Trivia: largest place without late evening journeys

[Martin1988]

Shrewsbury's neighbour Telford (185-200k ish) has very poor evening service in the last couple of years. It used to be pretty good until a few years ago, but it's steadily dropped off.

The main arterial route of the 4 has it's first bus around 6am with the last one doing the full length of the route around 8pm with a few short trips until about 9.30. It ran much earlier in a morning and comfortably past 11pm until a few years ago. Other main routes like the 7 now don't see service past 7.30pm. Lawley Village, a new housing area with over 30,000 homes doesn't see a bus service beyond 6pm apart from a single short journey on route 8 at around 8pm.

Can you recall whenabouts the evening services were cut back? Before, during or post Covid?

I'd also be interested to find out have Telford buses ever ran late on Sunday evenings?

 

[MaidaVale]

Can you recall whenabouts the evening services were cut back? Before, during or post Covid?

I lived there for a while, and moved away in 2022, and I'm fairly sure the significant drop in service levels was around then. Similar sort of time to when the "Travel Telford" services were first introduced under Chaserider and Select Bus. Definitely post-covid though. They were certainly nowhere near as bad as they are now when I was there.

I think the 4 had services relatively late-ish on a Sunday evening compared to what they are now. Maybe 9 or 10pm last bus. Can't recall exactly though and I can't seem to find an old copy of a timetable online anywhere.

 

[stevieinselby]

In general I think Fleet is one of the worst connected towns in the South East in terms of bus service. A population of 45,000 and it gets an hourly daytime service to Farnborough and a 2-hourly service to Aldershot, it's pretty poor although from memory the network was larger 15 years ago.

I don't know what you mean, I just googled "bus fleet" and got lists of thousands of buses

Yes, it is a shockingly poor service. Looking at the town, I wouldn't have expected a lot – given that it is a wealthy town made up mostly of bigger detached houses with some exceptionally affluent areas, and even the cheaper neighbourhoods are in the least deprived 30% of the country – but even with those low expectations I was disappointed.

It isn't even as though it makes up for it with a fantastic train service – sure, it isn't bad, with 3 trains per hour to Basingstoke, Farnborough, Woking and London, and 1 to Portsmouth, but that is still pretty limited connectivity for a town of that size, given the presence nearby of other towns like Farnham and Guildford that have no decent connection.

 

[Simon75]

Shrewsbury's neighbour Telford (185-200k ish) has very poor evening service in the last couple of years. It used to be pretty good until a few years ago, but it's steadily dropped off.

The main arterial route of the 4 has it's first bus around 6am with the last one doing the full length of the route around 8pm with a few short trips until about 9.30. It ran much earlier in a morning and comfortably past 11pm until a few years ago. Other main routes like the 7 now don't see service past 7.30pm. Lawley Village, a new housing area with over 30,000 homes doesn't see a bus service beyond 6pm apart from a single short journey on route 8 at around 8pm.

The last bus 5 from Telford to Stafford 21.13
Stafford to Telford via Newport 22.30

 

[Martin1988]

I lived there for a while, and moved away in 2022, and I'm fairly sure the significant drop in service levels was around then. Similar sort of time to when the "Travel Telford" services were first introduced under Chaserider and Select Bus. Definitely post-covid though. They were certainly nowhere near as bad as they are now when I was there.

I think the 4 had services relatively late-ish on a Sunday evening compared to what they are now. Maybe 9 or 10pm last bus. Can't recall exactly though and I can't seem to find an old copy of a timetable online anywhere.

Thanks for this interesting information. I apologise for the delay in getting back to you.

Telford (and Shropshire in general) isn't an area I'm too up on so any information that others can provide is helpful.

A few other areas where services finish quite early are Alsager (last bus on the 103 is around 2030 in both directions) and Nantwich where there doesn't seem to be any services after about 2145.

I know that on Friday the 84 from Chester runs later but would a later service by D&G on the 84x likely be viable?

 

[ChrisC]

I was in Gainsborough a few weeks back and they seemed to have no Sunday or evening buses.

Many of the towns in Lincolnshire and just over the border in Nottinghamshire have very few evening and Sunday bus services. Retford, Newark and Grantham to name a few. Newark and Grantham both being much larger than Gainsborough.

 

[MaidaVale]

The last bus 5 from Telford to Stafford 21.13
Stafford to Telford via Newport 22.30

Bit of an outlier, as it's a longer distance route. Doesn't serve much of the town itself, and none of the actual town routes have any meaningful service after 9pm.

 

[GoneSouth]

Having read some of the above comments, I’ve started investigating a little. It’s surprising the different attitudes and efforts made by different local councils to work with bus operators and provide subsidy. Some work hard to secure central government funding, some It seems apparent for example Worcestershire couldn’t care less of there are any evening buses Gloucestershire on the other hand seem to be throwing money at Stagecoach and expanding evening and Sunday services in particular over the past year. Haven’t checked Herefordshire yet, but I expect they’ll be taking the same approach to Worcestershire.

It really is a postcode lottery for non drivers out there.

 

[Martin1988]

Am guessing that when we are talking about late evening journeys we are mainly talking about Monday to Saturday evening but what about Sunday evening provision?
Sunday evening provision seems to either largely mirror the Monday to Saturday evening provision, be largely similar but perhaps finish an hour or two earlier or finish around 5/6PM (when they'd run later on Monday to Saturday).#

Bristol on the whole, has a generous Sunday evening network with services largely mirroring what is offered on Monday to Saturday. The Sunday evening provision did get temporarily reduced on some cross-boundary services a few years ago but most of those changes seem to have since been reversed to at least some extent. For example, a few years ago the time of the last bus from Bristol to Yate on a Sunday was moved back from around 2330 to around 2245 but the change was reversed about 6 months later and its currently 2350, same as on Monday to Saturday. I think the services to Portishead and Wells also now run on or closer to the 2300 mark than they did a few years ago. In addition most of the city routes seem to run until around 2300/2330 and there are some routes that are 24 hours Sunday night into Monday morning.

I understand though that there are other towns and cities where the Sunday provision is not as generous. For example, I understand that Stoke On Trent has far fewer Sunday services than it used to and places such as Crewe and Macclesfield no longer have any Sunday evening provision following previous withdrawals. I'm not too up on what its like in other areas though. Can anyone enlighten me?

 

[cactustwirly]

Fairly large parts of Milton Keynes have no evening buses, particularly on Sundays. Not one single place but probably higher population than some of the places mentioned.

The Headbolt Lane-Wigan railway has a very early finish, though not as early as it was, largely due to "bricking" incidents in the 1980s if I recall.

That's surprising, compared to somewhere like Reading which has buses to most places until 11pm

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's surprising, compared to somewhere like Reading which has buses to most places until 11pm

It's hard to economically operate buses in a city designed for the car. Most people are happy taking taxis, which are cheap and plentiful. If two or three people are travelling the taxi can often be cheaper than a bus fare each. Even if it costs a little more, there is value in getting home in 5-10 minutes rather than half an hour, and there is a reluctance in MK because of the ease of driving right to the door of your destination to walk anywhere.

The only bus routes that do well in MK are the ones that serve the poorer areas of low car ownership away from the centre (the 4, 5 and 6).

 

[cactustwirly]

It's hard to economically operate buses in a city designed for the car. Most people are happy taking taxis, which are cheap and plentiful. If two or three people are travelling the taxi can often be cheaper than a bus fare each. Even if it costs a little more, there is value in getting home in 5-10 minutes rather than half an hour, and there is a reluctance in MK because of the ease of driving right to the door of your destination to walk anywhere.

The only bus routes that do well in MK are the ones that serve the poorer areas of low car ownership away from the centre (the 4, 5 and 6).

Does MK not have a nightlife?
You can't drink and drive, taxis are very expensive especially when the bus is only a few quid and the taxi well into double digits

 

[aron2smith]

Does MK not have a nightlife?
You can't drink and drive, taxis are very expensive especially when the bus is only a few quid and the taxi well into double digits

Most of its buses are run by Arriva, so it's not surprising they would do the bare minimum! In other words, these late journeys if they are not subsidised by the council they don't happen, so fewer people bother with any nightlife. Generally why I think pubs are struggling so much, people can't afford it but can get there. But then they can't go home without taxis or a long walk home! Seems that way in Hertfordshire too.

Milton Keynes spread out design also doesn't help as everything seems miles apart there.

 

[andyb87]

Many of the towns in Lincolnshire and just over the border in Nottinghamshire have very few evening and Sunday bus services. Retford, Newark and Grantham to name a few. Newark and Grantham both being much larger than Gainsborough.

Retford has a (recently re- introduced) town service until around 2300 hrs. tho no out of town links. Newark has a Notts bus flexible service, not that I like that form of operation, and just Nottingham for out of town routes. There is not much town work in Worksop although out of town routes are good here (it does host the depot). I don’t think that Grantham has anything but Lincs CC have been doing good things in this respect recently.