Friday 3 September 2010

Humber Flyer Changes

From Monday (6th September) Stagecoach's Humber Flyer (Hull-Barton-Humberside Airport-Grimsby-Cleethorpes) will see changes. As I posted last month the service will now terminate at Cleethorpes Pier not Pleasure Island. However instead of an extended wait at Humberside Airport, the service will now operate via the Market Place in Barton, resulting in a fully revised timetable between Cleethorpes and Barton. Times remain the same between Barton and Hull. Oddly the Stagecoach announcement does not mention the new route in Barton.

This change has a major advantage in that it now serves more of Barton, but on the other hand it does increase the journey time for non-Barton passengers.

The change also raises an interesting issue again - are Stagecoach wanting to attract Hull-Barton passengers onto the Humber Flyer or not? On one hand it would seem so - mostly co-ordinated timetable with the Humber Fastcat, same stand in Hull Interchange and now identical route in Barton. Yet there is no publicity for the co-ordinated service and perhaps most crucially no inter availability of tickets between the Humber Flyer and Stagecoach operated Humber Fastcat journeys.

The Barton diversion of the Humber Flyer doesn't seem exceptionally well used from my observations. Stagecoach really need to promote it, not just for travel to Hull, but also for links to North East Lincolnshire. Lets hope Monday's change also sees some promotion. A few posters on the Humber Fastcat buses would be a start in raising awareness amongst Barton customers. Not exactly a hard or expensive thing to do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unless you have had recent experience of tickets being refused on the opposite sevice Stagecoach tell me cross ticketing is now available

Humber Transport said...

Thanks. It appears this is a recent thing and certainly wasn't the case back in April. Very welcome news anyway, particlarly as I will be frequently travelling from Barton to Hull again from next month.

Coincidently I picked up a new Humber Flyer timetable today advertsing a Megarider Humber valid for travel on Stagecoach services in Hull, Grimsby, Barton and Scunthorpe. So it would seem the Megarider Fastcat and Megarider Platinum have been combined. This has happenned since June, since the Grimsby-Cleethorpes fares guide, dated June, still refers to the Megarider Platinum. Very welcome that there seems to be a combined Fastcat/Flyer weekly ticket that also allows onward travel in Hull. Will give me a lot more options and save me a lot of money.