I am after some views and comments on the current bus service operating to Sheffield Airport / Sheffield Business Park.

The A1 service appears to have deteriorated over recent months and has suffered:


Repeat breakdowns
constant lateness
Drivers missing out stops
Buses not turning up at all
Overcrowding and turning away passengers at peak times


We are in the middle of raising these issues to the Business park management, the Sheffield Transport Exec and the South Yorkshire Transport Exec.

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can push for a better service?

If only one of the big players would bid for the route.

There was recently a meeting at the Business Park Management Suite I believe to take note of peoples travel concerns. Maybe some good will come of that.

How many people take the A1 route? If it's quite a few then a letter to First/Stagecoach begging them to bid for it would be quite a nice start.

I am after some views and comments on the current bus service operating to Sheffield Airport / Sheffield Business Park.

The A1 service appears to have deteriorated over recent months and has suffered:


Repeat breakdowns
constant lateness
Drivers missing out stops
Buses not turning up at all
Overcrowding and turning away passengers at peak times


We are in the middle of raising these issues to the Business park management, the Sheffield Transport Exec and the South Yorkshire Transport Exec.

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can push for a better service?

If only one of the big players would bid for the route.
my daughter gets this bus to rotherham everyday shes 16 ...phoned me up loads of times crying (typical teanager) saying its not come also she says that on a few occasions the driver has gone streyt down the parkway and gone into town avoiding the bus stops that cover the parkway markets also shes had one driver thet keeps letching over her he scares her and swaers all the time she hates getting that bus ....oooooo...... and also to add to it one driver refused her to get on with a travel pass card ,said she had to pay full and shed not got the money i phoned and complained and they said they would investigate ,yet the next time she got the same driver the same happened so i had to phone them yet AGAIN THERE rubbish xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

After Serveral emails, phone calls to Veolia (Dunn-line) who run the service, and SY Travel. I had a letter off SY travel saying its a subisdised service and theres not alot they can do, and still no reply off Veolia.

The service still is is in a really bad state, i work on the business park. And have also been in touch with the Park manager who tells me there will be a meeting in the near future. Its got to the point now that when waiting for a bus to go home at 5:30 at the airport instead of waiting for the sheffield bus, we just jump on the first one that comes (Rotherham), then get off at medowhall and get the tram back.

If the A1 to Sheffield is 10 mins late and still hasn't turned up, you can pretty much expect it not to turn up at all.

Theres talk of a petition starting awell within the office i work in.
Constantly late and when it turns up and i risk my life getting on it each time, Drivers are bonkers! :)

You would have also though that the amount of people who go to the business park each day they would have set up a special discounted weekly ticket, instead of it being £3.60 return each day.

But then i think to myself, they have no reason to change, what competition for public transport is there around the airport, they can do what they want because at the end of the day a vast majority of people don't have any other way of getting to work and the service has no other competition.

I'm getting a bike after xmas, so i've only got to grin and bear it for another couple of months. There a very slim chance of it changing until STAGECOACH or FIRST put a route out there.

Heres another thread on it:
http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=265330

The other week we had to walk home cos there wasn't a bus from 5:00 until i left the airport to walk home at 18:45.
The fun and games we have with these buses!

If you are travelling every day keep a diary of what time the bus was scheduled to depart and what time it actually departed (if at all) for both your outward and return journey. Once you have a couple of months data and it looks suitably bad, send it to the office of the traffic commissioner at VOSA and copy in SYPTE (who fund service A1).

The traffic commissioner has the power to take action against bus companies that do not operate services they have registered and those with poor maintanance standards etc.

See www.vosa.gov.uk for more information.

Agreed this bus is a terrible, i catch this bus every morning well i try to sometimes it doesnt come sometimes two come at once,:loopy: and sometimes the driver just misses out my stop, this kind of thing really shouldnt be aloud to happen.

First I think did bid for it but lost out on price. Veolia won with a lower price. Firt's may have been higher to cover any additional spare bus costs or to ensure the route could be operated properly unlike Veolia by the sounds of it.

When First did run it it performed well and met the PTE's expectations. I think it was also starting to carry more passengers due to First's large network coverage as passengers where using their First day tickets/weekly savers on it.

Ignore what the PTE have said about it being subsidised. Yes it is subsidised and their contracts team will look after it. When contacting the PTE say you wish to speak to a Contracts Team member of staff or address your letter to them. I got the same response from them over the 265 Barnsley bus (Stagecoach Yorkshire) so I addressed it to the Contracts staff, kept on at them and the service did improve.
The PTE are the contracts holder so should hold Veolia to the contract. If Veolia cannot perform correctly then the PTE can take the contract off them, retender it or award it to a competent operator.

Don't give up. Keep hounding them.

After searching the net it looks like i have found another person who as had a bad experiance and the regional manager of Veolia as also replied: http://www.travelsy.proboards75.com/index.cgi?board=buses&action=display&thread=1187970095&page=2

Looks quite good, and hopefully their will be some improvement soon :)

Also First i believe built up the route quite sucessfully from their Rotherham depot but as they did not bid again for the route or was turned away due to a company like Tm Travel or Veolia offering to run the route for Peanuts!

Also unless something is changed Veolia have the contract for another 2 years yet! and at the moment i can not see any commercial routes serving the business park or the AMP site in Rotherham due to the fact that it would be commercially suicide!

Also Manvers is only just starting to get on it's feet with commercial routes but stillas no service after 6pm from Stagecoach unless you count the 200 route which is like the A1.

As a driver who has worked on the A1 route well yes their are problems. TRAFFIC CONGESTION! Its all too easy to sit their and slag off the drivers. Try opening your eyes and asking yourself why the bus moves a few metre's every few minutes and why its late getting to the business park. Road works on Europa, building work on Broad st, constant traffic around Meadowhall, traffic stood one end to other on viaduct and peak times to name a few and then yes. What about these business park workers who turn up in a morning with ten and twenty pound notes (never got any change or are you just trying to scam a free ride), then the ones with out of date savercards that they try to disguise with a finger or too. And then they wonder why its late!!! Then there are the gobby ones who are just looking to row. The only life they have got is complaining on here. GET A LIFE! Maybe if they where more polite towards the drivers then we would care more about them! As for mainline they dont want the service, after all they have had the experience of you all before and dont want to go back there!:gag:

When ever anything goes wrong fill a PTE form in send to pte keep replies if situation doesnt improve write back to pte ask them to take action also send evidnace to the ministry and ask them to take action against the operator ,

Remember if they dont operate a service then they are committing an offence and can either be made to pay back something called fuel duty rebate and or loose there o licence

If you are travelling every day keep a diary of what time the bus was scheduled to depart and what time it actually departed (if at all) for both your outward and return journey. Once you have a couple of months data and it looks suitably bad, send it to the office of the traffic commissioner at VOSA and copy in SYPTE (who fund service A1).

The traffic commissioner has the power to take action against bus companies that do not operate services they have registered and those with poor maintanance standards etc.

See www.vosa.gov.uk for more information.

Sound advice.

As a driver who has worked on the A1 route well yes their are problems. TRAFFIC CONGESTION! Its all too easy to sit their and slag off the drivers. Try opening your eyes and asking yourself why the bus moves a few metre's every few minutes and why its late getting to the business park. Road works on Europa, building work on Broad st, constant traffic around Meadowhall, traffic stood one end to other on viaduct and peak times to name a few and then yes. What about these business park workers who turn up in a morning with ten and twenty pound notes (never got any change or are you just trying to scam a free ride), then the ones with out of date savercards that they try to disguise with a finger or too. And then they wonder why its late!!! Then there are the gobby ones who are just looking to row. The only life they have got is complaining on here. GET A LIFE! Maybe if they where more polite towards the drivers then we would care more about them! As for mainline they dont want the service, after all they have had the experience of you all before and dont want to go back there!:gag:

Its exactly this kind of attitude that makes this bus such a nightmare, not everybody is so dishonest that they would deliberately pretend not to have change in order to get a free ride. And if this is typical of your attitude i think you are in the wrong job.

Most of the people who catch this bus just want to get to work on time each day, they turn up on time only to get turned away because the bus is too full because the buses they put on are half the size they need to be to accommodate all the people who want to catch it (although i appreciate the buses run empty a lot of the day). They have to put up with downright dangerous driving especially on the journeys home, ( i've lost count of the number of times a bus i'm on has nearly crashed into the roundabout outside morrisons or cut someone up on the parkway). Although the roadworks cannot be helped several times the buses haven't turned up and when you ask why you just get fobbed off with frankly laughable excuses you just woldn't get with a reliable company.

I have had to put up with this bus service for the last year and can truthfully say it gets worse by the week. And with drivers with attitudes like this i can't see it getting any better in the near future.

As a driver who has worked on the A1 route well yes their are problems. TRAFFIC CONGESTION! Its all too easy to sit their and slag off the drivers. Try opening your eyes and asking yourself why the bus moves a few metre's every few minutes and why its late getting to the business park. Road works on Europa, building work on Broad st, constant traffic around Meadowhall, traffic stood one end to other on viaduct and peak times to name a few and then yes. What about these business park workers who turn up in a morning with ten and twenty pound notes (never got any change or are you just trying to scam a free ride), then the ones with out of date savercards that they try to disguise with a finger or too. And then they wonder why its late!!! Then there are the gobby ones who are just looking to row. The only life they have got is complaining on here. GET A LIFE! Maybe if they where more polite towards the drivers then we would care more about them! As for mainline they dont want the service, after all they have had the experience of you all before and dont want to go back there!:gag:

We can all understand the traffic problems, cos to be quite honest, they are awful at the moment. But when it gets to the point where we are all waiting at the bus stop at the airport, and one person down at the main road to see wether the bus driver will decide to stop or just simply go straight at the roundabout then theres a problem.

Surely if there is more traffic that gives the driver more time to re-mind themsleves that they have to stop at the next bus stop (isn't that their job?)

We pay for service that we don't get
Would you be happy if you paid gor a 3 course meal and only got two?

As it's been said, we just want to get to work on time, and get home at the end of the day. Without waiting out side for hours......

Would you be happy if you paid for a 3 course meal and only got two?



It depends how nice the food is.

I take pride in my driving and have never had problems at roundabouts, i am offended by passengers who label all drivers the same. Yes i agree 100% a couple of drivers on the A1's on the afternoon shift should not be behind a wheel but dont put me in the same class! Do u drive or just sit on a bus and criticize the driver who due to traffic, rude passengers, weather conditions and many more factors is stressed to death for the crap wage he draws at the end of the week. If everyone had a go at you everyday eventually you would feel how i do. I DONT MISS OUT STOPS, HIT ROUNDABOUTS, SWEAR AT PASSENGER ETC. so take your frustrations out on those that do. !! (or get a car and drive yourself)

If adequate parking was provided at the airport i'm sure many more of us would drive instead of risking this bus service, although i have to say the drivers that drive on this service in the mornings are much better drivers than the ones in the afternoon.

I don't complain to the drivers either, i pay my fare and sit down, even when buses are late or missing, and i know that i am going to get hassle from work when i turn up late AGAIN and blame the buses AGAIN (my bosses don't have to endure the buses and i'm sure don't believe us half the time that we didn't just miss the bus).

As for anything else this is a public forum and i'm entitled to my opinion, nothing i have said is untrue or exaggerated in any way. I guess for the time being i'm just going to have to grit my teeth and carry on giving you my money and your going to have to carry on taking other people abuse.