Getting Back to Normal

There have been two  three welcome developments in restoring normality to Lancaster's bus services this week.

   STOP PRESS: Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire has now told us that services 8 (Ryelands) 9 (Farmdale Road) and 580/1/2 (Lancaster-Kirkby Lonsdale-Skipton) will return to normal service (with minor modifications) from Monday, 20th July.

Timetable Displays

For the first time since lockdown Lancashire County Council has been able to produce updated roadside displays for its timetable cases at bus stops. Staff have been out and about throughout the Lancaster District this week updating the displays, which had become very out-of-date during the various changes to services made since lockdown began in March.

The move is especially welcome as it comes in time to help promote the new Sunday buses on city services to Vale, Ridge, Marsh and the East Lancaster Circle to Williamson Park as well as the routes to Kirkby Lonsdale via either side of the Lune Valley that start this Sunday.

Summer in the Lakes

The BUG also understands that from Monday 3rd August, Stagecoach will be introducing a full Summer service in the Lake District including the extra Motorway journeys on the 555 to Kendal and Keswick that were due to commence on 28th March. The summer timetable runs until 1st November. The usual "The Lakes by Bus" brochure was produced and distribution had started just before lockdown meant that its introduction had to be delayed. Presumably stocks are available, although with libraries, visitor centres and the bus station Travel Shop all closed your best chance of getting one is likely to be on a 555 or 755 bus.

New Normal

These changes mean that the area's buses are virtually back to where they were before lockdown began. Stagecoach services are fully back to normal, although there have been changes on services 7, 49, 55, 80 and 81 that are permanent and were due to be implemented irrerspective of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire services are still missing a couple of journeys on city routes 8 and 9 and the company's flagship service 582 to Kirkby Lonsdale and on to Skipton is still operating a reduced timetable. (See STOP PRESS) The new service 550 from Arnside to Morecambe, introduced just weeks before lockdown, remains suspended.

With changes to the capacity restrictions meaning there is now much more room available on buses and with all passengers required to wear face coverings along with other safety measures being taken, there really is no reason now for people to get back on baord and the BUG hopes to see the recent increase in the number of passengers travelling to continue over the rest of the summer.

More Room On Board

There doesn't seem to have been an official announcement, or if there was then we missed it, but it appears that the government's new social-distancing rules allowing the two-metre rule to be reduced to "one metre plus" in certain circumstances do apply to buses.

Nor have our local bus companies exactly gone overboard to bring us this good news. Buried away in the "Coronavirus" pages of Stagecoach's website, but with no indication on the link that anything has changed and that it might be worth looking at them again, is the new Guidance on socially-distanced travel by bus.

To save you the trouble of trying to find it, here it is - best summed up by this poster 

With one passenger allowed to occupy EVERY double seat (and more if travelling as a household or bubble) the carrying capacity of the bus is increased from 25% to 50%, meaning there is much less risk of passengers being left behind by a "full" bus.

More detailled information is available on this poster, although you'll have to forgive the trainee at Stagecoach who was given the job of writing it for his or her grammar  (it should of course read fewer available seats)

Now that we've found it, we are very pleased to see this news from Stagecoach and we hope that those newly-available seats will soon by filled with happy bus travellers.

Co-incidence?

It might, of course, be just a co-incidence but only last week the Bus Users' Group supported a joint approach to the Secretary of State for Transport by six leading public transport organisations asking him to change the message on public transport and to stop the damaging "avoid public transport" mantra that was doing incalculable long-term harm to the industry. It would seem that, for once, someone was listening.