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Travel Football Special Bus (OX2/OX3/OX7)

To be fair to the club, and particularly Mick Brown who leads on this, we've gone from nothing to a healthy number of buses coming from around the county to every game in a couple of years. At the same time, we've gone from average home gates of 8500 two seasons ago to 11500 this season.

The football special buses need to be seen as work in progress, and it will take time to establish enough vehicles and drivers to met demand. This will be essential for when we move to the new stadium, and seeing 17 buses of Stoke fans arrive in convoy 2hrs before kick off on Saturday shows what can be done. But it's taken them years to build towards this.

I would encourage everyone who uses these buses to share your experiences with OUSP via our email ouspinfo@gmail.com so that we can take these to the club and to help support everyone in getting to and from games as quickly and safely as possible.
 
I've emailed OUSP to ask what, if anything, is happening about Football Specials from/to Banbury. The north of the county has been forgotten!
 
brinyhoof said:
I've emailed OUSP to ask what, if anything, is happening about Football Specials from/to Banbury. The north of the county has been forgotten!
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Not forgotten but it takes time to build a wider service bit by bit. It would be great if you could share amongst any local supporter groups to show that the demand is there for this.
 
I have sent an email, but not sure how this can be brushed off Scotchegg. These buses are nothing new, and the OX7 has been running for a number of years now. There have been capacity issues for years on this line. This thread itself is over three years old and contains complaints from others on some of these issues.

Putting one extra bus on and finding one extra driver shouldn't be that difficult when the club has had literally years to work towards this. I appreciate that other lines have been set up recently, which is great for those parts of Oxfordshire, but issues with the OX7 line are long standing.
 
OnlyOneUnited said:
I have sent an email, but not sure how this can be brushed off Scotchegg. These buses are nothing new, and the OX7 has been running for a number of years now. There have been capacity issues for years on this line. This thread itself is over three years old and contains complaints from others on some of these issues.

Putting one extra bus on and finding one extra driver shouldn't be that difficult when the club has had literally years to work towards this. I appreciate that other lines have been set up recently, which is great for those parts of Oxfordshire, but issues with the OX7 line are long standing.
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Not brushed off, but making people aware of the bigger picture. You say that "putting one extra bus on and finding one extra driver shouldn't be that difficult" but the Mick Brown has been working hard to get several extra buses and drivers to open up other routes, and this has not been easy at all.

The club are committed to building sustainable transport routes and its Important that people recognise that we're dealing with significantly increase demand with a system that is still very limited across the county.

That's why I'd encourage everyone to share their experiences through emails to OUSP so that we can help prioritise which routes need the additional support or where new demand is.
 
Scotchegg said:
To be fair to the club, and particularly Mick Brown who leads on this, we've gone from nothing to a healthy number of buses coming from around the county to every game in a couple of years. At the same time, we've gone from average home gates of 8500 two seasons ago to 11500 this season.

The football special buses need to be seen as work in progress, and it will take time to establish enough vehicles and drivers to met demand. This will be essential for when we move to the new stadium, and seeing 17 buses of Stoke fans arrive in convoy 2hrs before kick off on Saturday shows what can be done. But it's taken them years to build towards this.

I would encourage everyone who uses these buses to share your experiences with OUSP via our email ouspinfo@gmail.com so that we can take these to the club and to help support everyone in getting to and from games as quickly and safely as possible.
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Understand the complexities but getting to the stadium routinely before the game actually kicks off should be a pretty basic requirement

No point implementing something that you really want people to use only for people to realise it's crap and thus not using it

Capacity issues are certainly harder to solve, I will give you that
 
Carpy said:
Understand the complexities but getting to the stadium routinely before the game actually kicks off should be a pretty basic requirement

No point implementing something that you really want people to use only for people to realise it's crap and thus not using it

Capacity issues are certainly harder to solve, I will give you that
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I agree, and most of the issues raised on Saturday were from those who arrived after kick off. There were traffic issues across Oxford on Saturday morning that may have contributed to this, but it is something we definitely need to stay on top of.
 
I think the early kick offs mean that you can get caught up in the build up of traffic going into town if you are coming in by road anywhere near access points for the city centre, took me nearly as long to get from my parents house in Abingdon to Greater Leys (forty minutes) as it did to get to Abingdon from my own house despite it being a 45 mile shorter journey, most of that was queuing from the a34 up to past the Abingdon Road, not normally that bad on a 3pm kick off as the queues into town have calmed down. So the club might want to consider going a lot earlier than ten minutes for those 12.30pm kick offs.
 
OnlyOneUnited said:
I have sent an email, but not sure how this can be brushed off Scotchegg. These buses are nothing new, and the OX7 has been running for a number of years now. There have been capacity issues for years on this line. This thread itself is over three years old and contains complaints from others on some of these issues.

Putting one extra bus on and finding one extra driver shouldn't be that difficult when the club has had literally years to work towards this. I appreciate that other lines have been set up recently, which is great for those parts of Oxfordshire, but issues with the OX7 line are long standing.
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The bus companies can't find enough drivers to service their regular routes, never mind these additional ones. It's extremely difficult to find an extra driver, especially when they don't even have enough capacity to fill the normal Saturday shifts (had to type that very carefully so as not to make a typo)
 
There needs to be an option of pre booking your space on the football special busses and the bus to arrive at the ground 30 minutes or more before kick off. If they implemented this I would get the football special from Abingdon but until then I don't fancy taking the chance that the bus will have space or be running on time.

They should also add another route of Wantage, Grove, East Hanney, Frilford , Marcham, Abingdon, Radley, Kennington and on to the stadium. There would be enough demand on that route to justify it.
 
Not looking to get into a spat on an online forum, but I struggle to believe that the club has been looking for the last few years for an extra driver and extra bus for the OX7 route, and failing. Much more likely is that they haven't been looking for that in the belief that one bus was plenty (even though that's not been the case for a few years now) and this season the situation has become even worse.

It would be good to understand whether the club is actively trying to find another bus for the OX7 route or not (as I said, I have emailed OUSP, so hopefully will get an update). If it's the case that this is proving impossible despite best intentions from the club, then I would stand corrected (pun intended).
 
OnlyOneUnited said:
I struggle to believe that the club has been looking for the last few years for an extra driver and extra bus
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I'm pretty sure the club doesn't recruit or employs bus drivers. Unless Des is thinking about parking the bus in some of the trickier away games this season. 🤔
 
QR said:
I'm pretty sure the club doesn't recruit or employs bus drivers. Unless Des is thinking about parking the bus in some of the trickier away games this season. 🤔
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I will re-phrase: "I struggle to believe that the club has been asking the bus company to look for the last few years for an extra driver and extra bus....."

As it is, I've seen the update on the email from OUSP where it specifically mentions the OX7 route. It says that Mick Brown has been asked to look into it, which is good obviously, but as per my previous posts, if the club hasn't been "looking into it" for the last few years, then why not? The implication in the message is that the bus supervisors may not have been reporting back issues so maybe the club weren't aware, but I would be very surprised if that were the case as the main question to them every week is usually "when are we getting another bus?".

Regardless, looking forward to hearing back from Mick Brown/OUSP on this soon.
 
Anyone using the one from Bicester, wondering how it coped yesterday, I would use it but usually like to get to the ground at least an hour before the game.

I may try it for the next home game
 
Can those who use these buses continue to share their experiences with OUSP via ouspinfo@gmail.com

Traffic from Bicester was awful on Saturday, and the A34 was backed on to the M40 junction by 12pm. So I'm sure anyone coming that way was affected, as would anyone who would have usually used the A34 past Pear Tree.
 
Northstandboy said:
I heard the bus from Kidlington didn’t turn up or was severely delayed over an hour?
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I would of thought the busses from Didcot/Abingdon would of been severely delayed too. Not only the A34 closure but 2 sets of 4 way temporary traffic lights in 2 locations within Abingdon were causing absolute chaos. I ended up going to Drayton, Sutton Courtenay and the back way in through Nuneham Courtenay to avoid being late.

These busses need to run a lot earlier to the new stadium that's for sure.
 
The OX7 from Kidlington didn't show unfortunately (or rather it did apparently, but about an hour later than expected!). I made a mad dash to the stadium on local buses and made it just in time for kick off, and then caught the OX7 on the way back.

Someone else who got on our bus to the City Centre said that they'd called the club to ask where it was and the club had told them it had just left Cutteslowe (this was at about 1:45ish). As we had also just left Cutteslowe we knew this wasn't right. Apparently it didn't leave Kidlington until 2:15ish, but then somehow also made it just in time for kick off (presumably because it wasn't picking many people up, as everyone like us had made their own way there).

According to this phone call from the club, the reason for the delay is that the bus itself had to come from Didcot to start its journey from Kidlington, so also got snared up in the A34 traffic. Why the bus didn't leave much earlier to ensure it was at Kidlington for the start of the journey seems strange when the club itself was issuing guidance to car drivers to do the exact same thing and leave early!

I know this thread seems like a long list of posts from me kicking the club, but it really does feel very tinpot at times!

I emailed OUSP a week or so ago about the request for a second bus, and they have promised to speak to Mick Brown about it. I chased yesterday for a response, but I know OUSP are volunteers and doing their best, so won't be complaining about that. In my chaser I mentioned the issue on Saturday, but didn't want to make too big a deal out of it as I still consider the second bus to be the priority, and by and large the OX7 has been very reliable timings-wise for a while now.
 
bicesterox said:
Anyone using the one from Bicester, wondering how it coped yesterday, I would use it but usually like to get to the ground at least an hour before the game.

I may try it for the next home game
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Coped OK. Set off from Bicester a little late, and I got it from Glory Farm for the first time so was a bit panicked when it was ten minutes late, but it got to the ground at about 2.40pm. The journey back was bit painful (and involved my 9-year-old having his first football bus wee in a bottle!), and we ended up trudging through the traffic all the way to the Barton roundabout, and the heading over to Wheatley to get on the M40 rather than risk the traffic towards Summer Town/Wolvercote.

I've said before, and have fed back to OUSP, that another 15 minutes earlier would be useful. We cut it pretty fine for the Stoke game, and it's a slightly longer walk now they've started closing the gate between the West and East ends of the north stand pre-match now. Would just be nice to have an extra ten minutes to grab a bit of food or drink, or get to the club shop before kick off.
 
OnlyOneUnited said:
I know this thread seems like a long list of posts from me kicking the club, but it really does feel very tinpot at times!
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It is tinpot, and it does our claims about making the triangle a predominantly public transport stadium absolutely no favours whatsoever.

Glad you still managed to get there on time.
 
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