This blog is not currently active. However, please feel free to browse through our previous posts to find out more about the local First bus services in Bath and what makes them tick.
For current travel and timetable information, please visit www.firstgroup.com. If you have an enquiry or any comments about our services, you can email bath.csc@firstgroup.com or telephone 0845 606 4446.
Thanks again to all of those who supported us through this experiment!
Thank you for all of your support throughout this experiment. You have joked with us (yes, there really *is* a bridge called the Chocolate Poodle!), played word games with us (it is amazing how many creative ways there are to describe traffic congestion!) and kept us informed about what you were experiencing out on the road. This proved invaluable to us and our Inspectors so many times as we battled through the difficult traffic conditions that have afflicted Bath over the last nine months.
What this has really taught us is that social media use in a business context can only be successful with the support and enthusiasm of its followers. We are really grateful for all of your support and the time that you have put in to helping us improve our bus services. We have really appreciated your comments, observations and ideas, which have been really inspiring. Thank you!
First is now really thinking hard about how social media can help the company in the future, so hopefully this experiment will have helped in some small way to pave the way for something even better. There have already been questions raised about how we can preserve the @bathcsc experiment and in order to study its strengths and weaknesses, so we will be looking into this!
There is also the bus station archive, which currently consists of hundreds of pictures of all three bus station sites in Bath – Manvers Street, Avon Street and Dorchester Street. A bus station is very much a community object, and one of our personal projects is to document the buildings and the human stories attached to them. At the moment, we are not clear what form this archive would take, but if you have a story about the bus station that you would like to share, or you would like to be involved in a community project to document this aspect of our transport heritage in Bath, please email us.
First is still dedicated to listening to you and can be contacted by email at bath.csc@firstgroup.com or by telephone on 0845 606 4446. There are still real people working at the Bus Station itself, running around trying to fix any problems and deliver you a great service. We hope we have given you some insight into this, which will help relieve the stress a bit when there are delays.
We will be saying thank you in person for all your support over the last nine months of this experiment in the Travel Shop at Bath Bus Station today between 13:00 and 15:30. There will be sweets!
Thank you again for being involved!
It is with huge regret that we have announce that we have to suspend our recent experimental social media work, due to economic constraints. This includes the bathcsc.info blog, the @bathcsc Twitter account and our Bath Bus Station Customer Services Facebook page.
Unfortunately, due to the current economic climate, First is having to make changes to its business structure. As part of making the company more cost efficient, the Customer Services function for Bath Bus Station will now be handled by a specialist, area-wide centre based at Exeter. As a result, the local staff here at Bath Bus Station will be reduced in number and sadly there will be no resources available to maintain our recent social media activity.
We will continue to respond to comments and queries until Friday 26th June. We will leave resources, such as this blog, online for everyone’s reference, which we hope will be of use to you all.
After 26th June, if you require any advice about our services, or wish to make a comment about any aspect of our operation, you can still do so by telephoning 0845 606 4446 or by emailing bath.csc@firstgroup.com. Your comments will still be fully investigated and taken very seriously.
We have very much enjoyed interacting with you all through social media and hope that you have all found this useful and enlightening as you used our buses. This experiment has been extremely interesting for us and we hope that First will be in a position to consider this approach to Customer Services again in the future, when the economic climate allows.
In the meantime, thank you so much to all of you who have supported us. We hope you continue to enjoy using First buses in Bath!
We have just received notification that Corn Street will be closed overnight Weds and Thurs 10th & 11th June 2009 for resurfacing to take place. Avon Street and Ambury will still be open during these works.
Services 18 and 418 will need to divert as follows:
18 to University of Bath – Pick up at Green Park Road then operate via Green Park Road, James Street West, St James Parade and then normal route.
418 to University of Bath – Operate from Midland Bridge Road to James Street West, St James Parade and then normal route.
Both services to use stop Wf in James St West.
This map might help you to visualize where the buses are going…
If you have any questions about this diversion, then please leave us a comment and we will do our best to help!
Now we are comfortably settled in to the new Bus Station, we are interested to hear what you all make of it.
So, let us know what you think about it and any questions you might have either by messaging @bathcsc on Twitter or by leaving a commenting on this post.
We look forward to hearing your views!
Well, there were times when we thought this day would never come. But, after a fairly manic weekend, we are finally starting to unpack and settle in to our office here at the brand new, shiny bus station in Dorchester Street.
Unlike in the previous two buildings, the Customer Services Department has been split up and homed in different spaces, depending on our functions. You will now find our customer-facing staff on the ground floor Ticket & Enquiry Office, where they will be happy to provide any advice you may need. Those responsible for investigations and our recent social media experiments have a looooovely new office on the first floor.
You can actually see into our office from the platform. Look to your right and up (if you are facing the bus bays) and you will see a glass wall which forms the back of two offices. One is the Business Manager’s office, which already has a privacy shield up, but the other (to the left) is our office. It is almost tidy and organised already, but there are inevitably still a few thinsg we have left to find!
Our office actually has two glass walls – the other looks out over the bus reversing area and the Great Western Railway, so we will be able to see the steam train coming through! We also have oodles of storage space – great for the colleague who collects bus timetables!
As you can all probably imagine, there is a limit to the amount of proper work we are all managing to get done today, since we are all trying to find things and get ourselves orientated. We therefore apologise if your comments are somewhere in our system, as it will take a little longer than usual to investigate and issues with everything that is currently going on. Your comments will still be taken really seriously though – as always!
Unfortunately, the wonders of modern technology are not allowing us to put pictures up for you all yet – but these will follow as soon as possible (for those of a nosey disposition!)
In the meantime, we look forward to welcoming you to the new Bus Station!
Well, I am typing as the only fully packed person in the building. Everyone else is scurrying around with huge purple packing boxes and sacks of paper for shredding.
There is a strange sense of deja vu about it all. Almost 2 years ago exactly I was in the same position. As an entirely computer-based person, I have very little in the way of worldly posessions at work.
Back then, I spent the last day archiving the old Bus Station, which was our home for the previous 50 years. I also interviewed members of staff about their memories of the site and later produced the digital documentary Moving On From Manvers Street to record its history.
So, as we construct mountainous marvels of physics with our packing boxes and ask each other: “Are we going to need these?” we leave you with those reminscings of our former home…
Well, it seems like only yesterday we were packing to move into our temporary bus station here at Avon Street Car Park. Now, we finding ourselves surrounded by boxes once again and preparing to move to our shiny new site
So what’s happening to the buses?
It will be business as usual from the current bus station up to and including Saturday 6th June. However, from first thing in the morning on Sunday 7th June we will be operating all of our services from the new Bus Station in Dorchester Street.
In practice, this will mean from Sunday 7th June stops for all bus services (including First and National Express) which currently use the temporary bus station will be moving to the new Bus Station or immediately outside. This is except for Service 13 to Bathford, which will depart from Ambury stop Wq.
A number of our city bus services which currently depart from the roads around the temporary bus station will also be changing, whilst some will remain at their current stops for the time being. Check below to see if your service is moving…
Service 2 to Ensleigh
- Ambury Wq [NO CHANGE]
Service 2 to Combe Down
- Dorchester Street Bl [NO CHANGE]
Service 4 to Bathampton
- Ambury Wq [NO CHANGE]
Service 5
- will operate from the new bus station (Bay 16) and will no longer serve Green Park Road
Services 6 and 7
- will move from Corn Street to Ambury Wn
Service 10
- will operate from the new bus station (Bay 13) and not via Ambury (via Avon Street instead)
Service 12 to Whiteway
- Ambury Wp [NO CHANGE]
Service 13 to Bathford
- Ambury Wq
Service 13 to Foxhill
- will continue to operate from Dorchester Street Bj
Service 14 to Odd Down
- will operate from the new bus station (Bay 14)
Service 14 to Weston
- will serve stop Bk in Dorchester Street. It will not stop in the Ambury
Service 17 to Upper Weston
- Ambury Wp [NO CHANGE]
Service 17 to Kingsway
- will remain at St James Parade [NO CHANGE]
Service 18/418
- will drop passengers (set down only) at Dorchester St Bh on its route to Corn Street [NO CHANGE] If you have any questions, please let us know!
We will be taking photos of the temporary site for our archive over the next couple of days and will be publishing these up online for you all. We will also be Twittering about all the excitement. Right now they are tarmacing the entrance to the new Bus Station, so we are all go! Woohoo!
One of the side effects of all the recent traffic problems for us in Customer Services – aside from hot, stressed people shouting at us when their buses are late – is the problem of finding buses when we are investigating complaints.
We always investigate any reports of problems – be it a problem with a driver’s attitude, his driving, a ticketing error or a problem with a vehicle. Normally, we can do this based on the time/date/location/direction of travel, as we can narrow down the number of buses that should have been in the vicinity and trace their operation through our data. It is a long, fiddly process, but it is worth it as we can usually track down the problem and solve it effectively.
However, at the moment we are really struggling. The reason? Well, with all the traffic congestion, the buses are obviously not in their timetabled positions. In order to minimise the effect of the delays, our Inspectors are also moving vehicles and drivers around as they become available to make sure services at least leave the Bus Station on time, where possible. This also means that buses and drivers are not where we expect them to be – making it difficult to know where to start when investigating. It is all getting terribly messy in our office as a result!
Our advice is that if you have a problem with a service that you want us to investigate and put right, we really need you to make a note of some vital information. We still need the time, date etc, but if you have a ticket issued by the driver of the service involved, PLEASE keep hold of it. The ticket has the driver number on it, which can help us identify the driver really quickly. If not, the vehicle registration number – or even better, the fleet number – will also help enormously (particularly if the problem is with the vehicle itself, not the driver).
The fleet number is the 5-digit number displayed on the front and rear of the bus. Bus spotters love these! If you want trivia – the first two digits tell us what type of vehicle it is (whether it is a double decker, a dart, a B7, an Optare, or whatever…). The following three numbers identify the specific vehicle/item of rolling stock. The same system is used for all First’s vehicles – including the train carriages etc. If you didn’t want trivia…. apologies!
So, whilst we REALLY hope that you don’t have any problems with our services, if you do want us to investigate, please try to make a note of the vehicle registration or fleet number, and keep any ticket issued by the driver of the service. We are really struggling under the current conditions to investigate without these details, so they will help us to resolve any issues for you quicker.
Many thanks for your continued support! If you have any questions, please leave us a comment here on the blog, email us at bath.csc@firstgroup.com or bath.students@firstgroup.com or contact @bathcsc on Twitter.
Or pop in and see us 
We are still at the temporary Bus Station at Avon Street Car Park until Saturday 6th June!
We are REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY sorry! The city has been gridlocked for several hours now and our bus services are all operating up to 1 hour late!
The traffic in the city centre is appaulling following the closure of Dorchester Street, which is causing diversions to most of our services.
We have been in contact with B&NES and they are sending some folks down to help – so fingers crossed.
We really appreciate everyone’s patience! This is extremely frustrating for everyone and we are doing everything we can, but at the moment nothing is moving.
If you need any advise please do contact us – but if you come in the office, please bring tissues in case we just cry!
