I picked one up at Sheffield Station a couple of weeks ago, it really is an excellent publication, very nicely done and most informative.
I'm certainly impressed with it, it's very informative. I picked one up and subsequently promoted it to a friend of mine; I'll expect my commission payment soon
Still on the hunt for a copy! WHSmith (or TGJones now) were out of stock.
18467 will only be a loan for the weekend - Great North Run this weekend will see a large number of open tops in use as cheering posts.
Correct. The driver got lost on a diversion and attempted an uphill hairpin junction and grounded out. Junction between Rectory Road and Scarcliffe Lanes/A632 in Shirebrook
Interesting, the photo / video I saw showed it fully off the road. Can't have been too significant however as it appears to have been back out a few hours later.
It’s a good job it came back out! Yesterday was tight, with a grand total of zero spare buses available when allocations were done the night before
Anyone know what the issue with 80163 is...shows as last out 4/8
Crikey what is the PVR at Chesterfield depot and how many vehicles are based there?
Suffered RTC damage.
I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but Enviro400EV are having reliability issues. Loss of service can mostly be attributed to an ongoing driver shortage; the loan drivers aren't enough to cover full service currently.
| Bus Service | Route Summary | Change Description |
|---|---|---|
| 42 Stagecoach | Sheffield - Woodseats - Lowedges | From 26 October the 42 service is withdrawn. View more information |
| 43 44 Stagecoach | Sheffield - Woodseats - Lowedges - Coal Aston (44) - Dronfield - Sheepbridge - Chesterfield | From 26 October there are timetable changes View more information |
| 50 50a Stagecoach | Sheffield - Eckington - Marsh Lane (50a) - Whittington Moor - Chesterfield | From 26 October there are timetable changes Please check back for details |
| 218 TM Travel | Sheffield - Ecclesall - Totley - Baslow - Bakewell | From 26 October there is a minor route change in Baslow to cater for Lady Manners School journeys View more information |
| X17 Stagecoach | Barnsley - Meadowhall - Sheffield - Chesterfield - Matlock - Wirksworth | From 26 October there are timetable changes View more information |
| Peak Sightseer Stagecoach | Lowedges – Castleton/Chatsworth House | From 26 October this service is withdrawn. |
Maybe Stagecoach Yorkshire will give us a full summary of the changes by the end of this week?
OK, here is the full summary of the changes. It's all minor changes unlike last year:
Tell me about it, it's no surprise that 1, 2, 3 and 77 have all been spared.
Hopefully! There seems to be a given in the industry that 'minor changes' is enough when tweaks are only by a few minutes to a few services, but when those are peak time services or when people rely on them then it's far better to have clarity.
Seems odd to split a service linking major parts of South Yorkshire in this way though. Originally it could have been down to the fact the registrations split at Sheffield, but now the Wirksworth section is also separate that idea no longer holds.
Isn't it only fairly recently the 39 went back up to every 15 minutes?
Perhaps ‘Hulley’s of Baslow’ aka High Peak May come sniffing around some of the routes that Stagecoach seem to be abandoning/neglecting….?
I guess that comes down to whether Stagecoach are prepared to let them get a foot in the door. They seemed keen to defend the 170 corridor, so maybe if HP do start registering services there might be a response? There isn't a lot of market to fight for, but there are areas a lower cost operator could improve things. Just adding a third bus and merging / interworking the 5/38/84 could bring a lot of improvements but it seems Stagecoach aren't seeing the passenger numbers they need to justify this.
Passenger numbers didn't increase as projected.
Permanent as far as I can tell. The passenger numbers on a Sunday don't support a full commercial service.
The 5 is technically my local route so I'm not entirely happy about it. The issue is that the 5 and 38 are absolute money sinks. They carry mostly concession passengers which isn't enough to support it commercially. Perhaps if Stagecoach had the guts to actually cut them, Derbyshire County Council (or EMCCA) would step in and tender the whole thing.
I wouldn't be opposed to seeing that; however, if Stagecoach aren't making enough money on a route to justify it commercially, I doubt anyone else would. You saw how the original Hulleys took on what some consider foolish commercial ventures in the form of the 80 and 6. They weren't the cash cows they thought they would be!
It's a shame DCC didn't transfer the support Hulleys had for the 170 over to Stagecoach. As it used to run late 7 days through BSIP money I'm sure some improvement over what is offered would be possible. That said, the Sunday daytime service was, I believe, commercial. It really should be possible to get a weekend service that goes in to Chatsworth House grounds to do well.
What happened with the 5? It used to be half-hourly and run on Sundays. It serves areas not too dissimilar to the 10 which supports a better frequency. I do wonder if it's the interworking with the 38 which is the main issue, but I also wonder if the 5 and 10 could be revised and interworked to serve the two halves of Newbold and Dunston more effectively.
Stagecoach are probably the highest cost operator in the area, so if it's marginal someone else might make a go of it, but if it's really not doing well then you are right, putting them out to tender would be best. The 6 had merits (as above, I think the 38 being a one-way loop is nonsensical) and the 80 was more bad planning than anything else. Not sure they ever thought the 6 would be a cash cow, more filling gaps.
Makes the timetable a mess though as they’ve literally just pulled the 42 out so now you have an unbalanced 15/15/30 frequency between the 43/44.
Until quite recently the 42 was the 43A. I'm not sure why they bothered renumbering it to be honest.
This doesn't really make much difference though - this was always the case on the common sections of the 43/44 not served by the 42, and the section served by the 42 has so many other routes as well that passengers might well not care.
Their approach to the tendered services was careful; they made sure operators were available. With the commercial services 55 and 170, they simply shrugged and went "it has nothing to do with us"
The 5 and 10 serve vastly different areas of Newbold. The 10 serves the rougher, more deprived areas which would support bus usage whereas the 5 serves mostly elderly and, for lack of better word, nicer areas of Newbold/Stonegravels. We know concession passes don't renumerate the operator nearly as much as paying passengers, so elderly people paired with people who mostly own cars aren't going to be able to fund a service at the same level as the 10.
I was waiting to see how long it would take you to mention a hospital service
The 42 was by all accounts pointless; Woodseats and Lowedges have plenty of services to meet demand. In my opinion, the 43 and 44 are fine how they are. From the chesterfield side, they're separate services; they serve separate areas of Dronfield. It seems people on the Sheffield side simply see them as 'more buses to Meadowhead".
Probably because route wise, it really had nothing to do with the 43 besides running up Chesterfield Road.
Agreed. It's a shame the 44 doesn't have the passenger numbers to support a 30min frequency. That would solve most of the issues with timings on common sections etc.
The 43A / 42 are a fairly recent thing anyway. The 43 used to run every 20 minutes with no coordination with the 44. I very much doubt these carry many through passengers past Dronfield or Coal Aston. It might even work better to have a single 43 and a single 44 coordinated on the Chesterfield to Unstone corridor, then have a new service which runs Sheffield > Dronfield > Coal Aston > Sheffield and vice-versa. This would give a better link from Coal Aston to the main shops in Dronfield - currently, only the roughly 2-hourly 15 links the two.
A few years ago I sampled the train from Dronfield into Sheffield. Fine but it was one of those days when the railway was in chaos and we couldn't get back by rail. Simple, get a bus.
