Fife Council ran a series of surveys on Bus Travel in Fife
You can read the background to these surveys at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/89c51ff8b3b344cb8e62d19b1897b511
It seems that bus surveys come along quite often - the latest one is from our local MSP Willie Rennie -it's always worth letting people know your thoughts on bus travel - and you can fill in his survey at: https://digitallibdems.typeform.com/to/VaYu5WKg
Here at 95 Crail Bus we have our own ideas about how you could improve bus services on the 95 in particular and around Crail in general.
In summary our suggestions are:
Put newer buses on the 95 route - reduce delays caused by bus breakdowns
Add more space for bikes, buggies and wheelchairs - to help more people use the bus
Subsidise an All Fife, All Day, All Operators ticket - to help people whose routes involve multiple operators
Run a more regular service - remove the long gaps in the 95 service around school start and end times on weekdays
Run a more frequent service - a 95 every 30 minutes would encourage more people to use the bus
Introduce a new direct bus between Crail and Cupar - cut out delays changing buses and serve rural destinations on the B940 - bring more choice to bus services for Crail
Subsidise an extra early morning journey for passengers who need to get to early jobs or appointments
Our proposals, with more detail of how they can be implemented:
Put newer buses on the 95 route - we are campaigning to put newer buses on the 95 because the current stock of older buses are mechanically unreliable, uncomfortable, noisy and not as environmentally friendly as newer buses - if you do manage to catch a new bus you will notice how much quieter and more comfortable the newer buses are - as part of our campaign to highlight the mechanical failures of older buses on the 95 causing delays and cancellations, we have been keeping notes of when faults are reported on the 95, see our Fault Log page
Run a more regular timetable - the Saturday timetable of the 95 is very simple and regular - unfortunately on weekdays this timetable is currently disrupted by modifications delaying buses to provide school services - these diversions for school services can sometimes mean a wait of over an hour and 50 minutes between buses going in the same direction at stops in Crail - our suggestion is that the Saturday service is also run on weekdays and that school services are provided by adding extra buses, that way non-school passengers can plan around buses running at the same time every hour without needing to worry that on schooldays the bus may be missing...
Run a more frequent timetable - waiting an hour or more for a bus puts a lot of people off using the bus - they will choose to use a car instead - if the 95 could run every 30 minutes during the day that would encourage many more people to use it - and it would give better integration with connecting bus services in St Andrews, Leven or Anstruther.
Cater for more people with bikes, buggies and wheelchairs - reasons for catching a bus can be many and complex, and sometimes you need to take some fairly bulky things with you, if only to get yourself or your children that final stretch between the bus stop and your destination, or from your start point to the bus stop - if buses had much more space for storing your wheels and for wheeling on and off the bus then life would be much simpler all round.
The 95 bus fits in well with the proposed East Neuk 50 cycle route https://eastneuk50.org/ and the provision of cycle spaces would allow people to cycle the route in sections.
Subsidise bus travel to help reduce traffic - if you are aged under 22 or over 60 you get a free bus pass - but if you are between these ages and struggling with life then the complexities of different bus operators and different ticket types can be daunting - we suggest that Fife Council subsidise an All Fife, All Day, All Operators bus ticket - it would work similarly to the current bus passes with operators claiming money to cover a proportion of the normal ticket costs of those using this ticket on their buses. By covering All Operators it deals with the problem where a route is covered by multiple operators, or involves changing buses between different operators. If the price is made cheap enough it will take cars off the road and make travel faster for all, and it will encourage operators to run a more frequent service for the benefit of all bus users. We suggest a target price for this ticket at £5 - so you can do all the puns about being a Fifer for a Fiver... There is a similar scheme in England - a £2 single fare cap has been extended to the end of October 2023 - with a £2.50 fare cap to follow for the 12 months to the end of October 2024: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65616182
Provide more cross-county services - our campaign is for a direct bus between Crail and Cupar - it's all very well if you want to go to St Andrews or Leven from Crail, but what if you need to get to the local Council offices in Cupar? A new service between Crail and Cupar could serve the Secret Bunker - which currently has no bus services but is a popular destination - if the bus service was timed right it could connect at Higham Toll with the X58 or with the X60 at Drumrack crossroads - it could go on to serve Peat Inn - perhaps optionally having diverted via Largoward to give residents there the benefit of the cross-county service - then on to Pitscottie and into Cupar - perhaps via Kemback, providing residents there with a bus service. Due to the narrow roads and sharp corners on the B940 the service would have to be operated by a relatively small bus.
If the bus route was extended to the Adamson Hospital in Cupar then the total journey time between Crail and the Adamson Hospital would be likely to be just under an hour - which would fit nicely with two buses providing an hourly service or one bus providing a two-hourly service and with the driver having a short break at Adamson Hospital. If the bus used the Pinkerton Road estate to turn around in Crail and it passed there in the long gap between 95 services at around 20 to 25 minutes past the hour - then it would restore the half-hourly service between the Pinkerton Road estate and the shops in Crail and it would connect at the Drumrack Crossroads with the X60 giving X60 users faster access to Crail and the Secret Bunker - Cupar itself has the railway station and more express buses to Glenrothes and beyond - and the arrival at the Adamson Hospital might replace one of the current service 68 journeys between the centre of Cupar and the Adamson Hospital, giving freedom for another short town service around Cupar and for changing drivers? Or, depending on route timings the operator might decide to terminate the new service at Cupar Railway Station and/or extend the Crail end of the route to Crail Golf Club roundabout - useful for the housing at Fife Ness and as a joining point for the Fife Coastal Path.
Subsidise an extra early morning journey - why is it that when you get an appointment at Victoria Hospital (or Ninewells, or Queen Margaret's in Dunfermline) that the appointment is always just too early to get there by catching the first bus through Crail in a morning? If Fife Council could subsidise a journey for the 95 in each direction about an hour earlier than the earliest time that Stagecoach consider to be financially viable then this would save a lot of unnecessary car and taxi journeys - and the existence of this bus would encourage more people to plan to travel to work by bus - which would eventually make it financially viable... (When timetabling this extra journey it's worth making sure that it connects well with onward buses from St Andrews or Leven - scheduling it to run 5, 10 or 15 minutes earlier if necessary to connect with onward routes to Dundee, Glenrothes or Kirkcaldy as appropriate.)
One way to move in this direction would be to open up those buses that run empty early in the morning on their way to start journeys from Anstruther Harbour or Elie to allow passengers on that otherwise empty section. It would cost Stagecoach little extra and give people more options for early morning travel. In the same way buses that run empty after finishing journeys in Lower Largo or Cellardyke could be opened up to passengers travelling back to the bus depot.
Some of our suggestions (for opening up some of the empty bus legs) have been implemented as of Monday 14th August 2023 - see our Late Night Buses page.
What do we like about the current 95 service?
It's run using double-decker buses which provide fine views over the countryside, and which have a shorter vehicle length than the bigger single deckers, making some of the corners easier for the bus to navigate - double-deckers also cope better with sudden arrivals of tourists or "events" on the route
It visits St Andrews Community Hospital
The Saturday service is particularly regular and predictable
There is currently one direct service between Crail and Cupar which runs once a day in each direction on Elmwood College days - operated by A1 Coaches:
Extra early morning journey
For the 150th Golf Open championship Stagecoach ran an extra early morning journey on the 95 as shown in the picture.
We would like to see a similar service every weekday.
But it would be good if it got to St Andrews for 06:00 - then it could connect with the 06:05 99 to Dundee, or the 06:05 X58 to Leven, or the 06:10 X59 to Edinburgh - though it would also be good if that X59 could once more connect with an X27 to Glasgow at Halbeath Park & Ride.
An arrival this early in St Andrews could be achieved by missing out Lower Largo, Colinsburgh and Kilconquhar from the 95 route - precedent has been established for missing out these stops in the current 95 timetable for those buses which need to make faster progress - and active passengers are generally able to walk from the missed stops to places on the reduced route.
In the same way if you really want to enable the bus to run faster the route could miss out Anstruther Harbour - like the ELM1 bus shown above - though it would be an idea to install an extra bus stop on Crail Road in Anstruther round about the junction with Ladywalk.
The simple provision of an approximation to the 95 that gets to St Andrews for 06:00 would enable so many more early journeys...
Times in this proposal are guesstimates based on other shortened route timetables
Below is a You Tube link to a Scottish Parliament response on help to move towards electric buses on rural bus services like the 95...