Letter: Why is Milford cut off by a lack of bus services?

Can the operators of More Bus, please explain the following:

Milford is cut off from any bus service, for 2-3+ hours each weekday afternoon, why?

If travelling from the west and arriving at New Milton, there is no X1 service toward Lymington from 14.51, until 16.55 – a gap of 2hrs 4mins. Even worse, travelling from Lymington, towards New Milton, there are no X1 services from 13.33 until 16.40, a gap of 3hrs 7mins.

I expect the reply will have something to do will school finishing times.

A reasonable excuse perhaps, but why are there not similar lack of buses and gap in the morning periods when schools are starting?

Why cannot More Buses coordinate their Lymington X1 services so that passengers travelling from Southampton on the Blue Bus No.6 service, are able to get a connection to get west in the afternoon, after a day’s shopping in Southampton? At the moment, the X1 leaves about 5mins before the No.6 arrives, leaving shoppers stranded in Lymington for 2-3hrs.

Yet another More Bus service, the 119 – serving New Milton, Ashley, Hordle, Everton, Pennington and Lymington – has no services at all, after 14.00hrs, so presumably, passengers from these localities are expected to dash out, then scurry back home with their shopping before the bus curfew strands them.

Seems like when travelling by essential public transport we travel in hope rather than expectation.

A Turner
Milford

Richard Wade, Morebus general manager, replies:

There are departures from Lymington to Milford at 1.33pm, 2.03pm, 3.27pm and 5.40pm on school days.

This current level of service has existed since 2015, when local authority funding was withdrawn. We now operate all buses to and from Milford on an entirely commercial basis, and the current provision – based on the number of people travelling with us – is the very best we can provide without any funding.

There are some gaps at school times because the cost of providing extra journeys at these times is particularly high. Any such additional journeys would require us to buy new buses and employ additional drivers, and the cost of this would be prohibitive.

We will continue to monitor demand and consider service levels as part of our regular reviews of the network.