Reaching out to Stagecoach...

Howard, on behalf of Back Our Buses, sent an email to Stagecoach in April, to highlight local concerns and frustrations over the changes to the route of the 69 service. In his email he mentioned the following:

"One of the primary issues for the (campaign) group is the adverse impact on passengers of the recent route change of the 69 bus in Winchester.

We gather the reason for the rerouting from its St Cross route to a route via the M3 is to save time. 

Such a saving for passengers is relatively small for typical total visit durations that can last for one or more hours...the consequential inconvenience from lost stopping points is much more significant for many passengers. 

..it was easier for disabled and elderly passengers to depart near the top of the high street and walk down towards the bus station while visiting shops, rather than now having an upward walk towards the top of the high street and back down again. 

It also provided a quicker and easier route to and from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital and Winchester rail station by changing buses using the stops in Jewry Street. 

The subsequent timetable changes have added further inconvenience, particularly in the evening.

On behalf of the passengers, our group would urge you to reconsider the change and to re-instate the St Cross route.

...there is also concern about safety issues that arise from re-routing on to a motorway. 

Passengers have expressed concerns that the buses do not provide an option of wearing seat belts as they are not fitted. 

(..also, speed limiters are fitted to the buses,).. and the speed limiters can prevent buses from achieving the speeds necessary to safely merge with motorway traffic travelling at higher speeds. 

Safer Driving for Life is an office of the government's Vehicle and Standards Agency, and it states that on joining a motorway "use the slip road to accelerate until your speed matches that of traffic on the motorway". 

Clearly your speed limiters will often make this impossible to achieve, lowering safety adherence.

Our members would appreciate knowing why you are apparently ignoring official advice on such safety issues by changing the route to include a motorway? 

We hope that you will resolve all these issues by returning to the St Cross route."

So far, we have not heard back from Stagecoach in detail. However, they did come back with the following short email, a month later (in May) :

"Thank you.. this information was passed over to our local Winchester depot to allow our depot management to look into this. 

We have since received a response confirming that your concerns have been escalated over to our Head Office, to ensure that this information is fully reviewed and monitored internally, in order to see if we can potentially make some changes to create a more sustainable service. 

Unfortunately changes to our schedules/bus routes can be a very lengthy process from start to finish, due to numerous consultation periods and requiring permissions from other parties.

However, we hope that you can take some comfort from knowing that your concerns are being looked into alongside the planning of this route. 

We would like to pass on our sincere apologies for any stress and inconvenience this may have caused, thank you for bringing these matters to our attention."

They mention consultations here - we are looking into this, as we believe there has not been a public consultation on the change to the route before it happened.

Watch this space for more updates when they come in!