Wednesday, October 10

Big changes for First buses in November

Just been looking at the new bus service changes that First are planning for November.

The first obvious major change is that practically all the bus numbers are changing. Most of the Waterlooville services into Portsmouth are changing to No's 7, 8 and 9, including variations on those numbers. Numbers that remain will be X40 and X41.

A much bigger change is in the routes. Nearly all the Waterlooville services will now miss out North End and Northern Parade completely and instead take the route along the M275 into Portsmouth. This will mean that most bus journeys into the City Centre will be faster.

From what I can see on the new route map only one bus service from Waterlooville passes through North End. Not sure if that is a 50% cut in services to North End, depends on the frequency of the remaining service. To get to non-City Centre areas of Portsmouth it appears the best option might be to change at Cosham.

Another problem seems to be a lack of buses servicing the North East of Portsmouth. There are no buses at all servicing the Anchorage Park area.

There is one bus service numbered 0! Is that a first in the UK??
It seems to do a circular route around Portsmouth. Never in my life have I seen a bus numbered 0.
Maybe they will start using negative and imaginary numbers in the future?

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