New Whippet busway timetable

Whippet will be changing their busway timetable as from 1 October. You can see the new  timetable  here.

Timetable changes from 3 September

There appear to be some timetable changes to the Stagecoach route A starting from Monday 3 September. You can see the changes here , though the format makes it a bit difficult to read.

Some early morning services from north of St Ives will serve the new bus stop in Station Road instead of St Ives Bus Station Bay 3. These are  (Monday-Friday) the 0605 and 0705 from Somersham, the 0625 and 0725 from Ramsey and the 0645 from Chatteris. On Saturdays only the 0705 from Somersham is affected.

'Schoolday only' services are starting as from Tuesday 4 September. Dates of operation will be 4 September - 26 October, 5 November - 21 December and 8-9 January. That last pair of dates perhaps suggest another timetable revision might be planned for 10  January.

The following schoolday journeys will run:

0740 Burrel Road to Long Road
0750 Ansley Way to Cambridge Rail Station
0805 Anslet Way to Cambridge Rail Station

and in the afternoon:

1614 Cambridge Rail Station to Ansley Way
1625 Long Road to St Ives Bus Station where it will connect into
1717 St Ives Bus Station to Somersham via Bluntisham

More changes to service B timetable

Stagecoach are having to make changes to the service B timetable in order to improve punctuality. In an email today, they say these amendments will be introduced from Monday 5th August, but I assume that should read Monday 6th August. Here are the changes they are making:

• Buses from Peterborough, Hinchingbrooke Hospital and Huntingdon rail station are retimed to leave up to 15 minutes later.
• Buses from St Ives towards Huntingdon will arrive at Hartford and all stops to Hinchingbrooke Hospital up to 3 minutes later.
• Buses are retimed between Huntingdon and Peterborough to give extra time for the journey. All leave and arrive slightly later.
• Evening buses from Huntingdon to Cambridge after 1900 hours and return buses from Cambridge after 2000 hours run 10 minutes later throughout.
• There are no changes to bus times on The Busway track during the daytime.
• There are no changes to route A.

Attached to the email is a pdf of the amended timetable , but it does not yet appear on the Stagecoach website.

Despite what the email says, the revised departures from Peterborough seem generally to be 5 minutes after the current timetable. Hinchingbrooke Hospital and Huntingdon Rail Station departures are 15 minutes later than now. the Peterborough to Huntingdon running time is slowed from 48 to 58 minutes ( 44 to 49 minutes northbound), and Peterborough to Cambridge Drummer Street is now 2 hours 2 minutes ( 1 hour 59 minutes going north).

Evening buses on service B from Drummer Street will leave at 1953 (as now), then 2103, 2133, 2233 and 2333. There are As from New Square (but not Drummer Street) plugging the long gap between the 1953 and 2103  B departures.

I guess they will now have to reprint their recently published timetable booklet!

Busway in this week's Hunts Post

Nothing as far as I can see about the new bus timetable and the extensions of services to Peterborough, Hinchingbrooke, Wyton Camp and Burley Road. But there is a letter from  Needingworth resident about the chaos at St Ives Bus station on Monday morning. The writer comments that there were no new timetables on dispaly, and only one Stagecoach employee on hand to redirect passengers to the new stop in Station road. In Station Road, traffic congestion built up on two occasions due to a lorry unloading at Petzone and  an ambulance parked opposite the bus stop. Also noted is that lack of a waiting shelter, and a concern that large numbers of waiting passengers could block the pavement . Hunts Post (25 July, page 6)

New timetable - Tuesday

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.

New timetable - Monday

My intention was to catch the 0737 service A from St Ives to Cambridge this morning. The 0730 B left the new Station Road bus stop on time, but the 0737 did not show. I boarded the 0745 B, which left more or less on time and reached Cambridge 7 minutes late. Live bus times were not showing for the A at the intermediate stops, so I have no idea whether the bus was cancelled or just running late.  Under the previous timetable, the service A towards Cambridge could usually be relied on for keeping good time. It remains to be seen whether the new timetable will offer this level of reliability. Still no sign of new timetable information at St Ives bus station.

New timetable, new bus stop

The new bus timetable  for Stagecoach service B began officially yesterday monring (Sunday 22nd), although the only change was that Cambridge-bound services were departing from the new stop  in Station Road rather than St Ives Bus Station. Well, that was the theory. In practice,  no new timetable information had been posted in the bus station, and there was nothing to direct passengers to the new stop. the 0840 bus called at Station Road, then looped round the bus station to pick up passengers there. I travelled to Cambridge on the 09.40, which also picked up atStation Road and the Bus Station.

Passengers boarding the first bus from the new, unfinished, Station Road bus stop (0840 Sunday 22 July).

New busway timetable published

Stagecoach has published its new timetable for routes A and B due to start from 23 July. Timetable posted here.

Early morning journey from Somersham and Chatteris continue to be available, and a couple of new early morning services run from Ramsey and Warboys to Cambridge. There are similar return journeys to these places in the evening.

There are two buses an hour to Hinchingbrooke Hospital and one an hour to Peterborough.

Huntingdon Railway Station is served by only one bus an hour, but, of course, the Hinchingbrooke services stop on Brampton Road just outside the Station.