We'll do Sheffield first. I dropped a vehicle off at a garage in Darnall, and beforehand I checked their journey-planner to find out where I needed to go. I was confronted with a cluster of four bus stops, with no common information at any of them, just the times for the buses that called (and their endpoints). Do the buses for Fulwood and Millhouses go via the City Centre? Or maybe via Meadowhall? We don't know. I followed my nose in the vague direction of Darnall railway station (an hourly service - totally inadequate) and came to the stop 5 minutes walk away that the frequent route 52 serves. But one couldn't be expected to know that.
Leeds next, and two screenshots from the main stop on Leeds City Square for buses along Selby Road (Halton, Whitkirk, Colton, Garforth, Kippax).
Too many letters! The First Leeds 19A timetable has notes A and E on one journey (this is an extra A to the A in 19A) to denote a route variation (to serve the Thorpe Park business park) - quite why two letters are needed to refer to the same service I do not know. It would seem simpler to me for this journey (and the return in the evening) to be numbered 19B (or 18 or 20, which are vacant), and then to avoid the silly letters completely. Then again, now that Transdev York serve Thorpe Park half-hourly during the daytime (seven days a week) perhaps First Leeds will either compete or give up?
The Arriva timetable is the biggest mess though. We have a note (D on one route, E on the other) to advise that customers can board at four preceeding stops on certain services - I would suggest that this is of precious little relevance to people who have walked to this stop and are reading the information.
We then have the last service of the day given notes B and E (in addition to the D as above) of which B denotes terminating at Kippax War Memorial (which is fair enough) and E denotes runs via Kippax Cross Hills (all 163 and 166 buses do this, so no need to highlight it on the last service of the day). Why does the last service of the day terminate at Kippax when the bus then runs dead to Castleford depot? Surely it could run in service to the bridge over the River Aire just outside Castleford (Lock Lane) instead?
Anyway.... we have codes G H and sch for a journey that runs via Colton, via Garforth Academy, and schooldays only - this again would be simpler if this route could have another number.
The evening and Sunday route 166 journeys omit East Garforth station (heaven forbid that anyone from Kippax might want to connect with a train to York) as code F tells us - again, if these must observe a different route then surely a different number would be simplest? Perhaps someone from Arriva could tell us why the residents of the Fairburn Drive estate (which is or was Europe's largest private housing estate so I understand) do not deserve an hourly evening and sunday service?
Numbers 164 and 165 are again vacant - and bizarrely 165 used to be used for one of the evening routes - so perhaps someone will see sense.
The real complaint over this timetable though is the lack of the Saturday evening service on routes 163 and 166, which does in fact run along the same lines of the other evenings. WY Metro please get this corrected. I still prefer the 'information' given in the West Yorkshire timetable to the mediocre effort made by SYPTE.
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