Tag: travel

Lonsdale Buses announces new services and new buses!

by Jim
Three of the new Volvo buses that have joined the fleet. Photo (c) Lonsdale Buses

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.

Service 83 will restore a service along Torrisholme Road withdrawn when service 2 was diverted after being converted to double-deck operation and renumbered to “100” in 2019.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.

“Confusing Times”: The Council’s Response

by Jim

A roadside timetable display

Earlier this month we published a post criticising the style, content and accuracy of some of Lancashire County Council’s roadside information displays. (Read again here).

The Council was offered the right to reply, which we are happy to publish here.

There are currently around 8,000 bus stops within the Lancashire County Council area, approximately 40% of which have timetable information though the council is expanding this facility.

The basis of the printed displays are the registrations that are received from the operators, in this case, the network serving Lancaster University is significant. As such, the levels of service do change significantly, and the destination of services are impacted. This is not a unique case across the county council, but the volume of journeys impacted in Lancaster is more substantial. Unfortunately, in this case, when using the registration provided by the operator, a higher number of codes for impacted journeys are being generated. As a result, the displays produced have a considerable number of departure times with notes.

Once the stop displays are produced, they are sent to print internally. The team of inspectors then take them out to the site with a 6-day window to try and complete the posting of the information. It is important to note, that when there are a significant number of changes being made, this can take longer and therefore not all stops will be update within the window.

We understand that the current arrangement doesn’t always produce the best possible outcome for passengers. We have reviewed the data, as a result of LDBUG raising the issue, and have produced some test displays. It has required a reworking of the registered journeys; we have split the journeys by university term time and holidays so that they are treated as separate services by the system. This has greatly reduced the number of departure times with codes. We will look to introduce these to the roadside as and when resources permit.

There are several impacts in doing this, one is the amount of time taken to rework the registration. The second one is the size of the cases on the route and the increased size of the displays with some now requiring two or even three pages. We will only be able to assess the impact once the revised displays are produced and inserted in the cases. We can assure LDBUG, going forward, we will mark the registrations for services 1/1A and 100 as requiring the extra work, to make sure we make the displays as clear as possible. In the longer term we are looking to update the software used to be able to create a more bespoke display for those stops that require them.

Additionally, Lancashire County Council has committed funding from the Bus Grant from HM Government to introduce brand-new Real Time Information displays throughout Lancashire. The initial tranche of signage is scheduled to commence in September 2025. Within Lancaster district this includes Carnforth town centre; key stops in Heysham and Morecambe and the Lancaster Infirmary stops.

Lancashire County Council