The new timetable for Lonsdale Buses service 85, Morecambe to Carnforth, from 6th July has appeared on the Bus Times.org website, although you won’t find it anywhere else such as Traveline or even Lonsdale Buses’ own website yet!
Frequency reduced
The service is being extended at both ends of the route. Northbound journeys will now start at Lancaster bus station and run direct via Morecambe Road, picking up the current route at Morecambe bus station. At Carnforth the route is extended to follow the full route of Stagecoach’s 5 from the railway station to Windermere Road. However, as no additional vehicles are allocated, the extra distance means that the frequency is reduced to every two hours. The first bus from Carnforth is at 0700 and the last at 1700. From Lancaster, the first departure is at 0800 but the last is at 1750, running ten minutes earlier than the pattern, which will make it harder to remember.
Criticism
When the service was introduced in October last year, it was criticised for being timed just 5 minutes in front of Stagecoach’s service 5 towards Carnforth and 9 minutes in front going towards Morecambe, with both services running hourly. Passengers saw this as wasteful when what was wanted was a regular 30-minute headway, which is also Lancashire County Council’s aspiration for the Overton-Morecambe-Carnforth corridor served by Stagecoach’s 5.
Integration Lacking
However, the new timetable doesn’t deliver this and suffers from the the traditional way in which most bus services appear to be planned in Britain – as individual routes rather than part of an integrated and co-ordinated network as found in places like Germany and Switzerland or, potentially the new franchised networks appearing in places such as Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.
The new service parallels several Stagecoach routes, all of which operate hourly. Between Lancaster and Morecambe buses on the 85 will run 15 minutes in front of Stagecoach’s 41. Between Morecambe and Carnforth they will still run at similar times to Stagecoach’s 5 although now they will be six minutes behind rather than 5 in front! Because the 85 is timed more quickly than the 5, by Carnforth Railway Station it will run at the same time as the 5 all the way up to Windermere Road, with Stagecoach’s hourly 49 to Lancaster following one minute behind as far as Highfield Road, then nothing for another hour.
In the return direction, the 85 will be 20 minutes behind the 5, which does give a better 20/40 split, although the 85 is of course only every two hours and at certain times of day it will run on top of the 755 as far as Morecambe. Lastly, between Morecambe and Lancaster the 85 will be just 8 minutes in front of Stagecoach’s hourly 41.
The timetable shows a layover time of 17 minutes in Lancaster bus station, which unless the service is to be interworked with something else, will add to the pressure on the inadequate layover space at the station.
What could have been?
Clearly with a route of this nature it would not be possible to produce a regular interval timetable with parallel services over the whole route. However, a cursory look at timetables suggests that if the core section between Morecambe and Carnforth were timed to run exactly half-an-hour apart from the 5 the only real drawback would be that it would more closely duplicate the 41 between Morecambe and Lancaster, although even here the mid-afternoon journey would fill a two-hour gap in the 41 timetable.
The Bus Times version of the new timetable is on this link: Service 85 from 6th July 2026
Lancaster Bus Users' Group 