Rail Replacement Bus Status

[a22book]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way to check the running status of a Rail Replacement Bus. I intend to get the 09:13 bus from Frodsham to Chester on Sunday 1st March and have a connection at Chester?

If not does anyone know how reliable these replacement buses are?

Many Thanks

Chris

 

[PHILIPE]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way to check the running status of a Rail Replacement Bus. I intend to get the 09:13 bus from Frodsham to Chester on Sunday 1st March and have a connection at Chester?

If not does anyone know how reliable these replacement buses are?

Many Thanks

Chris

Might find some interesting reading on this thread on rail replacement busses from late last year:-

www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=107048

 

[CatfordCat]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way to check the running status of a Rail Replacement Bus. I intend to get the 09:13 bus from Frodsham to Chester on Sunday 1st March and have a connection at Chester?

If not does anyone know how reliable these replacement buses are?

Many Thanks

Chris

Broadly speaking, there isn't any public real time information on rail replacement bus / coach services.

Some of the companies who arrange / contract rail replacement coaches do have systems involving tracking bus / coach drivers' mobile phones, but this isn't universal.

I don't know the area well, but as a general rule of thumb, the service shouldn't have unravelled too badly by 0913 on a Sunday (traffic doesn't usually build up until the shops get going) but nothing is 100% certain in life...

Presume it's a connection that national rail enquiries suggests, not an optimistic 2 minute connection, at Chester? And bear in mind they probably won't hold connections for late running coaches except maybe for last one of the day.

 

[D1009]

And bear in mind they probably won't hold connections for late running coaches except maybe for last one of the day.

Just the same as late running trains then. Personally I find it a bit strange that given the effort that goes into detailed train reporting, for anything going wrong with replacement buses, the industry relies on information supplied by the operator. I suppose until said buses are fitted with GPS tracking in the same way that some scheduled buses are, this situation will continue.

 

[rwebster]

This bus is the 07.28 from Manchester Piccadilly - AFAIK its been a bus every Sunday for several years and is run by the same operator each week, so should be pretty reliable. The timings for buses on that route are the same no matter what day or time of day, so you'll probably find the bus waits several minutes at each stop for its departure time and gets to Chester early too.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Presume it's a connection that national rail enquiries suggests, not an optimistic 2 minute connection, at Chester? And bear in mind they probably won't hold connections for late running coaches except maybe for last one of the day.

Just a quick point on that, at least in my experience when the Severn Tunnel was last shut, the times NRE gave for the rail replacement bus from Newport to Bristol Parkway was VERY optimistic. The 4 times I had to do that journey, once we missed the connecting train by 5 minutes despite not really being held up at all on the way, and the other 3 times we arrived at Parkway and had to rush like hell into the station to get the connecting train. This is despite the connection apparently being 10 minutes, so it should have been fine. In reality the timetable just did not leave enough time for the actual bus journey.