The cross country routes have been trimmed back. Birmingham is a hub for them.
Its like that for all the big three. There was a 184 Edinburgh to Liverpool service which operated for about five months, blink and you miss it.
I live in the catchment area for the route and have an NX account which I have not used for several years. I was sent an email about the new service which was useless. This part of the text:
Unfortunately, the route does not service Sleaford and does serve Cambridge which may be the most significant source of traffic.
I had no idea there seems a much reduced network now.
We would have seen more destinations back by now if the old network was to come back.
When I first started catching National Express coaches, my most common trip was Nottingham to Leeds - that used to run every two hours, increasing to hourly at certain times all on the Bradford - Leicester service group with some going further, with 1 overnight trip on the Halifax to London service. Now theres 5 a day, 2 of them overnight, on 4 different services.
Yes many destinations will never come back as even before the pandemic the network, mainly on the cross country routes was gradually getting thinner and thinner. For example a year before Covid, the 315 service that used to go all along the south coast from Helston to Eastbourne had been cut to run from just Plymouth to Bournemouth. Also the 304 which used to run from Liverpool down to Weymouth had been reduced to Birmingham to Weymouth only and even then this truncated route was axed prior to the pandemic. I believe other routes that had already been axed prior to Covid were the 571 Whitehaven to London and the 461 Lichfield to London.
While it involves a change, there's through ticketing via Transdev to Keighley and Harrogate, which offers a much greater frequency than would ever be possible by through coach.
They do. From Keighley I can pay an extra £6 to get the bus that's £2 if you pay on the bus to Leeds (before the recent drop, it was £3.60). And 87 stops and up to 1 hour 48 minutes later, I'm in Leeds. And which I could have done before. Or for less than £6 and in less than half an hour I can get the train to Leeds (though I do then have to cross the city centre).
The strategy seems reasonably clear to link major centres of population with Airports, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
Yes the 160 service is quite limited. The 035 service is fairly frequent and well used.
Surely train to Basingstoke then Flightline from outside the station is best now at 4 quid each way only from Basingstoke.
Northern’s relatively recently introduced hourly semi-fast Nottingham -Leeds service using new trains has probably taken most of National Express’s passengers.
Timetable finder https://timetables.nationalexpress.com/routes suggests
It seems like they are just permitting local travel again. Journeys booked online showing from £2 fare but to buy onboard it's more expensive such as Worthing to Brighton is £5.40 which is not competitive at all considering the 700 is £2. I am really baffled by NatEx decisions to start registering the services again if they are just going to go back to their ways of charging stupid fares for short distance travel.
I took the 590 from Glasgow to Birmingham last week and we were nearly an hour late. As it is a single manned service, the driver takes a break at Digbeth so no chance to claw time back.
Interestingly the London to Penzance service i did down to Exeter did a driver change at Sedgemoor (Weston super mare ish) services on the M5. The oncoming driver wanted to push on but the ex London driver had already announced a 20 min break. if theyd skipped the break it would have been almost on time at Exeter. I prefer Megabus services from london to Glasgow now because they dont take all the services breaks.
