Tag: travel

The next two weekends will see a number of changes to bus services operated by both our local operators, Stagecoach and Lonsdale Buses.

From Sunday, 26th October, Services 88 and 89 between Lancaster and Knott End-on-Sea will be operated by Stagecoach, replacing Lonsdale Buses. The only change to the timetable will be the last journey from Lancaster (all week) will extend to Knott End-on-Sea.

From Monday, 27th October, The Monday to Saturday journeys on service 18 Lancaster East City Circular will be operated by Lonsdale Buses. There will be no change to the timetable and Stagecoach tickets and passes will be accepted on Lonsdale Buses vehicles. The Sunday service will continue to be operated by Stagecoach.

The acceptance of one bus company’s tickets on another company’s buses is unusual in Lancashire and has been arranged by the county council following comments by the Bus Users’ Group that passengers visiting Williamson Park or Lancaster Leisure Park from other parts of the city would no longer be able to use Stagecoach Day Riders to complete their journeys.

Also from 27th October Lonsdale Buses will start running two new services, each running hourly on Monday to Saturday.

Service 83 will run from Brookhouse and Caton via Halton, Halton Road, Whalley Road, Slyne Road, Owen Road, Torrisholme Road, Torrisholme, The Shrimp, Lancaster Road, Euston Road and Central Drive to Morecambe Bus Station.

Service 85 will run from Morecambe Bus Station via Marine Drive Central, Bare, Hest Bank and Bolton-le-Sands to Carnforth Railway Station.

In practice, it is expected that buses will run through from Brookhouse to Carnforth and vice-versa and through passengers should, in most cases, be able to remain on the bus at Morecambe, although separate fares will be payable.

Service 85 closely follows the route of Stagecoach service 5 between Morecambe and Carnforth, but neither bus company will accept tickets issued by the other.

Timetables for both services are on our “Latest Changes to Bus Services” page

November

From Monday, 3rd November Stagecoach will introduce new winter timetables on services 555 Lancaster – Keswick and 755 Morecambe – Bowness-on-Windermere. Full details and links to the new times are on our “Latest Changes to Bus Services” page

Finally, Lonsdale Buses will withdraw service 550 Levens-Milnthorpe-Arnside-Morecambe after operation on 11th November. No replacement service will be provided.

Lonsdale Buses has announced two new bus services that will start on 27th October.

Service 83 will link Brookhouse, Caton, Halton, Skerton, Torrisholme and Morecambe every hour, six-days-a-week. The new service restores the link between Brookhouse and Morecambe that disappeared during the County Council’s cutbacks in 2016. It also brings back the longstanding and much-missed link between Skerton and Morecambe, which Stagecoach broke when it diverted service 2 via Scale Hall Lane to avoid the railway bridge following its conversion to double-deck operation in 2019.

Between Halton and Skerton the new service will run via Whalley Road, thus restoring a bus service to yet another stretch of road abandoned in recent years by Stagecoach. The Bus Users’ Group was pleased to have been invited to submit ideas as to how the service could best benefit local residents.

Service 85, which we understand will be linked operationally to the 83, will run from Morecambe Bus Station to Carnforth and will also have an hourly frequency on Monday to Saturday. This service will complement – or compete with – Stagecoach service 5, which runs from Overton to Carnforth via Morecambe.

The Bus Users’ Group has not been involved in the development of this service and its’ utility wil very much depend on how the timings of individual journeys relate to those provided by Stagecoach.

No Subsidy Involved

Both services are commercial operations and receive no subsidy from the county council or anyone else. Their success therefore very much depends on how much use local people make of them. Lonsdale Buses says on its website that the new services have been made possible by the arrival of four new buses in its fleet, although the Bus Users’ Group feels that the loss of the contract to operate services 88 and 89 between Lancaster and Knott End from the same date may also have been a factor.

New Vehicles

The four new buses, three of which were put on the road at the beginning of September, are all Volvo B8RLE’s equipped with the latest low-emission diesel engines and fitted with the “Next Stop” audio-visual announcement systems that are now required on all new buses. They join seven similar buses to have been delivered in the last couple of years that have given the company’s fleet a modern image.

The company is promising “new ticketing options” and more information about times and routes of the new services, which will be posted on its website (and on ours) as soon as they are available.

You can read what Lonsdale Buses has to say about the new buses and services here.