Lakes Link from the Park & Ride

 

Lancaster's Park & Ride facility at Junction 34 of the M6 will shortly be gaining a new bus service. From 17th April Stagecoach's seasonal fast motorway express service X8, which links Chorley and Preston with Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere and Keswick, will have an additional stop at the Caton Road Park & Ride site.

Although the stop is thought to be primarily to comply with certain rules and regulations concerning Drivers' Hours and the use of tachographs, passengers will be able to board and alight there. This year the service will operate on Saturdays and Sundays until the end of October with the northbound journey departing at 10.30 and the return from the Lakes getting back at 18.01.

On Saturdays a connection will be available from Lancaster Bus Station on the Park & Ride bus service, which is expected to resume the previous week.

Even after allowing for the change of bus this will provide a faster journey to Windermere and beyond than even the fast M6 motorway journeys on the 555 service.

There is no Park & Ride connection on Sundays but the service then is even faster than the alternative, which is the "slow" all-stops 555 via the A6 and Burton-in-Kendal.

PLEASE NOTE that as this is an express service with limited stops, English National Concessionary Bus Passes (NoW Cards) are NOT VALID although a North West Explorer ticket can be purchased from the driver by passholders at the discounted rate  of  £8.50.

Stagecoach is not publicising the service yet but you can find our version of the timetable on this link

Timetable Glitch Mars Service 33 Takeover but Passengers on the 51 Set to Benefit

 Two Lancaster district local bus services are changing hands on Monday, 29th March following the award of new contracts by Lancashire County Council.

Service 33 at Branksome

Service 33, the Morecambe - Bare Circular, will now be operated by Stagecoach. The official terminus in Morecambe will be the Festival Market, rather than Morecambe bus station.  The two stops are only 140 metres apart and under the present operator most buses started from the market anyway as that is where most passengers board. The bus station will still be served after leaving the market.

Timetable error

Other than the change of terminus the timetable remains the same as before, but passengers seeking to check that on Stagecoach's website will be surprised to find that, at the time of writing, no Saturday service is shown. The omission is repeated on Traveline, Google Transit and Bus Times.org sites.

When no print version of a timetable is available, Stagecoach's website defaults to strange, auto-generated documents, which in the case of service 33 looks like this:

There is no "Saturday" table, although the following page does tell you what is operating on Christmas Eve! Note also the departures at 1440, 1520 and 1600 that apparently operate on limited dates that are "not known".  We can tell Stagecoach (and our readers) that those  trips run only on Saturday and school holidays, when the bus and driver aren't needed for a school run, but it would be better if it was obvious from the document itself.

Much of the content of the Stagecoach website is controlled at Group level; local staff don't have full say over what appears on it, but they are believed to be working to resolve the matter and the data quality issue that lies behind it.  Let's hope they get it sorted out in time for next Monday, but if they don't there is an accurate version of the 33 timetable on the BUG website here.  Service 33 timetable

   LATEST:  A different version has now appeared on the Stagecoach website. It includes the Saturday timetable and identifies the annotated journeys as running in "English school holidays only". Unfortunately it describes the terminus as "Morrisons", which is a different stop to "Festival Market" and is on the other side of the road! Luckily, the regulars will realise this is wrong, but new and potential passengers need to be wary.

Bay Rider Tickets Extended to Service 51

Service 51 at Silverdale

After a period of being run by Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire, service 51 Carnforth - Silverdale, reverts to Stagecoach operation. At the moment, a similarly strange auto-generated timetable is the only one available on the company's website but at least this is accurate: BUG's version is here. The big news on the 51 however, is that the Bay Dayrider and Megarider tickets are being extended beyond their current boundary at Warton to take in the entire route of the service. 

Lancashire County Council, which controls the fares on the 51, had made a £6.50 Day and £17 weekly ticket available, but these were only valid on the 51 service and couldn't be used for journeys beyond Carnforth. At £5 and £15.90 not only are the equivalent Stagecoach tickets cheaper, but they allow travel over a much wider area including Lancaster, Morecambe, Heysham, Overton, Halton and Galgate. Passengers from those areas can also use these tickets to visit Silverdale. Let's hope that Stagecoach brings its ticket validity map up to date before too long!

Whilst the BUG appreciates Lancashire's action in allowing Stagecoach tickets to be bought and used on this service (as well as on service 33) we feel that it shows again  the need for more integrated ticketing in the county, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of network tickets irrespective of which bus company happens to run their local route.  Perhaps the new National Bus Strategy for England, with its emphasis on Partnership working will finally bring this about?