Brighton Area Buswatch

Representing Bus Users

Welcome to the Brighton Area Buswatch website

Brighton Area Buswatch is part of Bus Users UK, the national organisation representing bus passengers. We represent local bus users in and around the Brighton area. Our area stretches from Worthing in the west to Seaford and Lewes in the east and Haywards Heath in the north.

For more details on how to be involved press here.

Latest news:

Coverage of our launch event on Friday 5th October will appear here soon.

Part of Countyliner has gone into administration. East Sussex County Council reports it has replacement services covering all the affected services (except perhaps the 355), so in theory all services are running normally (often using a different bus company). Countyliner in mid Sussex is also affected. Some more details are included in our 'Public Transport info' page

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What we do:

Brighton Area Buswatch deals mostly with strategic issues affecting lots of people. We campaign for improvements to bus services and fares on behalf of bus users . Our policy is to build relationships with local Councils, local interest groups and bus companies to find out about their plans so we can make suggestions and try to influence them. Criticising authorities after they've implemented changes is usually too late to make a difference, so we try to avoid this situation occurring. However we will sometimes suggest lessons to be learnt, especially if we think it could help to avoid mistakes being repeated.

We are lucky to have excellent bus services in much of our area which are well-used and very few require public subsidies. Last year 44 million passenger journeys were made by bus in Brighton & Hove which compares with under 20 million journeys in Southampton or Portsmouth which are similar in size. This is a tremendous achievement but we recognise that people's expectations are always rising and there are always improvements that can be made.

If you have a particular problem regarding a bus service or an incident on a recent journey we advise you in the first instance, to contact the bus company concerned. In our experience most local bus companies are keen to receive feedback and will do their best to help if they can. Our partners at Bus Users UK can deal with appeals if a customer is not satisfied with the response from a bus company or local authority.

Issues we have dealt with in the past few months have included:-

• Objections to cuts on Council supported bus services in Brighton & Hove. We put forward suggestions which would have retained a through service between Ovingdean and Brighton without using extra resources. We are strongly opposed to the withdrawal of school service 52A (Woodingdean - Ovingdean - Cardinal Newman School) which is creating great hardship.
• We successfully campaigned for Brighton & Hove Saver tickets to be valid on Council supported services operated by The Big Lemon and Compass Bus.
  
• We supported the Brighton & Hove Bus company campaign on the Brighton Station Gateway proposals which could have reduced the number of buses able to serve Brighton station. This now looks unlikely.
• While having some reservations, we have worked closely with the Council and Cycle groups on Lewes Road bus and cycle lane proposals.

We have regular meetings with Brighton & Hove City Council and local bus companies where members can raise issues. A number of our suggestions for improvements to services have been implemented over the past year including:

• More early morning and late evening buses on route 1
• An improved evening service on route 6 from Brighton Station
• A better Sunday service on route 25 with an all evening service continuing to Palmeira Square and improved peak service to Portslade.
• Improved bus stopping arrangements at Hove Polyclinic
• Far fewer Brighton & Hove route branded buses running on 'wrong routes'

top left: Brighton & Hove bus etc.

top right: Stagecoach bus

above: Compass Bus service

above: Big Lemon CIC bus

above: Brighton & Hove Bus

This website is fully usable, but still may be developed further.