysham at present. Services 2X and 5 were diverted away from Heathfoot Avenue and Smithy Lane in February 2021 because Stagecoach said that the roads were "worn out" and casing damage to buses.

Despite protests from the Bus Users' Group, Lancashire County Council declared that it was a "low priority" for repair. However, the work has eventually been done and the latest timetable for service 5, published online and in the Carnforth Area Guide booklet dated "May 2022" shows the service running via Heathfoot Avenue. The 2X timetable however, has not been changed yet and the BUG understands that both services are continuing to run via Heysham Road but with a return to their proper route being promised "soon".

Dales Bus Services Start This Weekend

 

The summer Sunday Dales Bus network returns for the 2022 season this Sunday, 15th May. 

This year two services will run from Lancaster:

The Northern Dales Bus, service 830, starts from Preston and runs via the M6 to Lancaster University, then all stops to Lancaster Bus Station and then Caton, Hornby, Wray, Bentham, Ingleton, Ribblehead, Hawes, Buttertubs Pass and Swaledale to Richmond.  The timetable is HERE

The Malham Dales Bus, service 881, starts at Lancaster bus station and follows the same route to Ingleton, then via Clapham and Austwick to Settle, Langcliffe, Malham Tarn and Malham village. The timetable is HERE

Of course, as we explained in a recent post, bus services in the northern extremeties of Lancashire are a state secret, so you won't find these timetables on the operator's website or, with the exception of the excellent Dales Bus website, anywhere else online, and certainly not on Traveline or Google Maps/Transit or the sites of Lancashire and North Yorkshire County Councils.  The timetables are, however, available in printed leaflet form from the Visitor Information Centres and libraries in Lancaster and Morecambe.

No Sunday Buses to Skipton

Contrary to previous reports, the extension of services 81 and 82 on Sundays and Public Holidays to Settle and Skipton will not take place this year, due to a shortage of funding and difficulties in finding available drivers.

All these services offer the opportunity of a excellent day out in areas of the country not normally accessible by bus and come highly recommended.  Unfortunately, due to the regressive - and possibly illegal -  policies of the County Councils, the English National Concessionary Bus Pass can't be used on them (the Sunday extensions of the 81 and 82 to Skipton excepted) but fares are very reasonable with a Day Ticket for the entire Dales Bus network (click HERE for a Map) costing just £10 and only £5 for Bus Pass (NoW Card) holders.