Today nine of us went route learning from Winchester to Birmingham. This new Megabus route starts on Monday 1 October. The first section from Winchester to the Water Eaton Park and Ride car park in Oxford, where the Megabus stop is located, was simple enough. The following stop is near to Warwick University in Coventry which is still not too difficult to remember, the route we took today doesn’t appear to be the most direct to me so I may experiment a bit when driving it. After that it’s Birmingham International Airport. I had wondered how many passengers a coach from the South Coast to Birmingham Airport would carry, but when we got there I realised why we’re stopping there – more to service the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) than the airport I think! The final stop is in the centre of Birmingham and there would appear to be an infinite number of routes from the airport to the centre of Birmingham. They all would appear to be straightforward but the big gamble will be guessing which is the least congested on any day at any time?
The trip up to Birmingham was run near enough at the timetabled time so we probably experienced typical traffic conditions, it wasn’t too bad. However, we returned almost immediately rather than waiting until the late afternoon timetable departure time. How the traffic conditions will vary in real life we’ll see later.
I’m interested in seeing how the passengers on an ontime bus react to being delayed by the late bus. eg The B’ham bus gets in on time but the London bus is an hour late so the on time bus can’t continue to Southampton and Portsmouth because it needs to ‘give’ and ‘receive’ passengers. If I was a Southampton passenger I’d be pretty upset at having to wait an hour before the bus I was on could leave to do the 15 minute trip to Southampton!
Judging by recent evening arrivals from London, we’ll be lucky if the Birmingham bus and the London bus arrive in Winchester within an hour of each other !!!
I foresee Chieveley or Sutton Scotney services getting MegaBus visits to ‘kill’ time
When I told the guys who do B’ham to London every day how the B’ham bus would meet the London bus in Winchester they …….fell around laughing :-) I wonder why the B’ham bus is timetabled as 18:30 into Winchester and the London bus as 18:45 I’d have thought they’d at least be timtabled as the same time even if they don’t actually achieve it.
The biggest problem on this service is going to be trying to get the London to Bournemouth and the Birmingham to Portsmouth coaches to arrive at Winchester P&R at the same time, so that passengers can change between coaches without lengthy delay.
Gillers had a day off today – didn’t fancy two pre 0700 starts in the same month !!!
A couple of weeks ago, he didn’t come with us yesterday.
Gillers went out and checked the timings didnt he?