Alton Town Partnership
The Alton Town Partnership oversees the delivery of the Alton Town Plan recommendations
and also helps to develop Alton.
Please contact us by telephone at +44 (0) 1420 549684, by email:
or write to:-
The Alton Town Partnership, 66 High Street, Alton, Hampshire. GU34 1ET. UK.
64/X64 and 65 Bus Routes
From December 9th 2007, the 64 or X84 bus route from Winchester terminated at Alton Station rather than continuing to Guildford.
A new bus route - the X65 co-ordinated with the 64 route for onward travel to Guildford.
From September 1st 2008, the buses will only change their route number at Alton Station. The passengers can just sit tight.
Through ticketing from Winchester to Guildford is now possible again.
Sense at Last!
All this upheaval was a result of new EU legislation.
Some consequences for Alton are:-
The bus service still takes slightly longer to reach beyond Alton eg to Farnham.
The Train Station will has a few waiting buses present during the day and thus has become
slightly more of an interchange.
Information about any delays in connections is still not provided to travellers.
The longer time a bus journey takes and the more inconvenient it becomes, the
fewer people will use it and they will take to their cars instead.
What happens to any global warming considerations in this scenario?
Here are the current bus timetables. The 64/X64 timetable has details of through buses from Alton.
Click Continue to Stagecoachbus.com on the top right hand corner after taking this link.
Bus connections are still not good at Alton Railway Station for commuters when
travelling to Farnham or Guildford from the south of Alton.
Here is some background.
New EU legislation has placed driving restrictions on routes over 32 miles long - that all bus services over 50km must install tachographs to ensure
that drivers do not work longer than the set hours to avoid exploitation and to prevent accidents caused by exhaustion.
This distinction makes no sense. Compared to rural bus drivers, urban bus drivers often work longer hours by doing a series of shorter routes,
often under more stressful conditions brought on by traffic congestion and overcrowding. The working time directive restricts
the working week for particular employees to 48 hours. The road transport directive came in under what is called a horizontal
amending directive procedure. This overrules the original working time directive, and there is no UK individual opt-out.
There are bus companies who have divided services up into smaller parts, but these smaller parts must be services in their own right.
A 150km service cannot simply be subdivided into three to circumvent the regulations. To do that, the operator would need three vehicles,
three drivers and no through ticketing (though presumably an all-day ticket would be acceptable). This is exactly what Western Greyhound
has done, in chopping up its rural network.
A 32-mile route between Winchester and Portsmouth has became one of the first victims as Stagecoach said it was curtailing
the service to avoid complying with the regulations, which it said would involve recruiting several extra drivers.
Andrew Dyer, managing director of Stagecoach South, said: "The EU is applying the same rules to this bus route as it is to one from
Paris to Rome, which is silly.
"If a brain surgeon can volunteer to work a 50-hour week, why can't a bus driver?"
Another contact point at Stagecoach South who is encouraging travellers to complain to their MPs is Commercial Director
Edward Hodgson.
Similar cuts are also underway in Norfolk, Cornwall, North Wales and other rural counties.
Unions have welcomed the regulations, which mean that drivers on long routes can no longer work overtime beyond Europe's statutory
48-hour week. Employers must use a tachograph or formal roster to track their hours. A Transport and General Workers Union spokesman accused bus
firms of using it as a premise to withdraw socially important services: "Local authorities have got to look very carefully at these cuts and ask
whether the working time directive is the be all and end all in terms of reason. "If these companies are short of bus drivers, then they should
adopt the 'physician heal thyself' principle and pay their staff higher wages."
Bus firms also face a particular problem in a second directive which will require drivers to take a 45-hour break at least once
a fortnight. Operators say this will force them to withdraw Saturday services because it will oblige them to give drivers the entire weekend off.
A third issue is that some bus operators are known to register multiple routes but run them as one through route in order to get fuel duty rebate.
Mark Howarth, managing director of the Cornish bus firm Western Greyhound, said:
About half of Western Greyhound's 26 routes are more than 31 miles under a policy of creating through routes the length
and width of the county. Among those at risk is a 52-mile service between Bude and Truro. Local buses account for two thirds
of public transport journeys in Britain. The government has set a target of increasing bus use by 10% within a decade and of
ensuring that half of rural households are within a 10 minute walk of an hourly service.
Ben Colson, managing director of Norfolk Green, said towns in East Anglia were typically 15 miles apart, with major shops,
colleges and essential services in every other town. He has already begun reducing services between Great Yarmouth and towns
such as Spalding and March.
"It's not at all exceptional round here to travel over 30 miles to visit key shops or to go to a hospital," said Mr Colson.
He recognised the need for restrictions on drivers' hours, but said: "This completely loses its validity because of this very
artificial distinction between routes under 50km and over 50km."
Modern buses cost roughly £30 an hour, or £1 for every two minutes, to operate. In the King's Lynn area, that is slightly
more than the average fare paid. Every two minutes of extra time on the timetable because of congestion or other delays means that bus companies
have to carry one extra passenger. Bus industry costs are rising at roughly 7% a year. The main culprits are employer and public
liability insurance premiums, rapidly rising fuel costs and fleet insurance premiums.
There is a new EU draft directive on driver age; there is no start date yet. This will increase the minimum age for bus drivers
from 21 to 24, thereby reducing career prospects and attractiveness in the industry. The additional costs resulting from that will
depend on the age mix of staff at the introduction of the directive, but there will certainly be an extra cost to the industry.
This whole issue was debated in Westminster in March 2005 but has only just really received publicity:-
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