FAST BUSES TO THE LAKES START THIS WEEKEND

 

Service 555 in the Lakes

Lancaster is blessed with being the southern terminus of one of the country's most scenic bus routes: Stagecoach 555 to Keswick via the central Lake District. It must be admitted though the the best of the scenery is to be found north of Kendal as the bus passes through Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere and then over Dunmail Raise to the northern terminus at Keswick.  In fairness, the southern section cannot really compete!

Faster Buses

But on Summer Saturdays - and "summer" for Stagecoach lasts from the end of March to early November! - it's possible to cut out the boring bits and get straight to the beauties of the Lakes as extra journeys are introduced that run from Lancaster directly to Kendal via the M6, cutting 40 minutes off the journey.

The fast buses, still numbered 555, leave Lancaster bus station at 0815, 0925 and then every hour until 1525. 

They return from Keswick at 1100 and every hour until 1800 calling at Grasmere 30 minutes later; Ambleside 49 minutes later and from Kendal at 1245 and hourly until 1945.

Follow this link for the full 555 timetable

In 2023 there are even more reasons to enjoy a ride on the 555 as the all-England £2 maximum fare also applies to the motorway buses, meaning that a full day out in the Lake District need cost no more than £4 per passenger (adult or child) (£2 per person each way).

As an added bonus, a new fleet of buses, equipped with comfortable seating and modern, low-emission diesel engines, is due to enter service on the 555 early in the season.

More Summer Buses

Between 3rd July and 29th September the extra buses also run on Monday to Friday, giving plenty more opportunities to enjoy one of England's most scenic bus rides. Please note though that at the time of writing the £2 maximum fare was due to end on 30 June, meaning that a £12.50 Explorer ticket would be needed for travel into the Lakes. This does, however, have the advantage that it allows unlimited travel for a whole day and so can be used to hop on and hop off anywhere along the route as well as being valid on all other buses operated by Stagecoach in Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland.

Holders of English National Concessionary Travel Passes ("NOW Cards") can travel free on the 555 and on Saturdays can make full use of the service, including the motorway journeys, as there is no time restriction on pass use at the weekend.

Even Faster to the Lakes!

On Saturdays between 1st April and 28th October there is an even faster way of reaching the Lakes.  Stagecoach's X8 runs from Chorley to Keswick on a limited stop basis, using the M6 and calls at the Caton Road Park & Ride Site at Junction 34. 

The X8 leaves Caton Road at 1030 and runs almost non-stop to Windermere station (1104), Ambleside (1120), Grasmere at 1135 and Keswick at 1200.

It returns from Keswick at 1630, Grasmere 1655, Ambleside 1710 and Windermere Station at 1730 reaching Caton Road at 1801

There is plenty of free car parking at the Park & Ride site or passengers can use the Park & Ride bus - service L1 - that runs every 15 minutes from Lancaster Royal Infirmary (South Road) and Lancaster Bus Station.  THe suggested journey to connect with the X8 is at 1000 from the Infirmary (1005 from the bus station, stand 4).  Connecting return buses from the Park & Ride site are at 1805 and 1835  The Park & Ride return fare is £1.70 (£1.20 for under 19s) and there is also a Family Return at £3.40 for 2 adults and up to three children. Concessionary Bus Pass holders can travel free on service L1 according to the normal conditions of pass use.

The £2 maximum fare does not apply to the X8, which is a limited stop service, nor can concessionary passes be used. Passholders can, however, buy a concessionary Explorer ticket at the reduced price of £9.50.

Follow this link to the X8 Timetable

Summer Lakes by Bus Guide Published and New Buses On The Way

 

Stagecoach has published the Summer 2023 edition of its popular "Lakes by Bus" Guide timetable book, containing details of all the company's services in the Lake District. This year, "summer" lasts, very generously, from 27th March until 5th November.

The book includes timetables for buses from Lancaster (service 555) and Morecambe (755) to the Lakes and these services will continue to largely unchanged timetables. The only change that we can find is on the 555, where the slightly mysterious note on certain late afternoon journeys southwards from Kendal that they "can run up to 10 minutes late from Helsington, Lumley Road" has disappeared!

Otherwise the 555 continues to run hourly (two-hourly on Sundays) between Lancaster and Keswick with extra journeys that run via the M6 between Lancaster and Kendal on all Saturdays and Monday to Friday in July, August and September.  Service 755, which runs from Ocean Edge Holiday Park in Heysham to Bowness-on-Windermere will have four through journeys a day (seven days a week) with an extra northbound trip on Saturday, Sunday and school holidays.

The new timetables are here:

555 Lancaster - Keswick

755 Ocean Edge - Bowness-on-Windermere

and the full Lakes by Bus Guide is here

Printed copies of the Guide will also be available on the buses on the 555 service as well as from libraries and Visitor Information Centres.

X8 Chorley - Keswick 

Not included in the Guide, presumably because its operated by a different bit of Stagecoach, is the X8 limited stop service from Chorley to Keswick, which north of Preston operates on the M6 and calls at the Lancaster Park & Ride site at Junction 34, Caton Road.  

This year the service will operate on Saturday only  and we will post details of the timetable when they become available.  The £2 fare cap and Concessionary passes are not valid on the X8 although a cut-price Explorer ticket is available to pass holders.

Bargain Fares

Until the 30 June, the England-wide £2 maximum single fare cap applies to  services 555 and 755, meaning that a trip to Kendal, Bowness-on-Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere or even Keswick costs just £2 (plus £2 for coming back). Even if you want to break your journey and visit, say, Kendal and Ambleside or Grasmere and Keswick, you can still make a saving over the Explorer ticket price.

After the end of June, or if you will be using more than six buses in the day, the North West Explorer ticket at £12.50, which you can buy from the driver on any Stagecoach bus, is still good value.

New Buses for the 555

The Bus Users' Group understands that a fleet of new buses is being delivered to Stagecoach for use on service 555 and should be ready for the start of the new timetable, or if not, shortly afterwards. They are an updated version of the buses currently used on the service and will again feature more comfortable seats than the usual standard as well as the latest low-emission diesel engines.

Shake-Up on The A6 South from March

 

Service 41 to Preston at Lily Grove

Bus services running south from Lancaster along the A6 to Preston and Blackpool are due for a major shake-up following a review by Stagecoach.  For the first time ever, the Bus Users' Group was invited to comment on the proposals before they were finalised and we were able to work with the commercial department at Stagecoach to suggest a number of changes and improvements. The new timetables come into force on 26th March.

The revision, which will see almost every bus running at new times, is designed to improve reliability and to provide better spacing of buses along the A6, ending the current situation where at certain times of day two buses are timed very closely together, followed by a long gap. There are also changes to service numbers on some journeys to make it clearer which way buses go.

The new timetable has departures from Lancaster on the hour (40), 20 past (42) and 40 past (41).  Coming north, buses leave Preston at 15 and 45 past the hour and from Blackpool at 42 minutes past, combining to give departures from Garstang at 00 30 and 45 minutes past each hour.  It has not been possible to have an even 20 minute headway in both directions due to the different route lengths and running times of the three services, but the northbound service is more regularly spaced than at present.

Service numbers

At present, the difference between a 40 and a 41 is the route taken through Garstang, where service 40 follows the long-established route via Lancaster Road whilst 41 diverts via Croston Road and Wyre Vale Park mobile homes site. In addition, buses numbered 41 serve the Lancaster University campus. Most service 40 journeys remain on the A6 past the campus but some evening journeys and the Sunday service divert that way, leading to confusion.  The new timetable sees all journeys numbered 40 run via the A6 and Lancaster Road and all 41s via the campus and Croston Road. Although this means that Lancaster Road in Garstang will not be served by the 41 in the evenings or on Sundays the changes to service 42 outlined below mean it will retain a regular service to and from Garstang centre and Lancaster.

Evenings 

Times are different in the late afternoon and during the evenings when extra running time has been added to the timetable to eliminate the late running that frequently occurs at the moment and to improve reliability.  The evening services on the 41 and 42 have been retimed and evening departures from Preston will be at 1915 and every hour until 2315.  Southbound from Lancaster, evening buses will run at 1840 1940 and 2040 with later journeys at 2200 and 2320.  It was felt better to leave the last two journeys at their current times rather than upset existing passengers by making the drastic changes necessary to extend the hourly headway throughout the evening.  

The recently re-introduced evening journeys on the 42 are also retimed and given additional running time to improve reliability and provide better spacing on the Catterall to Lancaster section.

Sundays

Thanks to extra funding from the Bus Service Improvement Plan the Sunday service on the 42 is doubled to every hour.  The current situation, with the first northbound bus not arriving in Lancaster until 1258, is very much improved with new journeys that reach the city at 1107 and 1207, the first of which, unusually, starts from Poulton-le-Fylde rather than Blackpool.  Similarly, the new 1810 from Lancaster also runs only to Poulton.

As in the evenings, extra running time has been added to improve timekeeping and departure times are altered to improve spacing along the A6.  Buses will leave Lancaster at 10 past the hour (42) and 40 past (41), these journeys starting back from Morecambe at 15 past the hour.  Coming north, Sunday buses are also regularly spaced, arriving in Lancaster at 07 (service 42) and 37 (service 41) past each hour. This eliminates the current frustrating situation whereby buses leave Lancaster within five minutes of each other, with nothing more for an hour.

No more "Connections" at Garstang

"Garstang then Blackpool" on the 42

One feature of the new 42 timetable is that the need to make bogus "connections" ("the connection is guaranteed, through fares are available and passengers can stay on the bus which operates through") at Garstang is largely eliminated. This peculiarity has been due to the need to get round (sorry, "comply with") the Drivers' Hours regulations that are much stricter for journeys over 50km in length than for shorter trips.

The Blackpool service was always marginal, with only the occasional extensions to Homfray Avenue (for Morecambe depot) or the diversion to serve Ripley school taking it over the limit. It looks as if someone at Stagecoach has realised that if these journeys are transferred to a separate registration, then the bulk of the service can be presented as a straightforward through service, which should also mean that the "destination" "Garstang then Blackpool" on the front of the bus can be replaced with a similarly straightforward "Blackpool"

Overall, the Bus Users' Group thinks that the new timetables are a great improvement. We understand that printed timetable leaflets are to be made available as well as online versions and that the company is keen to see them distributed as widely as possible. For the first time, the 40 41 and 42 will all be contained in the same leaflet, making it easier for passengers on the common section of route north of Catterall to see the full service available to them, which is a welcome development.

The new timetables can be seen here:

40 41 Morecambe - Lancaster - Preston

42 Lancaster - Blackpool

£2 Fare Cap Extended and More Funding for Buses

 

The government scheme whereby most bus fares in England are capped at a maximum of £2 per single journey is being extended from its previous end date of 31 March until 30 June 2023. Bus companies participating in the scheme will receive a share of £75m that has been allocated to meet the cost. 

At the same time, with bus passenger levels still 10 - 15% below pre-Covid levels and with bus operators threatening to make substantial service cuts, the emergency Bus Service Recovery Grant that was also due to end in March will now be extended for another three months. A further £80m will be distributed to operators to compensate them for maintaining services despite the loss of passengers.

With this further £155m the government now says it has provided £2billion in financial support to the bus industry since 2020.

Whilst the extension to the funding is welcome, it is surely time that the government accepted that to bring about the improvements to services that everyone seems to agree are justified and needed, the buis industry requires well-planned and long-term funding - and not just a series of temporary fixes.

Meanwhile in Lancashire our local £1 evening fare (any bus journey after 19.00hrs) and the "buy one, get one free" offer on Day Riders, whereby a ticket bought on Saturday can be used again on Sunday) will continue until at least 2025.

Broken Shop Windows

 

The humble bus stop is more than just a place on the highway at which buses stop. It advertises the existence of the bus service, provides an opportunity for the bus operator to promote its wares and acts as a point of entry to the bus system for passengers old and new. It is, in fact, the bus operators' shop window.

Successful High Street retailers use their shop windows not just to advertise the goods they have for sale, but as marketing tools to entice passers-by to take a closer look and perhaps buy something they wouldn't otherwise have bought. It might not be quite so easy to persuade people to make a bus journey they weren't already thinking of making, but at the very least the bus stop can be used to reassure passengers that they are waiting at the right place for their chosen bus. At the same time, if the stop and its facilities are well maintained  it makes the passenger feel welcome  - and first impressions are important.

Unlike shopkeepers however, bus operators are not in control of their "shop windows". Strangely, almost uniquely in business, they have very little say in what facilities the stops provide (such as seating, shelters or timetables) or even how many stops there are or where they are sited. Bus stops are the responsibility of the County Council in its role as the highway authority. The council also decides where timetable cases are placed and what is shown inside them, whereas bus shelters can be provided by any one of the county council; the city council; advertising contractors or, in rural areas, parish councils.

Understandably therefore, the standard of bus stops varies enormously throughout the city and, indeed, the country. In Lancaster, an above-average percentage of bus stops appear to be equipped with shelters and timetables and the powers-that-be deserve credit for that. It has to be said, however, that there are areas of the city where provision is largely sub-standard.  

The Bus Users Group recently conducted an audit of the stops on service 7, which runs between the city centre and Vale and this is what we found:

Of the 13 bus stops that are unique to service 7 (i.e. not used by any other service):

•     8 had bus stop signs that were damaged, faded or missing altogether
•     8 did not display the stop name clearly or at all
•     8 stops did not have level-access boarding kerbs to allow wheelchairs to board safely.
•     at 7 stops the road markings to keep them clear from parked cars were worn or missing
•     One stop name was misspelled and two stops, on different parts of the route, have the same name. A fourth stop name was out-of-date.

The Hathaway Road stop name is misspelled "Hatherway"!

One bus stop pole was found to be leaning dangerously. . .

Bus stop at Clare Road with leaning pole and faded markings

. . . whilst at another stop the sign appeared in danger of falling off.

McColl's on Barley Cop Lane, which is still officially named "Co-OP"
The sign appears to be about to fall off and the road markings are worn out.
How welcome would you feel here as a passenger?

The full Bus Stop Audit Report can be read here.

Actions

The Report was forwarded to both councils and to Stagecoach, which operates the service.

Lancashire County Council was fairly quick to respond and has promised that by the time this is published the "leaning pole of Clare Road" should have put right and the loose signs re-fixed.

Adding or updating stop names on the signs will take a little longer as it is, apparently a county-wide problem. The Council is developing a programme of works on a route-by-route basis and service 7 will be added to the list, but with over 8,000 bus stops in the county and limited resources of staff and funding it will take time. The county council did seek funding through the Bus Service Improvement Plan to improve bus stops, as it recognises they are the first ;point of contact with the bus network, but the government declined to include it in the allocation received.

The same lack of resources means that there can be no quick resolution to the level-access boarding or road markings issue, but at least here it might be possible to divert additional resources to speed up the process, Once again, however, this is a county-wide issue and service 7 will have to take its turn.

As far as "Hatherway" Road is concerned, the feedback from the city council was that the county council (whose shelter it is) no longer uses that supplier for the provision of bus shelters and that therefore they cannot amend the wording! The only answer would be to replace the shelter!

No comments were received from Stagecoach, despite the state of the stops having a direct impact on its business.

Results?

The Audit has at least resulted in the dangerously leaning pole and the semi-detached signs being repaired much sooner than would have otherwise been the case.

The Vale stops are also now "on the list" for further improvements when time and money allows and again, this would not have been so without the Report.

Lastly, the Bus Users' Group has learned more about how the system of providing and maintaining bus stops works and the problems the county council faces, which will allow us to target our requests for improvements in the future. 

So we have achieved a little, but so much else needs to be done.

Pssssst! More Fare Reductions Coming Next Week!

...and then three come along at once!

 There's a well-known saying that goes: "You wait ages for a bus...and then three come along at once." Now it seems the same thing is happening to fares reductions, although you could be forgiven for not knowing.

On 1st January, as part of a government scheme, all single bus fares were capped at a maximum of £2 per single journey. It's fair to say that there was some publicity about this from the government, whilst the Bus Users' Group also did it's bit to promote the scheme.

But now, we hear that two more fares initiatives, this time confined to Lancashire, are to start this Monday, 30th January as part of Lancashire's Bus Service Improvement Plan, but publicity for these is even harder to find.

This is what we think we know:

£1 Evening Fare

 All bus fares throughout Lancaster District and the rest of administrative Lancashire are reduced to £1 for journeys starting at or after 7pm (19.00hrs) every day of the week.  If you get on the bus at or after 7pm you will pay no more than £1 for any bus journey within administrative Lancashire.

The only excluded journeys we can immediately think of locally are on service 555, where the £1 fare would only take you to the county boundary and not to Burton-in-Kendal or beyond, although we are unsure whether it applies to the full route of services 81 and 82, including the short section between the county boundary and Kirkby Lonsdale.

Bus services operated by Blackpool Transport aren't included, except the 74 and 75 that are operated under contract to the council, but we are assuming that the £1 fare will be available on evening buses in the Blackpool area that are run by other bus companies, such as Stagecoach's 42 to Lancaster.

Weekend Fare Offer

This is a bit more complicated as there is an inconsistency in information across websites we have consulted, but what we think it involves is that if a bus operator offers a day ticket, such as a Day Rider,  any ticket you buy on Saturday can be used again on Sunday.

Locally, that means a Stagecoach Day Rider for The Bay Area, or a Lancashire Day Rider bought on a Saturday can be used again on Sunday. Effectively, if you buy the ticket on Saturday you get a Sunday's travel free! 

Lancashire County Council's Day Ticket for supported services is also included in the scheme, but the 89 Lancaster to Knott End has no Sunday service, meaning that the only buses it can be used on are Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire services 81 to 82 to Kirkby Lonsdale and even here it's not clear whether the last few hundred metres into Kirkby Lonsdale, which is in Westmorland, are included.

Nowhere does it say whether or not the ticket has to be used by the same person on both days, but as in practice it's impossible to check that we'll assume it can be transferred.

The new initiatives are, of course, welcome, especially as they will run at least until March 2025. This will give them time to become established and known-about, unlike the temporary £2 fare cap that ends on 31st March 2023.

Read All About It (Not!)

To say that these schemes were outlined in the Bus Service Improvement Plan of October 2021, publicity for them has been very last-minute and minimalist in scope.

The County Council issued a press release today (27th January) and there are brief details on  the "Bus Service Changes" page of its website, which might not be your first port of call for news of fares reductions.

At the time this post first appeared there was nothing on Stagecoach Cumbria & North Lancashire's website, although the following is now shown under "service updates" New fares initiatives in Lancashire This confirms the range of day tickets included in (and excluded from) the scheme but note that the "Bay Plus" ticket zone referred to no longer exists! 

Both the LCC and Stagecoach websites have confined their efforts to "providing the information" (if you know where to look for it) rather than trying to actually sell the initiatives to the public.

There is nothing on Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire's website and a quick trawl of other Lancashire bus operators' websites also drew a blank apart from Transdev, who are promoting the evening fare (which has been in operation for some time there) but not the weekend offer.  Perhaps everyone is waiting until the government's £2 fare cap finishes in March to do something, but there really is no point in having offers like these and then not telling anyone about them!

It is, we suppose, somewhat of an achievement to get most of the county's bus operators to join in a single initiative, and we hope it is a small step along the road to developing what is really needed in Lancashire, and elsewhere: A single ticket, or range of tickets, that can be used throughout the area on every bus, irrespective of who operates it. Now that really would be "Enhanced Partnership" working!

Bus Station Information - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

 A quick visit to three Lancashire bus stations recently showed a wide disparity of approach in providing people with information about bus services in a form they can take away with them and consult at their leisure without need of a data connection, a battery or even a PC or 'phone:  The printed timetable leaflet.

Chorley

Chorley bus station is operated by Lancashire County Council.  There is an information desk on the concourse, which at the time of our visit was apparently unstaffed (or at least, none of the staff were visible), and the only immediately available information was the above notice fixed to the plastic screen that separates customers from staff, or would do if any staff were on duty.

Stagecoach please note:  No one would go to the trouble of making and sticking up a poster like this if they weren't fed up of people constantly asking them for something they haven't got - printed timetable leaflets!

It's possible that timetable leaflets for Blackburn Bus Company's service 2 to Blackburn and for the various services operated under contract to the county council were available, although there was no evidence of this - and no one to ask, so we can't be sure.

Blackburn

Things were much better at Blackburn, where the newish bus station is operated by Blackburn-with-Darwen Council.

Here, there was an enquiry desk with a staff member waiting to assist and no barrier to keep the customers at bay, plus a fully-stocked, help-yourself leaflet dispenser with timetables for all services readily available. An excellent example of how things should be done.

Meanwhile in....

Lancaster

We have this:

Despite our branch of Stagecoach being one of the few to still produce timetable leaflets they are not easy to come by and certainly not from the Travel Shop, which closed at the start of the Covid pandemic, never to re-open.

We are told that if you can find an inspector - and if you ask very nicely - they might just delve into their secret cupboard under the stairs in their office and get one for you (but don't tell them we said so!)

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly....we'll leave you do decide which is which!