Apologies for an essay-length post, but as somebody who has recently travelled on Bournemouth’s Yellow Buses, I feel that they have really gone downhill ever since their network change in 2017, when they ditched their well-known suffixed route system in favour of a completely unrelated prefix one. Despite being reversed a year later, YB have since then pruned a huge chunk of their network, leaving Morebus to pick up the pieces and get ahead of the competition.
For me, the “Golden Era” of Yellow buses was between 2006 and 2017, when the company was taken over by Transdev and later RATP Group. This begun with the introduction of the suffixed numbering system, which was a very simple system to understand with numbers dedicated to a single corridor as follows:
1a/1b/1c - Christchurch Road
2a/2b/2c - Holdenhurst Road
3a/3b/3c - Charminster Road
4a/4b - Wimborne Road
5a/5b - Charminster & Alma Road
6a/6b/6c - Wallisdown Road
There were also some outlying routes in the system, such as the 18 (Bournemouth to Broadstone) and 26 (Poole to Boscombe via the University), as well as later additions to the suffixed lines network such as the 4c and 4d to West Moors and Wimborne respectively. It was a very comprehensive and well-covered network, with almost nowhere within the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation being unserved (apart from ironically where I live, despite the nearest YB route being a 30 minute walk away which is luckily within reach for somebody young and fit like myself).
I would say that the network begun to go downhill in the autumn of 2016, when YB withdrew their direct airport service (numbered A1 at the time) in favour of a longer route via Winton. This was done to avoid queues at the A338/B3073 junction even though it led to a longer journey time, and at the expense of a half-hourly service to West Moors, which was the only direct service from there to Bournemouth (the X6 existed then but took the long way round via Verwood, as it still does today). Less than six months later the major recast came along which changed everything.
YB decided to scrap their excellent suffix-based route numbering system in favour of a prefixed-based one, with some routes changing completely. Many of these did not correlate into single corridors, and even the tendered services were incorporated into the system, which didn’t really make sense as these were only low frequency. The letter prefixed routes were as follows:
While there have been some positive developments such as the extension of the 1a to New Milton, 6 to Wimborne via Merley and the introduction of summer services to Hengistbury Head, the Yellow Buses network overall has been in a downward spiral over the past five years. Routes such as the 4a (the only direct link between Northbourne parade and Bournemouth) have been withdrawn in recent weeks, while the 3 which once boasted a 7-8 minute frequency is now every 20 minutes. Today’s introduction of the Morebus m1 extension to Bournemouth Hospital is likely to see a lot of YB passengers flock to that route since it now entirely duplicates route 3, which today is a much lower frequency and thus has no unique selling point anymore.
I once used to favour Yellow Buses with their comprehensive network, but with so little left it now seems that Morebus are definitely the more dominant operator in Bournemouth. It will be interesting to see how the future years pan out for Yellow Buses, but I can’t see any rapid expansion in the same sense that there was a decade ago. The golden days are over, and perhaps it is time that YB solely focuses on the few areas of Bournemouth which have not yet been colonised by its biggest rival.
For me, the “Golden Era” of Yellow buses was between 2006 and 2017, when the company was taken over by Transdev and later RATP Group. This begun with the introduction of the suffixed numbering system, which was a very simple system to understand with numbers dedicated to a single corridor as follows:
1a/1b/1c - Christchurch Road
2a/2b/2c - Holdenhurst Road
3a/3b/3c - Charminster Road
4a/4b - Wimborne Road
5a/5b - Charminster & Alma Road
6a/6b/6c - Wallisdown Road
There were also some outlying routes in the system, such as the 18 (Bournemouth to Broadstone) and 26 (Poole to Boscombe via the University), as well as later additions to the suffixed lines network such as the 4c and 4d to West Moors and Wimborne respectively. It was a very comprehensive and well-covered network, with almost nowhere within the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation being unserved (apart from ironically where I live, despite the nearest YB route being a 30 minute walk away which is luckily within reach for somebody young and fit like myself).
I would say that the network begun to go downhill in the autumn of 2016, when YB withdrew their direct airport service (numbered A1 at the time) in favour of a longer route via Winton. This was done to avoid queues at the A338/B3073 junction even though it led to a longer journey time, and at the expense of a half-hourly service to West Moors, which was the only direct service from there to Bournemouth (the X6 existed then but took the long way round via Verwood, as it still does today). Less than six months later the major recast came along which changed everything.
YB decided to scrap their excellent suffix-based route numbering system in favour of a prefixed-based one, with some routes changing completely. Many of these did not correlate into single corridors, and even the tendered services were incorporated into the system, which didn’t really make sense as these were only low frequency. The letter prefixed routes were as follows:
- R1, R2, R3 (Royal Line) - replacing the 1b & 1c to Poole, and the 2 & 3 to RB Hospital
- P1, P2, P3 (Priory Line) - replacing route 1 services to Christchurch
- B1, B2, B3, B4 (Bourne Line) - replacing route 4 services via Wimborne Road
- V1, V2 (Village Line) - replacing route 5 services to Kinson
- U6, U7, U8, U9, U10 (Uni Line) - replacing all services running via Bournemouth University (U1-U5 were not used to avoid confusion with Morebus’s Unibus network)
- C1 (Coast Line) - replacing the 2 to Alum Chine and the Castlepoint section of tendered route 20
- D1 (Dolphin Line) - replacing the tendered routes 33 and Poole section of route 20
- H1 (Heath Line) - replacing the tendered route 18
- All routes which previously had the highest lettered suffix were replaced with no suffix (so the 1c became 1, 4b became 4 etc).
- The 3 was extended to Poole, putting it into direct competition with Morebus’s m1. YB’s route 1 (nee 1c) had already been competing with the m2 for some time.
- The now isolated service to Alum Chine was renumbered as the 7
- The former 26 route was renumbered as the 8, although it no longer ran west of Wallisdown to Poole
While there have been some positive developments such as the extension of the 1a to New Milton, 6 to Wimborne via Merley and the introduction of summer services to Hengistbury Head, the Yellow Buses network overall has been in a downward spiral over the past five years. Routes such as the 4a (the only direct link between Northbourne parade and Bournemouth) have been withdrawn in recent weeks, while the 3 which once boasted a 7-8 minute frequency is now every 20 minutes. Today’s introduction of the Morebus m1 extension to Bournemouth Hospital is likely to see a lot of YB passengers flock to that route since it now entirely duplicates route 3, which today is a much lower frequency and thus has no unique selling point anymore.
I once used to favour Yellow Buses with their comprehensive network, but with so little left it now seems that Morebus are definitely the more dominant operator in Bournemouth. It will be interesting to see how the future years pan out for Yellow Buses, but I can’t see any rapid expansion in the same sense that there was a decade ago. The golden days are over, and perhaps it is time that YB solely focuses on the few areas of Bournemouth which have not yet been colonised by its biggest rival.
Last edited:
