Seven ADL Enviro300s in dedicated blue livery take up duties on cross-town Suffolk service
First Eastern Counties (FEC) has taken on the Ipswich Park-and-Ride service commercially following Suffolk County Council’s (SCC) removal of a £500,000 annual subsidy for its operation.
Seven Alexander Dennis Enviro300s transferred from elsewhere in the group have received a blue livery for the cross-town route, which runs between the London Road and Martlesham Heath sites.
One journey per hour off-peak continues to Rendlesham, improving the village’s links to Ipswich and helping the service’s overall viability.
“SCC was unable to continue to subsidise the service so it approached operators and asked for ideas on how best to take it forward,” says FEC Commercial Manager Paul Martin.
“We proposed retaining the cross-town link, which gives both sites easy access to Ipswich hospital.”
The buses have been tidied internally and they have wi-fi along with audio-visual next stop announcements and ‘smart’ destination blinds that remove via points as they are passed, both supplied by McKenna Bros.
The decision to use existing buses was because of the six-month lead time on the agreement with SCC, says Mr Martin; it would have proved difficult to have procured new vehicles within that timeframe.
Although the service is not yet commercially established, Mr Martin says that First is working with local establishments to encourage regular use through period tickets. It sees considerable scope for growth in this area.
“There are lots of traffic objectives along the route, and we are focusing on exploiting them as part of the process to build the service.”
Headway of the core service from the London Road site is every 10 minutes during the morning peak, and every 15 minutes at other times and from Mendlesham Road.
Such is its confidence in Ipswich’s ability to support a park-and-ride service that First does not rule out expanding it to the currently mothballed Bury Road site if existing journeys prove popular.
