First West of England has announced a raft of service changes in Bristol from Sunday 15 September. These are scheduled to coinicide with the start of the busiest period of the year in the city, and aim to provide extra capacity on peak hour journey, as well as making other changes in response to customer feedback.
Service 2 will see additional capacity, services 48 and 49 will be extended to Lyde Green and the Bath and Bristol Science Park, whilst a new X49 will be introduced between Staple Hill and the city centre. Metrobus m1 will see extra buses during the moring peak, although the off-peak frequency will be reduced slightly to better match demand, whilst Monday to Saturday evening journeys will reduce to every 20 minutes. Service T3 will be withdrawn, whilst ‘Q-Buster’ buses will return, to ensure more capacity is available at times of disruption or high demand.
Ian Coyle, Operations Director for Bristol at First West of England, said: “The changes we’re making this September represent a significant investment in our Bristol services. We’re adding more capacity, increasing frequency and making changes to ensure that our services are more reliable for our customers. We have listened to feedback and made changes where possible to reduce the impact of this service revision. We know that congestion in
Bristol is often exacerbated in the Autumn with the end of the summer holidays. This extra pressure on the city’s road network makes it very challenging to run our services, but these changes are designed to ensure we’re providing the best level of service we can for our customers. The return of our highly successful Q-Buster buses adds extra capacity at the busiest and most congested times to support our service during this period.”
