Transport Report – March 2018

There have been a number of changes to all the tickets and prices for Stagecoach West. Singles have gone up by 10p and returns by 20p and some of the weekly and monthly tickets have also gone up by a small amount. The increases were effect from Sunday 4th February. Stagecoach West are putting a significant investment into new buses for the launch of the Stagecoach Gold Service 55 to Wootton Bassett, Calne and Chippenham. Swindon will then have two Stagecoach Gold services as the Service 66 to Oxford has had that type of bus for the last two years.

The Parish Council have taken up the matter of the unannounced closure of May’s Lane by Thames Water. This caused considerable inconvenience to bus users as the buses were unable to pick up passengers from the Landmark bus stop or Station Road. Neither the bus company, parish or borough council was given any notice of this road closure.Thames Water have now been informed of all the street names on the bus route through Chiseldon and hopefully we will get notice of any further road closures.

The Swindon Bus Company are making lots of changes to their services from Sunday 11th March.  We advise passengers to look at their website as some of the routes now end up in different destinations and Service 12 no longer goes to Highworth via Blunsdon.

A survey carried out for the BBC shows that the number of bus miles has reduced in the UK by 134 million miles over the last four years.  Swindon’s bus mileage has gone down by 3%.

New trains are being built by Hitachi with parts from their UK factory at Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, though the trains are being assembled in Italy.  These trains will be used for services from Westbury, Pewsey, Bedwyn and Hungerford to London, maintaining the direct link to London. These trains will be similar to the new trains running through Swindon, but will have fewer coaches.

Highways England have two public consultations currently taking place, one for the A417 “missing link” (Air Balloon roundabout). Views for this scheme need to be in by 29th March.  The second scheme is the tunnel at Stonehenge with a flyover of the Countess Roundabout and further dual carriageway improvements to the A303.  Views by 6th April.  To online and give your views to these two important road changes.