First Southampton > Reviews > Billy escapes leaving Jamie the bill

Author's product rating:   

Quality of Rooms	Good
Customer service	good
Frequency of bus / buses	Very frequent
Value for money	Average
Reliability	Good

Advantages:	Your eyes are filled by buses
Disadvantages:	They take your hard earned brass

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Wait, here comes Billy Connelly, here he is in his checked kilt being cheeky to the girls by lifting up his skirt half way, "Hey there Jamie man, talk to the dirver, I said you'll pay the bill! " I shout "Eh" but too late, he's escaped with the driver looking evil at me!

Oh well, forget about the hairy bearded man (not meant). Let me tell you about the bus that this famous man has just spent a long time on......

FirstBus are the Scottish based company who started out by sending their buses packed with drivers into large cities like Birmingham, Manchester, London and Southampton of course.

Now you’ll see their buses everywhere, Leicester, Portsmouth, Hull and Derby.

However Southampton is a large city, every year the city seems to have more to offer and generates more money and more visitors. We used to have CityBus and Blue Solent on the roads as well as little time bus business Home James who are best known for their nationwide coach services.

With Southampton developing more and more as the year passes, more demand for more bus routes and bigger buses has also increased.

Last year the West Quay opened, a extremely large 3- floor modern shopping centre. When this opened Southampton’s economy boosted rapidly, I could see the Council Chairman eating their donuts and laughing loud.

If you remember well, you’ll know that this years Boat Show brought so many visitors to Southampton, more than expected and more than ever before. This year it was acknowledged that this years International Boat Show was the biggest in Europe.

Luckily FirstBus came into Southampton with a flock of traffic full of buses on the M271, the main entrance to Southampton. They came in and gave all us people something to be excited about, we were all shouting in our heads, “ get rid of those dirty old buses and let us travel in style!”.

However, the first actual buses that came from FirstBus were those that replaced the old CityBus buses, like the economical ones like Gas and Electric powered with massive great roofs that must have had the power to power over 50 engines which they never really use.

The next buses came out almost instantly, long ones and double-deckers made by Volvo and by the way, it’s the excellent Swedish Volvo that build these buses.

Then the most famous of them all came out, bendy buses. They are excellent and seemed dead weird at first. But with huge passenger capacities and seats, rush hour and peak times are not as much trouble because people have room to actually rest their bums, well, most the time.

Now the actual buses are most probably the cleanest of all the bus companies, with strong glass windows, bearable seats with some style and comfort and finally, they seem the safest as I’ve never really saw them brake down, you might see once parked up with a recovery truck about once or twice in a month but when you consider the amount of buses on the road in this large city you’ll realise that it’s not that bad.

Each and every bus has great disabled facilities as well with room to sit in wheelchairs on the buses as well as a moveable floor which lowers from the door for wheelchair users to get on the bus. Woah, dogs, cats, hampsters and allagators go free as well! No fair needed for them!

Southampton covers a massive patch of homes and ground from Redbridge - Bursledon. Totton also has the service of FirstBus into and out of Southampton however Totton isn’t now claimed as part of the city.

So obviously, there is also a huge demand for bus routes, the main 2 with over 20 buses dedicated to their routes alone it’s the 8/8A and the 17/17A/17E.

The 8/8A route runs between Thornhill and Weston/ Bitterne, where as the 17 route runs between Millbrook/ Lordshill to Weston. There is now over 5o different routes in the city and that's quite good, they obviously manage it well.

There’s not many delays with this service no matter which stop your waiting at. However, you do see the usual 2 or 3 buses in a row which gets annoying but your never really waiting long because they are frequent, every 10 -15mins at the most.

Though after 7pm they change to every half hour per route and this is where the delays seem to occur leaving you standing there alone in the cold.

One bad thing about this service are the high prices, still in this moment in time and since they’ve been a part of Southampton, they’ve managed to remain the most expensive bus service within the city.

I use this bus service a lot to get from home to Southampton Central the city train station. I don’t take my car because of those dam parking charges so prefer to use FirstBus.

It will cost me £1.10 for s single from my home in Millbrook to Southampton Central, which is the same price to the city centre. A day return would cost me £1.80. Prices are always changing though, never getting lower, just getting higher. Child prices seem fair but the thing that annoys me is that they still charge a fair amount for short journeys.

I could walk to the local Tesco’s which is just a 15min walk from home, if I get the bus it’ll take about 5mins and cost me 70p single and £1.40 day return.

Prices only seem fair when you buy them in deals like week passes and day passes.

Day Pass -

• Child £ 1.20
• Adult £ 2.00

Week Pass -

• Child £ 6.00
• Adult £ 8.00

Term tickets done by the month are decisive on the travel you want, they’ve split Southampton into zones and it’s these zones you travel in which decide the cost of your term ticket.

However I do know by finding out that an Adult Unlimited Travel Pass for a month costs £ 28.00. But there is by the way a FREE service between Southampton Central and The Quay stopping in between for stops like Red Funnel and West Quay.

I would say that buying the special tickets save lots of money and pennies, it really will if you travel often. But don’t get too carried away, especially when you find that you can travel unlimited on these tickets with the time period allowed.

So next time you’re in my home town of Southampton, come to me and I’ll take you for a ride in my stepped up Peugeot 306 instead of torturing you to paying these prices.

Thanks for reading!
All the best!
!Jamie!