Bluestar to take over Calmore and Totton bus routes from City Red

A BUS operator accused of waging a war after setting up a similar route to a rival has announced it will be pulling its Calmore and Totton service.

As reported in the A&T, City Red, which is owned by First Group, began running its Number 1 service between Calmore and Southampton city centre in 2019.

The company was accused by senior New Forest councillor David Harrison of launching the new offering simply to drive out local rival Bluestar, which operates a similar trip.

Now City Red has confirmed it will no longer be operating the route – or any others to and from Southampton – from February next year.

A statement from the company said: "Lower customer numbers post-Covid, rising costs, changes in travel patterns and insufficient demand for the number of buses operating in the city’s competitive market have all added extra pressure.

"This has led to this difficult decision being taken and meant the business is simply no longer sustainable."

Rival operator Bluestar confirmed to the A&T it would be stepping in and said: "All areas currently with bus services will still be covered.

"The situation will be very similar to how it is now – it’s just that routes may have different numbers and the buses will be blue.

"Bluestar will issue new timetables in plenty of time so people will be able to familiarise themselves with which buses will cover their journeys."

Bluestar’s parent company, Go South Coast, is no stranger to stepping in when services have been withdrawn by fellow operators.

Earlier this year another of its companies, Morebus, moved to recruit more than 100 new staff following the collapse of the Yellow Buses service which served Christchurch and the west of the New Forest as well as Bournemouth and Poole.

The spokesperson for Bluestar added: "We are very proud to be helping to keep our communities running and we look forward to welcoming new colleagues and customers onboard as we aim to transform bus services for the better."