Leighton Buzzard Looks Bigger

The above cartographic concoction shows an immediate post WW2 town placed on top of a more recent map. It is this recent splurge that was servied by routes 32, 33, 34, 35, 36A and 36C before the new “improved” network arrived at the beginning of May.

Because services to the east of Leighton Buzzard town centre cannot be directly mapped to the new versions, readers will need to keep their wits about them. 

A key feature of the area is the main road shown RED on the new map. This is Hockliffe Road which become s Leighton Road just above the bif “L” of “Leighton”.

So we begin with 32 and 33 in GREEN.

fbb can only find an old 32 timetable c/o Central Bedfordshire Council …

But is this the same 32 as shown on the map. Dunno!

But it is reasonable to assume that 32 and 33 were hourly each way round their loop …

… but each had its own special wiggle which we will meet soon.

Likewise the 34 and 35 operated hourly each way round their loop, shown in BLUE.

There is a very old timetable on-line from Arriva (!) which confirms the hourly service on each route.

The frequency runs for a normal busman’s working day. But a later version, also still on line, shows a typical Arriva cut-back.

The routes are still hourly but there are a lot less of them!

In yesterday’s blog, we already met the 36A and 36C giving a half hourly schedule direct to Billington Park, map  colour MAROON.

This, you may remember was half cross-town.

So What Now?

Most of the 32, 33, 34 and 35 are rolled up into the new L5 running anti-clockwise every hour. As the loop is now bigger, journeys will tend to be longer in one direction, depending on how far round the circuit the passenger will be travelling. We saw yesterday that there is no Sunday service on this side of town and the presentation of the times is unhelpfully shown in a very summarised form.

So no improvement there! For most users the new set-up is less frequent and slower.

And Billington Park?

It now gets an hourly L4 but comes at the end of a large loop, so a very long journey to get there by comparison with he former 36A/C. 

The L4 also takes on a little wiggle that was part of the 32/33 with the same result – a more lengthy journey to get home!

We will meet the L4 again in tomorrow’s blog, so our readers will have to contain their excitement until then.

You can begin to see why Leighton Buzzard bus users are up in arms.

But it will be even more infuriating for them after seeing what else in happening east of the town centre. But so far, four routes giving a good half hourly service to most parts of the town have become one hourly service giving a worse set-up for most parts of the town.

More tomorrow. When we see the town getting even bigger!

A Work In Progress …

More to come!

 Next Leighton Buzzard blog : Thursday 8th June