www.wiltshire.gov.uk
Changes to Malmesbury Area Bus Services
1 April 2008
As the current contracts for bus services in the Malmesbury are due to expire on 6th April, the County Council began to seek comments, suggestions and ideas from interested parties as far back as twelve months ago.
The responses, coupled with our own long standing aspiration to create a more co-ordinated network of bus services in this area, means that a number of changes and improvements will be made to the bus services which serve the Malmesbury area, from Monday 7th April 2008.
These alterations are summarised below but please note that the new timetables are designed to improve connections with all the other services in the area and special through tickets will be available for passengers changing buses.
Malmesbury Town (Service 30)
- Service divided into 3 sections to reduce journey times and make it easier to understand;
- Service will call at the new Health Centre when completed (late June?);
- Additional journeys added, particularly in the late afternoon;
- Most journeys will be operated by low floor easy access buses (as at present).
Malmesbury – Brinkworth – Wootton Bassett - Swindon (Service 31)
- Will now operate on a one-way loop around Malmesbury, giving most parts of the town a direct link to and from Swindon (including the new Filands area development);
- Most journeys will now run via Milbourne and Lea, instead of Cowbridge (which will now be served by service 91 – see below);
- Timetable revised to improve connections at Malmesbury with all other services to give residents of the surrounding villages a more attractive way of getting to/from Swindon;
- All journeys will now be operated by low floor easy access buses (at present some peak journeys are operated with older high floor vehicles).
Malmesbury – Sherston – Luckington – Badminton - Yate (Service 41)
This service is one of the less well used routes in the Malmesbury area, although it still provides an important lifeline for certain residents. The off-peak service has therefore been reduced to run every 2 hours to make it more cost effective to provide and has been retimed to ensure it connects with other services in Malmesbury.
Dauntsey Vale villages - Chippenham (Service 91)
This is currently a very complicated service that links all the villages in the Dauntsey Vale with Chippenham, and provides connections with buses to Swindon & Malmesbury. Following requests from passengers and discussions with transport representatives, this service is being completely revised with the following improvements:
- Service simplified to provide a bus once per hour between all the Dauntsey Vale villages & Chippenham;
- Off-Peak journeys extended through to Malmesbury via Cowbridge, to avoid the need for Dauntsey Vale residents to have change buses;
- Hourly connections will be available with buses to/from Swindon;
- Low Floor Easy Access buses to be introduced on the service for the first time, using developer funding.
As part of this change, most journeys on service 91 will no longer be able to call at Seagry or Startley, but bus users from these villages will be able to use a new shuttle service (91B) which will connect with service 91 at Sutton Benger for Chippenham or Malmesbury, but on Mondays to Fridays only. This bus will also be able to pick up at the village of Rodbourne, giving that village a bus service for the first time.
As a result of the retendering exercise, services 91 & 91B will now be operated by the AD Rains bus company of Brinkworth, instead of by Hatts Coaches (as at present).
Malmesbury - Hullavington - Stanton St. Quintin - Chippenham (Service 92)
- Service will now call at Chippenham Rail Station;
- Additional time added in to the timetable to make the service more reliable.
- Combines with service 91 to provide 2 buses per hour between Malmesbury & Chippenham for most of the day, and a more evenly spaced service along the Malmesbury Road in Chippenham.
- All journeys after 9.30 am will now be operated by low floor easy access buses.
Malmesbury – Hankerton – Crudwell – Chelworth – Oaksey - Cirencester (Service 93)
- Service will operate via Tetbury Hill in Malmesbury in both directions and when possible, will run through Avenue de Gien until the entire new development is completed (additional bus stops will also be sited on Tetbury Hill).
- Peak Hour journeys will now also call at Cirencester College
- Some of the little used journeys have been withdrawn so the service now runs approximately every 2 hours.
Other Changes
As part of these changes, it will now be possible to provide a shoppers bus direct from Brinkworth to Chippenham on weekdays (service 95).
A special Malmesbury area timetable book is currently being produced to publicise these changes and should be available shortly from Libraries and Tourist offices (TiC) in the areas served and on the buses themselves. Timetables can also be sent by post to members of the public who contact the Council's Customer Care Centre or who send an email to buses@wiltshire.gov.uk .
This is the biggest alteration that has been made to these routes in over 10 years and whilst we have tried to incorporate the requirements of all of the existing passengers, inevitably the need to change the timetables to get the buses to connect may mean that some of the changes will not suit everyone. However, we hope that the new network and the use of more modern accessible vehicles on the majority of services will encourage more passengers to consider the services to be a realistic alternative to the private car.
