Sometime yesterday (Monday) a poster was put up in St Ives Bus station advising passengers to go to the new bus stop in Station Road if they wanted to travel towards Cambridge. This should have been in place before start of service on Sunday, and it would have been even more helpful if advance notice had been given.
My bus home last night (the Trumpington to Chatteris service) appeared on time at Parkside showing the destination 'St Ives'. The driver seemed unaware that the bus was going beyond St Ives, which did not give passengers any confidence that they'd get home. A change of drivers happened at St Ives Park & Ride, and the new driver was able to confirm that passengers for Ramsey Road and Fenton Road, Warboys, would get to their destinations. Another passenger mentined to me that about 11am a whole string of buses turned up at Station Road, indicating that the new timetable had got very out of sync.
This morning I caught the 07.22 A which arrived in New Square about a minute late. A close look at the new timetable shows that the A now takes 2 minutes less than the B between Central Cambridge and Histon. In the old timetable, the A was regularly early getting into Cambridge, and could often catch up a few minutes on the way out of Cambridge.
Please keep writing comments on the blog about the teething troubles of the new timetable.
Stagecoach usually make a success of bus routes by simplifying them - but here they've made a bit of a pigs ear of it by confusing many good folk of St Ives. Monday daytime saw St Ives bus station in close to complete anarchy - the purple rinse brigade up in arms with chaos everywhere, no one knowing where to wait, and what for. Plenty of folks with stories of being on "the wrong type" of A bus, so it turning right and not left at the end of Ramsey Road, and Whippet's 1A and 1B buses looking busier than I've ever seen them! The bus stop shambles in St Ives doesn't help. Today (Tuesday morning) I was even educating the Stagecoach customer services assistant that had been placed at the bus station to give out timetables exactly how service A split at the top end of Ramsey Road - he didn't seem to know!!! Whippet guided buses are still using the bus station at the moment. I'm on a Whippet weekly ticket this week until all the carnage dies down (and might stay that way, we'll see...)
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting. Please keep it up. My journey home was uneventful. The bus said it was going to Chatteris & St Ives, though the information screens at bus stops said it was going only to St Ives. We stopped for a few minutes to change drivers at the Park & Ride, so it might almost have been quicker to get out and walk the last quarter mile to the bus station.
DeleteQuis custodiet custodies ipsos???
ReplyDeleteInteresting, you must pass me on the bus mot mornings as I trundle down the bus way to Cambridge !
ReplyDeleteI must look out for you. How would I recognise you?
DeleteTuesday was something of a disaster for Stagecoach. After one bus broke down the replacement did the same. The guide wheel on the next replacement broke so there 3 useless buses at various places along the route. It would be interesting to get a picture of a bus being levered off. Sadly I don't have a time for these problems.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this update, Colin. I have been on only one bus that broke down ( it was a Sunday morning a few weeks ago). It managed to limp to the next junction (Oakington) where we had to wait for the following bus. There was another bus in the winter that I thought was going to break down, but somehow we got to Cambridge - a bit late, it's true. It's not clear to me what would happen if there was a complete breakdown. the guide wheels must get a terrible hammering in every day use. Just think of the speed they drive onto the guideway, and the huge lurch there often is. I wonder how often the guide wheels have to be replaced.
ReplyDelete