New White Bus service later this month

White Bus have announced that they will be making changes to their Frimley Park Hospital to Heatherwood Hospital (Ascot) route X94 from Tuesday 31st August, which serves Camberley, The Meadows, College Town, Great Hollands and Harmans Water along the way. The route of the X94 won’t be changing, but the timetable will be. It will still run weekdays only, but will be increased from four journeys each way to five towards Frimley, and to six towards Ascot (plus a seventh ‘short’ between Bracknell and Ascot).

In addition to the X94 changes, from the same date a new route X30 will be launched, also linking Frimley Park Hospital and Heatherwood Hospital with six journeys in each direction (plus an Ascot station to Heatherwood Hospital ‘short’). This new route will follow White Bus’ 500 from Frimley Park Hospital, through Camberley and onwards to Bagshot. From Bagshot it will leave the 500 to rejoin the A30 along Bridge Road, turn left upon reaching The Windmill pub (Windlesham) and run along Sunninghill Road/Bagshot Road. In South Ascot it will turn left at the roundabout and run alongside White Bus’ 01 for the remainder of its journey along Brockenhurst Road, Station Hill (past Ascot railway station), and along the High Street to reach Heatherwood Hospital. While the X30 won’t particularly fill gaps in the 01 between Heatherwood Hospital and South Ascot due to timings (bar the 1339 South Ascot to Heatherwood Hospital section of one journey), it will offer some handy additional options for residents of Bagshot travelling to Frimley Park Hospital who currently have large gaps in the daytime 500.

The two routes will form a large circle, as can be seen in the route map below:

X30/X94 route map – WHITE BUS

I’m not a scheduler and have no insider knowledge of how the services will be resourced, but a look at the timetable suggests to me that the two routes will most likely interwork and require four vehicles. I understand the current X94 operation utilises two vehicles, in between school journeys on the 85A/B Collingwood College routes. I’ve had a play around with the journeys and found a potential ‘pattern’ that would facilitate four self-contained duties, incorporating potential driver breaks or at least changeovers, and could be sandwiched between school/peak requirements. This pattern consists of X30 Heatherwood to Frimley via Bagshot, X94 Frimley to Heatherwood via Bracknell, turn at roundabout, X94 Heatherwood to Frimley via Bracknell, X30 Frimley to Heatherwood via Bagshot, driver break/changeover, and repeat. If this is accurate, I figure it could potentially have been laid out in this way as the westbound ‘Heatherwood Hospital – east’ bus stop is a lay-by that could allow a vehicle to be parked off-road for an extended layover for break/driver changeover (I believe it’s only school routes that otherwise serve this stop). I will stress again that these are merely my speculative ‘doodlings’ and may well bear no resemblance to what actually occurs!

My speculative duties

The full timetable can be found below, or by clicking here.

Other upcoming service changes timed, as usual, to coincide with the new academic year are slowly filtering through and can be found over on the Service Changes page.

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