from 22 February 2009
We’re making some changes to Bluestar bus services from Sunday 22 February 2009. We are continuing to respond to issues of traffic congestion and improving reliability, as well as positioning our buses where most people will use them.
Times changed. More buses between Eastleigh and Fair Oak – now every 10 mins Mon-Sat daytime.
We’re sorry about the reliability issues affecting certain journeys on Bluestar 2, which has to overcome a number of traffic bottlenecks along the line of route.
That’s why, with the help of feedback from customers and staff, we’re making some changes to ensure the service is reliable and sustainable going forward.
The main part of the route between Southampton and Fair Oak via Eastleigh will now run every 20 minutes Mon-Sat daytime. There will be extra short journeys between Eastleigh, Bishopstoke and Fair Oak giving you a bus every 10 minutes Monday to Saturday daytime on this section of route.
We hope that this should create a more reliable service and offer the right amount of buses compared to levels of useage.
Easy access, stepless-entrance buses will be used on all journeys.
Times changed to improve reliability further.
Again, in response to congestion issues along this route, we’ve reviewed running times in order to improve reliability and have offered a number of our journeys more time to ensure we provide as confident a service as we can, in addition to giving buses more time at either ends of route so they can start their next journey punctually.
Whilst we regularly monitor reliability, your feedback is really helpful to us – let us know.
Sunday times are changed to provide a better spread of departures along Millbrook Road.
To get away from the silly situation of having a number of buses traveling together along Millbrook Road to/from Totton during Sunday daytime, Bluestar 12 will now depart Southampton at 40 mins past the hour to spread departures around a bit better, and mean less waiting time for you.
More buses at morning rush hour.
We’re pleased with the growth in passengers on this route and need to carry on positioning journeys where we know most people will use them.
That’s why we’re introducing more buses from both ends of the route at Millbrook and Thornhill to offer commuters more buses into the city in time for work.
Remember, a Southampton Freedom at £12 for 7 days travel offers serious savings on buying every day!
We’ve also looked at evening and Sunday buses to ensure they are better spread with our other routes heading out of the city – for example during the evenings, we have separated departures across the hour with Bluestar 3 to provide a more even service between Southampton and Bitterne.
Changes to route and timetable.
This route will become completely funded by Hampshire County Council and will no longer be run by Bluestar.
Please click here for Hampshire County Council’s bus changes page for more details.
This route will no longer run.
As our regular customers will be aware, this route was originally scheduled to be cancelled last year when Portsmouth City Council and Southampton City Council pulled the plug on funding it. This left us in a sticky situation – do we stop running now that the contract has ended or do we give it a go ourselves?
We tried our best, and with the help of our regular team of drivers, a dedicated vehicle and strong marketing, we’ve done all we can to grow the service. However, we also need to be proud enough to accept when things don’t work out as we would like. Competition from the rail service, inadequate reimbursement from local authorities paying us when pass holders travel free and an overall lack of demand to travel between the two centres by bus means that we’ve been running this service at a significant loss – and we obviously can’t carry on doing this forever!
We’re really sorry that this bus will no longer operate but sincerely thank our customers for their support over the past few years.
Alternative links between Southampton and Portsmouth exist on the National Rail Network – you can download a copy of the train timetable here