Cambridgeshire’s biggest bus operator is adding even more buses onto its Busway services to allow what it calls an unprecedented increase in passengers to travel when they want.

Last year, between August and September, Stagecoach East’s services on the Busway saw a 7% increase in passengers – this year that figure has ballooned to a 20% increase overall. At certain times in the morning, the increase has been even sharper: up to 58%. This rise has meant that some customers have not been able to travel at their preferred times.

This September has seen a large number of students travelling on the Busway, with Long Road and Cambridge Regional College both reporting higher student numbers than last year from St Ives, Huntingdon, Swavesey and Longstanton. The effect of this is compounded by the fact that the colleges themselves only know final student numbers in August, well after timetable changes can be legally registered. 

To cope with this increase, the local bus operator has already used driver-trained office staff to duplicate key journeys at peak times. Now two additional buses have been registered to run from Sunday 3rd November – these will be two extra B services from St Ives Park and Ride to Drummer Street, and two extra back from Drummer Street.

Also, the number of B services going to Addenbrookes will drop from nine to five in the morning peak, and four in the evening peak. This will mean more seats from St Ives and more buses starting and finishing in Drummer Street. 

The increase in capacity comes on top of the announcement, just weeks ago, that three extra buses were added into the Busway rotation, one of which was supported by the Combined Authority.

Congestion continues to be a major challenge for the operator, meaning that buses cannot complete their journeys to schedule. Hills Road has a particular impact on all bus services, especially the Busway, which can take up to 29 minutes to complete that stretch at peak times – compared with 9.2 minutes last year. Also, although Stagecoach East consistently runs 99.5% of its scheduled miles, of those it cannot run, last week, 70% was due to congestion.

Darren Roe, Managing Director of Stagecoach East, said: “The Busway is such a unique and important piece of local infrastructure, so we are pleased that it has seen such an increase in popularity, but we certainly also regret that some of our loyal customers have not been able to travel at the times they choose.

“We hope that this further injection of new buses into the routine will help even more of our new customers to get where they need to go, at the times they want travel, and, for the future, we would just encourage local organisations to give us as much information as they can about the travel needs of their students and members of staff. We will also continue to adjust our services as our customers’ travel needs evolve.

“We would always say, as well, that congestion remains a key challenge, adding new buses helps improve the punctuality of buses turning up, but does nothing to improve journey times, which is key to help rebalance bus over car journeys.  We would like to encourage further communication with not only the utilities companies over roadworks but also with our local authorities over issues like parking enforcement and road priority. Once our buses leave the depot, overwhelmingly their punctuality on the road is down to factors that are out of our control.”

(Picture – Stagecoach)