TRIVIA: Largest settlements with no public transport

[AY1975]

Following on from the thread about the largest towns with no Sunday bus services at https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/largest-town-with-no-sunday-bus-services.147478/, what are the largest settlements that you know of with no public transport of any kind (bus or rail services), or with no public transport other than, say, school buses, community transport, or demand-responsive bus services?

 

[MedwayValiant]

A bit more than a year ago, I was musing about this question: What is the number x, such that there are x settlements in the United Kingdom which have a population of at least x? Are there 10,000 towns of 10,000 people? - clearly there are not. Are there 1,000 towns or villages of 1,000? - yes and plenty more. In fact, based on 2011 census figures there are 2,374 towns or villages with at least 2,374 inhabitants.

Of those 2,374 places, there was precisely one with no public transport of any kind. It was Wynyard Village, a gated community about three miles west of Billingham in the Borough of Stockton on Tees. You have to be fairly rich to live in Wynyard Village - Duncan Bannatyne used to own a house there, for instance - so it's perhaps not surprising that its inhabitants have little need of buses. Even so, if you are surprised that this possible answer is in the north east of England, when you might have expected it to be somewhere like Dorset or Herefordshire, well so was I.

Now, it possible that some villages larger than Wynyard (population 2,683, according to the 2016 official estimates) have lost their bus services since I made that discovery and so I cannot claim that it is definitely the answer to your question. But an opening bid, in any case.

 

[darloscott]

Wynyard does have its own service actually. A branded Sprinter runs (for free I believe!) into Billingham multiple times a day operated by Richardson's Coaches from Hartlepool.

 

[Typhoon]

Wynyard does have its own service actually. A branded Sprinter runs (for free I believe!) into Billingham multiple times a day operated by Richardson's Coaches from Hartlepool.

Free indeed
http://wynyardpark.com/pdf/WynyardPark_BusTimetable.pdf

 

[MedwayValiant]

Thanks for that, it's one I didn't know about.

Is it an non-registered service? I think it might be, for three reasons:
1. Traveline doesn't know about it, and if you ask it to take you to Wynyard Village it suggests a bus to the edge of Billingham and then walk for 82 minutes.
2. That timetable states "Wynyard Park reserve the right to refuse admission". While any bus service has the right to refuse carriage to someone who is offensively unclean or off their face, you'll never see this stated on a timetable, and there would be a huge fuss if a major operator decided to deny transport to anyone it didn't like the look of.
3. The Wynyard Park website refers to it as "a private Park Bus", suggesting that it is not available to the general public.

On that basis, it's debatable whether it really counts as public transport - but it is a bus service of some kind, and so Wynyard won't really do as the answer to AY1975's question. Have we any other suggestions? I'm thinking there's somewhere in Northern Ireland, but I'll have to look stuff up before I think more explicitly!

 

[Typhoon]

Thanks for that, it's one I didn't know about.

Is it an non-registered service? I think it might be, for three reasons:
1. Traveline doesn't know about it, and if you ask it to take you to Wynyard Village it suggests a bus to the edge of Billingham and then walk for 82 minutes.
2. That timetable states "Wynyard Park reserve the right to refuse admission". While any bus service has the right to refuse carriage to someone who is offensively unclean or off their face, you'll never see this stated on a timetable, and there would be a huge fuss if a major operator decided to deny transport to anyone it didn't like the look of.
3. The Wynyard Park website refers to it as "a private Park Bus", suggesting that it is not available to the general public.

On that basis, it's debatable whether it really counts as public transport - but it is a bus service of some kind, and so Wynyard won't really do as the answer to AY1975's question. Have we any other suggestions? I'm thinking there's somewhere in Northern Ireland, but I'll have to look stuff up before I think more explicitly!

Interesting about Traveline. I did a search and was presented with a walk of 31 minutes. I suppose it depends on where in this very extensive development you choose as a starting point. Is it available to the general public? Probably not, unless you can get into the gated community and that is probably the point, they don't want riff-raff so the general public is not allowed in! I had a quick look at the website, properties with triple garages abound; I reckon the (mini)bus is largely empty.

Also, there will probably be Scottish islands, who rely on ferries. They probably should be counted as public transport as well.

 

[Busaholic]

Thanks for that, it's one I didn't know about.

Is it an non-registered service? I think it might be, for three reasons:
1. Traveline doesn't know about it, and if you ask it to take you to Wynyard Village it suggests a bus to the edge of Billingham and then walk for 82 minutes.
2. That timetable states "Wynyard Park reserve the right to refuse admission". While any bus service has the right to refuse carriage to someone who is offensively unclean or off their face, you'll never see this stated on a timetable, and there would be a huge fuss if a major operator decided to deny transport to anyone it didn't like the look of.
3. The Wynyard Park website refers to it as "a private Park Bus", suggesting that it is not available to the general public.

On that basis, it's debatable whether it really counts as public transport - but it is a bus service of some kind, and so Wynyard won't really do as the answer to AY1975's question. Have we any other suggestions? I'm thinking there's somewhere in Northern Ireland, but I'll have to look stuff up before I think more explicitly!

Being a free service, it falls outside the remit of the Traffic Commissioners, and also means they could operate it with an 82 steps to access seats bus, if they could find one. of course

 

[Bletchleyite]

Free indeed
http://wynyardpark.com/pdf/WynyardPark_BusTimetable.pdf

Planning gain on environmental grounds, perhaps?

 

[Bletchleyite]

3. The Wynyard Park website refers to it as "a private Park Bus", suggesting that it is not available to the general public.

It appears to be a gated community/private estate in the vein of those found in Betjeman's "Metro-Land", this being the case the right of admission is probably reserved to the whole estate rather than just the bus. FWIW, though, sometimes this kind of thing does appear in planning gain generally. I was aware of a tender for one in the past which was only tendered to serve a new (non-gated) estate for planning gain, but in the end the tender was awarded to the local incumbent bus company who ran it as a regular route open to all and serving the estate but running to the main village centre as well.

 

[MedwayValiant]

Ferries to Scottish islands are undoubtedly public transport, although in fact there are rather few settlements of 1,000 or more on the islands in any case, and I think all of them have bus services of some kind. It's not in Scotland, but Hugh Town on the Isles of Scilly (population 1,050) has a town bus service seven days a week!

The place in Northern Ireland of which I was thinking earlier is Maghaberry (Co Antrim, population 2,470) - but I now discover that it does have a bus service. If you ask Translink to give you buses to Maghaberry it gives you the 51 which stops only on the A3 a mile outside the village (in England we'd probably call the stop Maghaberry Turn), but there is in fact also the 52 which goes into the village proper. The reason I didn't find this before? You have to misspell Maghaberry as Meghaberry to get this service to appear! That's Northern Ireland for you ...

Hemingford Grey (Cambridgeshire, population 3,650) now has only two buses a week - into St Ives on Monday and Friday mornings, and back again at lunchtime. It's just about walkable if you're young and fit, but I doubt if the older or infirm would fancy it.

 

[Busaholic]

Ferries to Scottish islands are undoubtedly public transport, although in fact there are rather few settlements of 1,000 or more on the islands in any case, and I think all of them have bus services of some kind. It's not in Scotland, but Hugh Town on the Isles of Scilly (population 1,050) has a town bus service seven days a week!

The place in Northern Ireland of which I was thinking earlier is Maghaberry (Co Antrim, population 2,470) - but I now discover that it does have a bus service. If you ask Translink to give you buses to Maghaberry it gives you the 51 which stops only on the A3 a mile outside the village (in England we'd probably call the stop Maghaberry Turn), but there is in fact also the 52 which goes into the village proper. The reason I didn't find this before? You have to misspell Maghaberry as Meghaberry to get this service to appear! That's Northern Ireland for you ...

Hemingford Grey (Cambridgeshire, population 3,650) now has only two buses a week - into St Ives on Monday and Friday mornings, and back again at lunchtime. It's just about walkable if you're young and fit, but I doubt if the older or infirm would fancy it.

Usain Bolt could complete a circuit of Hugh Town in about a minute