Friends of the Barton Line

HT, I have had the following back from Stagecoach East Midlands via Twitter:

"Hi Thomas, on 27, 30 and 31 December we will be running a Saturday service, so this does mean that the extra evening journeys on 350 between Hull and Barton will run. Unfortunately the 260 will not as does not run Saturdays. Hope this helps!"

I have alse had an email from Lincoln stating outright Saturday service. Like you I am not convinced, so I have made further enquiries, including contacting Traveline, however for now that seems to be the position.

I have had the following back from Traveline:

"

Thank you for the feedback message you submitted from the traveline east midlands website, bringing these discrepancies to my attention.

As bus operators are only obliged to confirm their level of service on Bank Holidays, and over the festive season, 21 days in advance, we applied (back in September) a “best guess” adjustment to the standard timetables, and these are adjusted (or confirmed) week-by-week by our local data contributors as operators declare their actual operating patterns. It seems that services in the North Lincolnshire area have not been as well handled as we would have wished. We are just putting the finishing touches to our final data-build before the festive season, so your queries have allowed us to correct some errors, though the corrected data will not ‘go live’ on our website until late morning on Thursday of this week.

I can confirm that service 350 will be operating to a Saturday service on 27th and 30th December, so those extra late journeys will be operating.

It is my understanding that service 260 will not be operating on 27th, 30th and 31st December. On the normal timetable, Stagecoach provide the weekday journeys while CallConnect provide a more limited service on Saturdays. As Stagecoach has declared that they are running a Saturday service on those days (= no service) and CallConnect have declared they are running their normal services across the festive period with the exception of no service on 25th and 26th December, and 1st January, it seems that neither operator will be providing any journeys on service 260 on 27th, 30th and 31st December.

As I said, I expect these errors to be corrected when we release new data on Thursday of this week normally just before lunchtime. In the meantime I have used our “incident” system to remove service 260 from our point-to-point journery planner on those three days (and annotate the timetable). Likewise, I have added a note to itineraries using service 350 on those three days.

I am grateful that you took the trouble to bring these matters to my attention. We welcome reports of data errors, or incorrect responses from our journey planner, as they can lead to corrections or improvements that allow us to provide a better service to future enquirers. With the amount of data we bring together from a wide range of sources, and the methods we use to “glue it all together”, there are bound to be some aspects that we can improve, and we are grateful for any help in finding the “needles in the haystack”."

Thus confirming that Stagecoach publicity.

i agree that it is disappointing that the 260 does not operate for three consecutive days, this is certainly something to be raised in time for next year.

An anonymous comment on my blog also states it is operating, based on contacting Scunthorpe depot. 

http://humbertransport.blogspot.com/2019/12/getting-short-straw-this-christmas.html

Stagecoach and Traveline East Midlands websites haven't been updated though to state it is operating.

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Thanks as well for copies of the email correspondence with Traveline