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Trivia: A complete UK public transport network?

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pjnathanail

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Is the UK public transport network a true network?

Ie, can I get on at my local bus stop, and make it to another bus stop in any given place in the UK (as long as they both have some form of service).

Bus, coach, train, tram, ferries etc are all fine, as is a short walk to connect between stops/modes such as at termini.

Or are there self contained services/networks which don't interconnect with any others?
 
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EM2

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I can't think of anywhere that is so isolated to the point that it doesn't connect with any other public transport. Even the Isle of Wight network connects with ferries to the mainland.
 

Eagle

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I can't think of anywhere that is so isolated to the point that it doesn't connect with any other public transport. Even the Isle of Wight network connects with ferries to the mainland.

As do the more remote Scottish islands.

Even Northern Ireland, there are numerous connections to the ferries (as well as a number of through coach services to Britain).
 

Polarbear

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There can be some large gaps on Sundays though.

The public transport network in Shropshire for example is rather threadbare on Sundays away from the railways & urban areas. Getting to Oswestry from anywhere on a Sunday could be a challenge.
 

TheGrandWazoo

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There can be some large gaps on Sundays though.

The public transport network in Shropshire for example is rather threadbare on Sundays away from the railways & urban areas. Getting to Oswestry from anywhere on a Sunday could be a challenge.

The situation regarding Sunday buses is massively improved in many areas from the low water point of the early 1990s, mainly given the increase in Sunday shopping (now second busiest day of the week retail wise).

For example, Wiltshire had only basic services (excl the main centres of Swindon and Salisbury) for much of the county but now:

Chippenham to Swindon - was every 120 mins, now every 30 mins
Swindon to Devizes - 1 or 2 journeys Summer only, now every 60 mins
Bath to Trowbridge - was every 120 mins, now every 60 mins
Bath to Devizes - 3 journeys, now 5 journeys
Swindon to Oxford - was every 120 mins, now every 60 mins

The improvement in neighbouring Somerset and Gloucestershire is even more notable. However, Dorset remains stubbornly awful. The reason being that the councils used RBG cash to support some of them, and now much of the funding has gone, it has come to represent an inadvertent pump priming episode.

However, the Trowbridge example is actually a commercial initiative from First showing how Sunday can actually justify daytime services. Conversely, Sunday nights have probably experienced a greater cut from council cuts and are probably worse than at any time
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There can be some large gaps on Sundays though.

The public transport network in Shropshire for example is rather threadbare on Sundays away from the railways & urban areas. Getting to Oswestry from anywhere on a Sunday could be a challenge.




Curiously, Shrewsbury and Oswestry didn't have a Sunday service between them until the RBG cash. There was a service from Wrexham to Chirk and Oswestry though but that has gone conversely.
 

Bevan Price

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There can be some large gaps on Sundays though.

The public transport network in Shropshire for example is rather threadbare on Sundays away from the railways & urban areas. .

Also applies to weekday evenings in some places. My last bus home is at 17:50 from the town centre (St. Helens).
 

poshfan

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In my area of south Lincs, although there are a handful of long distance coach and bus routes, a lot of the rural bus routes are designed to connect a group of villages to the nearest town and don't really form a network as such. Basically, think of each bus route as a dead end branch line starting from a market town or city. So chances are, to go from point A to point B few miles away, unless they happen to be on the same route, you have to travel into the local town and change at the bus station and travel back out again. Even when bus routes do intersect, you would be brave to try to connect there. Also even when routes do connect 2 towns, the routes are often very indirect as they try to take in as many places along the way as possible. For example, one route in my area from Stamford to Grantham which has been improved in recent years to 5 a day, takes 1h 15, you can do it in 40 mins by train via Peterborough even though you start off in the wrong direction.

If you try to plan a route using http://traveline.info , it is remarkably difficult to get any distance in a day unless you include trains or long distance coaches.
 
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