Monday, 8 December 2014

Go Ahead buys part of Western Greyhound

The Plymouth Herald reports that the Liskeard depot and associated routes of Western Greyhound have been purchased by Go Ahead's Plymouth Citybus and will be rebranded as Go Cornwall Bus.

It remains to be seen what will happen to the rest of Western Greyhound.

Our Council Check series is taking a break for a couple of weeks. In the meantime you can catch up with the scores so far and read all previous reviews here.

Sunday, 7 December 2014

Council check: SESTran

This week's local authority is SESTran, which takes care of transport for several authorities in South-East Scotland, including Edinburgh. How do they promote the bus routes in their region?



Where do the buses go?

There's a regional public transport map, but it has a disclaimer stating that it doesn't include routes that are wholly within one council area. SESTran suggests trying the local councils for local routes, but they're under the impression that SESTran is taking care of everything. It then suggests Traveline Scotland, on which you can search for all routes serving a particular area, but it is rather clunky and awkward to use. 3 out of 5.

Timetables

Not provided. The best place for these is Traveline, which in Scotland is not as user-friendly as it is in the Midlands and South of England. 1 out of 5.

Fares

No information on single tickets or operators' own tickets. There is however a region-wide multi-operator and multi-modal ticket, the One-Ticket. No mention of Plusbus, which is available in Bathgate & Livingstone, Dunfermline, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Kirkcaldy and Linlithgow. 2 out of 5.

Summary

Not comprehensive and leaves you scrambling around several other websites in order to find complete information. Not really good enough for the transport portal of the region containing Scotland's capital. SESTran scores 6 out of 15.