Southampton changes

First Hampshire, Dorset and South Somerset (ok, I'll stick with FHD) are set to announce their next set of changes to the Southampton network next week. Most routes have changes on, but the biggest change simply from VOSA appears to be the 11 and 12.

The 11A, 11C, 12A and 12C at present connect Southampton City Centre to Sholing, via Woolston and Bitterne. The 11s go via Butts Road in Sholing, white the 12s go via Botley Road. The As go around the circular in an anti-clockwise direction, heading for Woolston first and heading back to the city though Bitterne, while the Cs go first to Bitterne. These routes replaced the existing 5/5A and 7/7A to Sholing in 2008, as the majority of cross-city routes were altered to terminate at the city centre.

VOSA indicates a new 11 and a new 12 have been registered from 12th June. We aren't sure yet of what changes will occur to these routes, so I can only speculate. Possibly the 11 going via Bitterne and doing a circular of Sholing, and the 12 via Woolston and the same? Or a frequency increase to compete with BlueStar 18 - recently increased to 8 buses an hour? We will find out next week, hopefully.

What is known is that service changes in Southampton are seeing potentially 7 more buses arrive in the city. At least one further Hong Kong Dart SLF is arriving from First Hants & Dorset's Plymouth depot, along with at least 2 former Truronian Darts - T32JCV and T34JCV are confirmed. These are very similar to sister 42235 (T35JCV), pictured to the right. 3 buses haven't been confirmed yet, 42235 could potentially move too. Furthermore, it is expected that Weymouth based Volvo B10BLE 66156 (S356XCR) will also move east.

The Dart SLFs haven't been confirmed as for Empress Road - there is some talk from the company that these will move to Hoeford, concentrating that type in the east of the company. This will cause 5 of the ex-Glasgow Darts at Hoeford to move back to Southampton (40822/5-7 were previously allocated to Portswood) and 41515 (R415WPX), which was of course new to Southampton. Interesting times ahead- and that's before any of the network changes are confirmed!