I saw this evening that in the VOSA Bus Service registrations that there were entries from GoAhead (Swindon) for route and timetable changes to Service 1/1A/1B (Middleleaze / Ramleaze / Hillmead - Great Western Hospital) and Service 5 (Haydon Wick & Orbital Shopping Park - Park North). So I have had a look at the new timetables on TravelineSW for both routes and the journey times look frankly silly. For example:
- For Services 1, 1A & 1B the last journey from Hillmead to Swindon Bus Station (Service 1B) is currently timed to take only 31 minutes (dep. 2309, arr. 2340) but the new timetable has the same journey dep. 2309, arr. 0041 which is a journey time of 92 minutes! In the same group of routes the journey time from New College to Great Western Hospital is timetabled to take anything from 20 minutes to 25 minutes even in late evening (presently timetabled for a maximum of 7 minutes). The same applies going the other way too with some overly long travel times: the 0640 Great Western Hospital, currently timed to take only 26 minutes to Link Centre, is timed to arrive 0800 which is a journey time of 1hr 20min.
Similarly daft journey times are on Service 2 with, for example, the 1750 from Swindon Bus Station timed to take 26 minutes to Fairfax Close instead of 7. I note that the new TT includes 7 minutes from Fairfax Close to Maitland Road - the next stop - on all journeys. Again some very odd journey times going the other way: the last journey from Swindon takes 73 minutes to Covingham Square and the last journey from Covingham to Swindon shows at 84 minutes end-to-end.
In fact all the Swindon town routes appear to have very long end-to-end journeys. Either a lot of typos or some very lengthy detours / reroutings! No doubt the corrections will be made before the new timetables start on 02nd December but nothing on the Swindon Bus website yet.
Dave