New Rutland Bus Timetable - Council fail the working

Today saw Rutland County Council publish it new bus time table for the country and it came with little in the way of surprises and thankfully no shocks. It seems just looking at the time table, other than a reduction in the shore link service for the winter, there is really no change in the timetables at all. Not one service has been cancelled for a change.

The disappointing thing was that Rutland County Council continue to fail the people that want or need to get to work by bus. From Oakham there is still no service to Leicester or to Grantham, one a city and the other a large time that are area of employment for people in the country. Then there still remains the problem that some service end to soon in the evening to get people back home from work even if it manages to get them there. Typical of that is the 19 service from Nottingham which leaves people stranded in Melton Mowbray. One person I talked to recently said her husband had to travel to Melton to bring her home every night.

Providing people with the public transport it need to get to work should be a priority for Rutland County Council especially with the expansion of Oakham they have allowed without the creation of any real jobs in the county. The council needs to get it's act together on this before the only way you can work in the county is by being able to drive. Already the roads are getting busier and busier and improving the range of destinations offered by local bus services is becoming more important as more boxes are Larkfleet Homes.

Bus Travel (Centrebus)

Having had to use the buses in Rutland and the surrounding counties for the last few months, I thought it would be good to give my opinion of the service they offer the local community and my thoughts on bus travel. 

 

Let's start by saying what they not, they are not the fastest way to get about. They tend to take an age to get from A to B just by the fact they don't take a direct route and they stop all the time. They are not a public service as the majority of routes are run by private companies for profit and profit alone, as subsidies have been with drawn my councils in order to save money.  

The company I use is Centrebus not the biggest bus company in the country but the only one in the Rutland area. Over the years it has grown and taken over most of it family run competitors and now runs there services. Like most peoples impressions of Bus companies I should imagine my views on the company are mixed. The front line staff like the drivers are pleasant and generally helpful but the staff at the customer services side of the company at head office are unhelpful but never rude. 

Surprisingly it is a reliably method of transport on the whole, buses generally turn up within 5 minutes of the alloted time even at a rural bus stop and normally arrive at their destination on time. I wouldn't say you could set your watch by them but they do a good job on our busy roads. On just two occasions I have been delayed over 30 minutes and both of those were due to a breakdown. In both cases replacement buses arrived to take us on our way. They far better than breaking down in a car and waiting for the AA to arrive.

Ticket prices do seem high for short journeys, but I should imagine that is universal in the bus industry, you can pay one way £1.50 to travel 2 miles with a journey time of less than 10 minutes. However the further you travel once you have hit the maximum fare the better the value especially if you use return tickets which have a maximum fare of £6.30. For example you can travel from Nottingham to Peterborough and back with a through return ticket for £6.30, a journey of some 56 miles, which is great value for money.

Of course there are other ticketing options available to you like session tickets but these tend to limit you to a single route or are based on area. The latter aren't much use particular in Rutland. However if you need to use more than one bus there are some great deals out there if you know where to get them from. There a whole series of Network tickets that allow unlimited bus travel on the Centrebus network. These tickets can be brought from a day to a month.  It best to by the one day and three day products on the bus, other tickets such as the weekly and monthly tickets are available through Payzone (not avoid the three day Payzone ticket which is more expensive).

Being able to get a bus when you need one and timetabling is always going to be an issue with bus transport, especially since the demise of local authority subsidies caused by the capping of spending imposed by the Conservative government on councils. This can been seen in the bus timetables with cuts to later services that aren't so popular, although in many case still provide an essential service for those going to and from work, and example of this is the removal of 1830 service between Melton and Oakham, which led me writing letters and emails to the bus company, the County Council and my MP (who was as helpful as he could be).

Waiting time between connecting buses can be appalling. The people responsible for drawing up the timetables on seem to consider journeys from A to B, rather than journeys from A to C via B. This is a big issue for example a journey between Oakham and Grantham, there being no direct bus, takes nearly 2 hours because of at worse a waiting time of 50 minutes plus at Melton. If the waiting time was just a mere 10 minutes that journey time is reduced to about 1 hour fifteen minutes even in the Grantham rush hour. Another problem is the bus station at Oakham where all the buses seem to leave and arrive on the hour. Although there aren't that many buses using it but there is enough to cause a bus jam at the bus station meaning buses don't always leave or arrive at the right bus stop. This needs looking at and it is a problem that could have a better solution than is currently implemented.

Centrebus buses are clean although they are a little uncomfortable on the country roads. The suspension tends to be hard and so are the seats which doesn't make for a good combination. It not so much the bus company that is at fault here it is the design of the buses themselves and is true of both the newer and older buses they use. In the summer the buses could do with air conditioning like you find on buses in continental Europe as they can get warm and stuffy especially when they are not moving or moving slowly through town.

One nice thing about bus travel is that it is relaxing. They not much you can do on a bus other than read, listen to music or play on your phone. It just breaks up the working day and lets you unwind. What I do with the long waits between buses is look around the shops or maybe have a coffee in one of the many coffee shops and small cafes in Melton. This helps make the waiting a pleasant experience  rather than a core.

In general the bus service for a rural area is very good in Rutland especially if you compare it to the services offered to rural communities in the Grantham area for example. There are some oddities which don't seem to make sense, like the empty tourist bus which runs around Rutland Water everyday all year long. To me it would make better sense to just run the service at weekends and during the summer and put the money to better use on the main services. There is no direct service from Oakham to either Leicester or Grantham, two major employment areas where people can find work. Finally there is a set of late buses that people don't seem to be using, these need looking into if to find out if they are a good use money to provide subsidised services.