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Post by Tangy on Nov 6, 2005 11:14:16 GMT
Monday 28th November will see the commencement of a new route from London to Blackpool, Lancaster and Preston. (This route has been in the pipeline for absolute months!)
The following week will see Chesterfield back onto the Megabus network with a new route serving the town, plus the new destination of Norwich
In addition, there will be a number of timetable revisions and improvements to Megabus routes on the English network from December 2005. These changes will mainly affect the Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Milton Keynes and Nottingham routes. Look out for several new destinations joining the Megabus too!
Full details are still awaited, but will be posted when known.
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Post by Tangy on Nov 6, 2005 11:15:19 GMT
1) Norwich will be once a day- the bus will be the "South" Olympian and Leyton Driver that now work the 1100 London to Nottingham and 1530 return. Ah Ha! (Sorry Norwich persons, but Alan Partridge is your most famous resident!) Driver training will commence soon.
2) Nottingham/Leicester service will be doubled. A Bus (Olly? Neoplan?) will come empty from Chesterfield, then leave Nottingham at about 0700 and reach London at about 1030 before returning to Nottingham at a time close to the current service. Same bus will then go back to Victoria in the afternoon and then form a 2000ish London to Nottingham before going empty back to Chesterfield. I assume a Neoplan (or two) will be found and reallocated to Chesterfield for this, they currenltly have three buses for three turns so an extra spare would be prudent, even if this is in the shape of an Olympian.
3) Major changes to West Midlands services. Birmingham will be served every TWO hours, and some/all/none of these will go via Coventry and/or extend to Wolverhampton!! Leamington will LOSE their megabus work, the whole show is moving back to RUGBY- it has been suggested that a Rugby vehicle will overnight at Leyton rather than the current arrangement.
4) What Lancaster via Preston and Blackpool service? London know nothing about this which suggests one of two things- the whole thing is run by Nuneaton and another depot (Lancaster?) and this is why London are not aware of this OR it's not really a new service, just a feeder off an existing run or an existing service (e.g. X61 Manchester to Blackpool) which could be through bookable via megabus.com. Whatever happens, there is little known about this at the moment.
All this means we are now approaching judgement day! We had a stimulating discussion earlier in the year when I suggested that some route would have to be "downgraded" to Olympian operation if new long distance routes required the scarce Neoplan resource to be allocated to them. No matter how you count them, there are 25 Neoplans and this finite number can only work a maximum of 25 diagrams. Scheduling cross-border services to 100% utilisation isn't too clever, so somebody will have to go short! Can you really imaging Olympians being used on the Lancaster to London runs, or making a come back versus sexy new NatEx coaches on the Birmingham route? I don't think so
Thanks to Megabus13601 from the megabus group for this information.
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Post by Tangy on Nov 21, 2005 18:12:01 GMT
The new timetables for the Scottish internal Megabus routes (including Glasgow-Edinburgh 900) and the Scotland- Manchester- London route are now on the Megabus website.
Changes include: --Dundee stop will be changed to Seagate Bus Station from Discovery Point. --Perth City Centre stop will move from Mill Street to Perth Bus Station (the main Perth Megabus stop however remains at Broxden Park & Ride).
Also the timetable for the new Blackpool/Preston route is also now online and bookings are now being taken. The current Manchester-London journeys are now included in this timetable and not within the London-Scotland timetable.
Changes to the other English routes are not fully connfirmed yet althouth as the Birmingham route will be serving Coventry it will impractical to serve the existing Megabus stops at University, Selly Oak and Kings Norton as the route will run direct along the A45 to Coventry and then down the M1 to London, instead of the M40! We all know how bad the M1 can get....
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