This might be quite a long post, but I thought it was worth sharing!
Hertfordshire County Council made a few changes to the contracted buses in my local area, supposedly taking effect from today.
The plan was for the 657 to be cut back from Redbourn where it currently ends to the estate where I live in Harpenden which it would start to serve. The HA1 service that originally served my estate has has it's frequency halved and has stopped serving my estate, now doing trips to Redbourn in the spare time to make up for the 657 being cut back.
The issue? The council told the company operating the HA1 to make the changes from 30/03/15, but told the other to change the 657 from 02/04/15 advertising the change as from 30/03 as well, the result was being that my estate ended up with no service in the gap. They then decided the best way to deal with this is to get the company running the HA1 to run a different bus and driver on the entire old timetable for an extra week! Having two separate services running with the same number on slightly different routes and timetables with one not being advertised anywhere has had the obvious result.
The new HA1 timetable is only slightly different for the retained journies meaning that I only found out this was happening when I saw one HA1 go past, followed by another 2 minutes later which I decided to get on and later bothered to ring the council to see where the 657 I was waiting for was!
The best part is that the reason the HA1 was cut back was because the 657 was no longer going to Redbourn, so there needed to be a replacement service going there, but because it still is until 02/04 there's now two buses doubling up each route. Needless to say, this is the result of budget cuts!
Hertfordshire County Council made a few changes to the contracted buses in my local area, supposedly taking effect from today.
The plan was for the 657 to be cut back from Redbourn where it currently ends to the estate where I live in Harpenden which it would start to serve. The HA1 service that originally served my estate has has it's frequency halved and has stopped serving my estate, now doing trips to Redbourn in the spare time to make up for the 657 being cut back.
The issue? The council told the company operating the HA1 to make the changes from 30/03/15, but told the other to change the 657 from 02/04/15 advertising the change as from 30/03 as well, the result was being that my estate ended up with no service in the gap. They then decided the best way to deal with this is to get the company running the HA1 to run a different bus and driver on the entire old timetable for an extra week! Having two separate services running with the same number on slightly different routes and timetables with one not being advertised anywhere has had the obvious result.
The new HA1 timetable is only slightly different for the retained journies meaning that I only found out this was happening when I saw one HA1 go past, followed by another 2 minutes later which I decided to get on and later bothered to ring the council to see where the 657 I was waiting for was!
The best part is that the reason the HA1 was cut back was because the 657 was no longer going to Redbourn, so there needed to be a replacement service going there, but because it still is until 02/04 there's now two buses doubling up each route. Needless to say, this is the result of budget cuts!
