#plusbus

WestlandStek voor jubilaris Plusbus

De heer C.P. (Peter) Hofland uit Honselersdijk heeft bij de viering van het 12,5 jarig jubileum van de Plusbus op 5 oktober 2019 de WestlandStek ontvangen van wethouder Vreugdenhil. Hij ontving de gemeentelijke onderscheiding voor zijn buitengewone inzet als coördinator/operationeel leider van de Plusbus Westland. 

De heer Hofland was in 2006 één van de initiatiefnemers van Plusbus Westland.…

Appingedam – Houd u van autorijden? Zoekt u zinvolle tijdsbesteding in een maatschappelijke organisatie? De PlusBus zoekt extra chauffeurs en begeleiders om met ouderen uit 5 gemeenten op pad te gaan.

Drie bussen rijden vanuit de gemeenten Appingedam, Delfzijl, Loppersum, Eemsmond en Slochteren overal naar toe. De PlusBus is een samenwerkingsproject met het Nationaal Ouderenfonds. Vanuit…

Not enough Information

Take a little look at this extract from a map of Sheffield.   Things to note are:-

Middlewood, Burngreave, Norfolk Park, Grimesthorpe, Halfway, Parkhead, Manor Park, Fullwood (sic), Northern General Hospital, Ecclesfield and Hillsborough are all in the wrong place.  Middlewood is especially bad, being about three miles wrongly displaced to the North West.

Fullwood should be Fulwood (one "l" not two).

Birley Lane and Shalesmoor are road names, not district names and Valley Centertainment is a commercial Leisure Park; again, NOT a district of Sheffield.   Why does it get free advertising when the more important Meadowhall - a major regional shopping centre - is only shown as a railway station?

And where are the railway stations at Darnall and Woodhouse?

And Sheffield City Airport closed to commecial flights in 2002 and utterly in 2008 - it simply no longer exists.

And significant communities like Chapeltown, Dore, Handsworth, Totley, Firth Park and Woodseats are expunged from existence completely; whilst (omitted) Nether Edge is much more important, with a bus every 10 minutes, than Sharrow (included) with only a paltry hourly service.

Like so much stuff on-line, it is pretty obvious that the creator of this cartographic chaos has never travelled on Sheffield buses and probably fails to understand the basic geography of the city.   Can the cartographer actually read a map?   Harsh criticism - after all it's only a diagram.   But when you realise what the diagram purports to show...

... It tells me where my Plusbus ticket is valid.   Plusbus?   A bargain way of adding local bus travel to your rail ticket.   And a very good deal it is, too, with a fare of £3.50 for a day's travel throughout the Sheffield area on all operators' buses.   So what EXACTLY is the Sheffield area?

Helpfully the web site also provides a downloadable page of "zone boundary details" which provides comprehensive details of the limits of validity of the Sheffield scheme.   Or does it?

It's good to know that you can travel as far as Chatterton Farm!   It would be even better if you, or, more importantly, a typically jaded bus driver, knew where Chatterton Farm might be.   What EXACTLY is this "zone boundary" list?   "Barnsdale Bar" is the clue.   The list is actually the boundary points for the whole of South Yorkshire County; stretching from Darton in the north to Low Edges Estate (Sheffield) in the South and from Fox House in the west to beyond Thorne in the east.  [perhaps that's where Chatterton Farm is?]

Does that REALLY mean that a Sheffield plusbus ticket would allow me to travel all the way to Barnsdale Bar, roughly seven miles north of Doncaster?   And, more worryingly, would the driver of Arriva's 496 know that a plusbus ticket marked "Sheffield" was valid from Doncaster? - especially as the self-same driver is probably based at Wakefield in West Yorkshire.   An even more telling question when you know WHAT Barnsdale Bar is?

The picturesque Barnsdale Bar.

And this is just typical of the trouble with Plusbus.   What ought to be a spectacularly good scheme, used by millions each day, turns out to be complicated, unclear and extremely risky.   Fares and availability vary widely; "zones" and possible destinations are woolly and the potential user needs to spend tedious hours searching innumerable web sites to discover the devilish detail - like times and routes of these very cheap bus rides.    And remember that, in most cases in order to find a timetable, the frustrated user almost always needs first to know the route number and, possibly, the operator's name.   Boy, it ain't easy!

Have you heard of "Plusbus" - a scheme whereby you can buy add-on bus travel when you buy your Rail Ticket?  Have you ever used Plusbus? Outwardly the scheme is excellent!   Not only can you buy, effectively, a day rover ticket to use on "most" buses at your destination; but the price is cheap and railcard discounts apply.

BUT - in practice, for the "average" traveller, the scheme is almost impossible to use.   Firstly, the add-on tickets can only be bought at your start station - they cannot be bought when you arrive.   This might be an advantage until you realise that the information you might need is simply NOT available when you start - if details are available at all, they are ONLY available when you arrive, say on a station poster display.  In the case of Bournemouth, for example, there is no LOCALLY available ticket that allows unlimited travel on "Yellow" buses and "Wilts and Dorset"; whereas the Plusbus add-on (available remotely!) does provide this facility.   Many locals now buy a rail ticket and throw it away to get the benefit of the "rover" facility!

The Plusbus website is not very helpful.   Very stylised maps showing the rough extent of validity are there for each scheme (because each town has a different scheme, different prices and widely different areas of availability).   But no route map, no timetables and no clear definition of boundaries.  You can "Plusbus" to one of the University campuses (campi?) in Bath but not to the other!  In some cases destinations are shown on the map but there are NO bus services to get there!  Many of the location "blobs" are in the wrong place and some names are mis-spelt. As for Sunday travel - don't bother to start!

The sales of Plusbus tickets are, we are told, growing.   True, but at the last count published, growing from very few indeed to not very many.  [on average about three tickets per railway station per week!].

What we need to encourage usage is

(1) sales permitted at destination stations.  If this is commercially risky, then why not simply endorse a valid rail ticket and sell a Plusbus ticket only valid with its associated rail ticket. "Simples!"

(2) leaflets available at start stations giving fuller details of availability at selected likely destinations.  "Simples!"

(3) downloadable timetables and route maps on line.  Not quite so "simples" but still do-able.

(4) just one nationally available plusbus add-on price (say £3) to make the thinking and decision-making process easy.   The aim would be, eventually, to make the Plusbus ticket the norm and "Rail only" an opt-out!

Even better, says he cynically, why not make the Plusbus facility FREE with any appropriate rail ticket?   I am sure that some overpaid lawyers could make millions deciding how to allocate revenue and there is a good chance that their millions could be offset by even greater zillions in environmental benefits!    Rail fares often bear no relationship to the cost of providing the service anyway, so a bit more "jiggling" of rail subsidies, fuel tax rebate grants and bus service tender prices is, once again "simples!"