PlusBus railcard discount times

[philthetube]

Wow, your complaining about buses only running every 20 minutes in the evening and on Sundays…!

especially when compared with the services in Ockley.

 

[Capvermell]

Wow, your complaining about buses only running every 20 minutes in the evening and on Sundays…!

The biggest problem is having to catch two of them in Portsmouth to travel only 1.6 miles, 1 mile on the No.1 bus and the 0.6 miles on the No.25. So the amount of time spent standing round for the two buses to arrive and very long interchange between the 1 and the 25 (to only travel 0.6 miles more) means at best you save only about 10 minutes compared to just walking the whole 2.1 miles.

My local rural bus 93 in Capel is only hourly but is reliable time wise and on Sunday when no trains are running from Dorking to Horsham its the only realistic way to do the 6.5 miles to Horsham or 7.5 miles to Dorking without a car. But it is is extremely expensive and costs £7.90 return for a 14 mile round trip or £4.90 for a single and Yet Metrobus's Metrovoyager ticket that allows totally unlimited travel all over their network all day is only £8. And A Discovery ticket that lets you travel on all bus routes across the whole South East of England outside London on multiple bus companies is only £9 for a whole day's travel (which could be well over 10 hours worth). But the Dorking and Horsham Plusbus schemes don't cover the 93 route 7 miles south of Dorking and 6 miles north of Horsham to where I live in Capel but only for about 2.5 miles around each town.

The relatively shorter distance (but not as short as my 1.6 miles journey on the No.1 and No.25 combined in Portsmouth that I end up concluding every time I buy Plusbus and catch them that I am better off avoiding and saving the £2 Plusbus fare and walking instead) fares on Metrobus for the route 93 are simply far too expensive in relation to the only hourly service and the appalling crashing, banging and thumping ride quality of the clapped out but totally unnamed manufacturer (one bus driver suggests they were made by Dennis) buses used. And I only need to travel on the 93 at all on a Sunday when Southern gets away with running no trains from Dorking to Horsham all day long.

 

[paul1609]

The biggest problem is having to catch two of them in Portsmouth to travel only 1.6 miles, 1 mile on the No.1 bus and the 0.6 miles on the No.25. So the amount of time spent standing round for the two buses to arrive and very long interchange between the 1 and the 25 (to only travel 0.6 miles more) means at best you save only about 10 minutes compared to just walking the whole 2.1 miles.

My local rural bus 93 in Capel is only hourly but is reliable time wise and on Sunday when no trains are running from Dorking to Horsham its the only realistic way to do the 6.5 miles to Horsham or 7.5 miles to Dorking without a car. But it is is extremely expensive and costs £7.90 return for a 14 mile round trip or £4.90 for a single and Yet Metrobus's Metrovoyager ticket that allows totally unlimited travel all over their network all day is only £8. And A Discovery ticket that lets you travel on all bus routes across the whole South East of England outside London on multiple bus companies is only £9 for a whole day's travel (which could be well over 10 hours worth). But the Dorking and Horsham Plusbus schemes don't cover the 93 route 7 miles south of Dorking and 6 miles north of Horsham to where I live in Capel but only for about 2.5 miles around each town.

The relatively shorter distance (but not as short as my 1.6 miles journey on the No.1 and No.25 combined in Portsmouth that I end up concluding every time I buy Plusbus and catch them that I am better off avoiding and saving the £2 Plusbus fare and walking instead) fares on Metrobus for the route 93 are simply far too expensive in relation to the only hourly service and the appalling crashing, banging and thumping ride quality of the clapped out but totally unnamed manufacturer (one bus driver suggests they were made by Dennis) buses used. And I only need to travel on the 93 at all on a Sunday when Southern gets away with running no trains from Dorking to Horsham all day long.

Why dont you just get the 25 bus to/from the hard (outside Portsmouth Harbour Station)?

 

[Capvermell]

Why dont you just get the 25 bus to/from the hard (outside Portsmouth Harbour Station)?

The 25 is extremely infrequent (but its intervals aren't even constant forcing you to consult a timetable) and there is also a gap of about half an hour between the arrival of services from Horsham at Portsmouth Harbour and its departure and ditto in reverse and it then has a journey time of nearly half an hour after the train journey already taking nearly 10 minutes longer to go to Portsmouth Harbour than to Fratton plus most trains from Horsham now terminate at Portsmouth & Southsea and not Portsmouth Harbour meaning even more time lost if you have to connect at Fratton on to a Portsmouth Harbour service. The 25's last bus of the day also used to be seasonal in terms of its time with the last bus back from Eastney Beach area as early as around 3.30pm earlier and later in the spring/autumn although it looks like this year they are more committed to keeping services going later till just after 6pm (this was a new bus route only a couple of years ago). But we are still talking a less than hourly service for most of the later part of the afternoon.

If I walk from Fratton I save £2, get fit and my journey time is much the same but involves far less hanging around at bus stops. As I see it the 25 seems to be a service only aimed at locals in Eastney going shopping in Gunwharf Quays but is not aimed at anyone trying to get to the Eastney Beach area.

Also Southern is very regularly in the habit of short terminating the few services from Horsham that are scheduled to go to Portsmouth Harbour at Fratton whenever they are running late in order to get them back to Victoria on time. This pernicious but frequent practice still goes on to this day despite the fact that the majority of services from Victoria to Portsmouth Harbour via Horsham and Barnham now terminate at Portsmouth & Southsea rather than Portsmouth Harbour.

 

[paul1609]

If I walk from Fratton I save £2, get fit and my journey time is much the same but involves far less hanging around at bus stops. As I see it the 25 seems to be a service only aimed at locals in Eastney going shopping in Gunwharf Quays but is not aimed at anyone trying to get to the Eastney Beach area.

Thats not really that surprising considering that from Fratton Station (on Goldsmith Ave) you can take the no. 1 bus to Bransbury Park from where it is only 0.7 miles walk to Eastney Beach itself 14 mins according to Google Maps. Portsmouth is not like London its an island so its not going to possible to run a frequent bus service down every dead end road Im afraid.