First the worst? Brentwood passengers stranded on Sunday

Sunday evening, 1851, Brentwood Station. The train has just arrived from London and a Brentwood senior citizen is waiting for her connecting bus home. It's parked up by the station. She waits for it to move, turn round and pick up passengers. And she waits. And then she waits some more.

It doesn't move, so she crosses the road and asks the driver if this bus is the 80C, to which the driver replies "yes, but it's broken down". Apparently the back lights didn't work. She checked and they weren't working alright:

First's solution: do nothing. Leave passengers, including this pensioner who relies on the bus, stranded. Our friend ended up having to fork out £8 to get the taxi home, just ten minutes away.

But this isn't the end of the story. Routes 80A and 80C on Sundays are subsidised by Essex County Council. So First is being handed taxpayers' money to run these services. The 1851 80C from Brentwood Station on Sunday did not run. With the nearest bus depot being in either Basildon or Chelmsford, we're quite certain the 1951 80A didn't run either. So will First be handing the subsidy money for that journey back to the council? We sincerely hope so.

If they didn't, then we hope Essex County Council will be looking for alternative providers of their subsidised bus services.

Was Sunday night's 80A/80C debacle an isolated incident or have you been the victim of a non-running First bus in Brentwood? Please leave a comment and let us know, especially if it's a subsidised service for which First have their hand firmly in the taxpayers' pockets.

First fares go up on Sunday

First are putting most of their fares up on Sunday 3rd February.

The FirstDay Brentwood goes up from £3.50 to £3.60. FirstWeek Brentwood rises from £13.50 to £14.

FirstDay Basildon Outer stays at £6. FirstWeek Basildon Outer drops from £26 to £24.

FirstDay Essex stays at £8 but for that same price you might as well get the Essex Saver, which is valid on all operators' buses throughout the county. FirstWeek Essex stays at £30.

The FirstMonth tickets valid in this part of the world stay the same.

Some single and return fares are changing too. Here's a sample of adult fares to/from Brentwood from Sunday:
Billericay £4 return (cheaper than the train)
Ingatestone £4.50 return (£4.30 return on the train when travelling after 1200 weekdays or anytime at weekends)
Chelmsford £6.30 return (cheaper than the train)

Brentwood's major bus routes on one clear map

Essex County Council are one of the best in the country for their public transport maps. But they are so comprehensive, listing every single route that runs, even if it only offers one journey a week. Sometimes it's easy for the vital information on the major routes to get lost in the detail. None of the bus operators offer a simplified map of their Brentwood services, so we thought we'd step in.

Here is a vastly simplified map of bus services in Brentwood, only showing those routes that have at least an hourly service Monday to Saturday daytimes:

And here's the Sunday bus network:

We hope you'll find these maps useful. Please feel free to share them.

Oyster's here, but not always cheaper

Oyster has arrived in Brentwood, if you ignore the fact that it arrived on the 498 bus ages ago! It's now here on the trains too. The fares aren't quite as simple as they could be, so we've prepared this table to make it clear how much a journey into Greater London will cost using paper tickets or Oyster:

The surprising fact is that some day Travelcards are cheaper with paper tickets than on Oyster. Oyster's only the best deal if you'll be travelling into London on a train that arrives at Liverpool Street between 1000 and 1200. For single journeys into and out of Greater London, Oyster always works out cheaper.

Watch out for the £16.20 off-peak pay-as-you-go daily Oyster fare cap when travelling from Brentwood though - it's quite high and can only be avoided by either using a paper ticket to travel from Brentwood into Greater London and then switching to Oyster or by using two separate Oyster cards, one to get over the border and one to get around London.

Here's how the paper v Oyster fares look from Shenfield:

It's not yet clear what situation is regarding the Brentwood & Shenfield Plusbus, but my guess is that it is not available in conjunction with Oyster.

Do leave a comment and let us know what you think.

New route: NIBS 489 to Moreton

Since Monday 7th January, there's a new bus route in Brentwood. NIBS 489 runs in from Moreton every weekday morning and heads back every weekday afternoon. Here is the route map:

Timetable:

and list of stops served:

The SMS codes can be used on Nextbuses or by texting 84268 (normal text message costs apply) to see a list of the next buses scheduled from that stop.

As the 489 is mainly a schools service, I won't be adding it to the directory of major bus routes at the bottom of this page, but if there are any changes to the 489, then we'll let you know right here.

Also below, right at the bottom of the page, you'll find a useful list of available day tickets for Brentwood's buses. We've made it clear which ticket can be bought and is valid on which bus. The biggest surprise is the Sunday Saver, which at £2.80 for travel on all buses in Essex every Sunday is surely one of the best value bus tickets in the country!