A popular city centre bus route could be merged with another in a bid to make it more reliable.
The number 18, which runs between Brighton Station and Queens Park, is well used but because of its unusual route through some of the city’s traffic hotspots, it is more prone to being late.
After complaints from users, passenger group Buswatch put some suggestions to Brighton and Hove Buses, which runs the service.
Now, the bus company is seeking feedback on its plans for the route – but is not revealing more details until a meeting of the St Luke’s Residents Association on Monday evening.
Nick Hill, Brighton and Hove Buses’ commercial director, said: “We are not currently planning to reduce the level of service to Queen’s Park. We are investigating options to combine the route 18 with another route to improve reliability and ensure financial sustainability.
“These changes are not yet confirmed, and will be discussed on Monday as part of the St Luke’s Residents Association meeting.”
A spokesman for Brighton Buswatch said: “The issue of reliability of route 18 was brought to us at a Buswatch meeting in the middle of last year.
“As a result, we have taken it very seriously, discussed and put a number of ideas to the bus operators and council for their consideration. All with a view to support the majority of bus users.
“It is well known the issues on route 18, caused by congestion and the inability to efficiently wait time along the route and recover. The routing is one of the more unusual ones and quite unique to the city centre.
“It is operationally Brighton’s very own Circle Line, which itself was extended to deal with the same problem.
“The ideas put forward cannot be shared publicly at the moment as other routes and areas may be involved. There would also be funding or otherwise to consider.”
The number 18 route was introduced in 2014, replacing the 81 which ran between Hanover and Hove. Hundreds of people protested the change.
Monday’s meeting will be held at 7pm at St Luke’s Church Hall.
It isn’t about the route, it’s about the prices.
I honestly do not understand how getting a bus, if there are two of you, can often be more expensive than getting an Uber.
How did we allow this to happen?
£3 is a very reasonable price
it is not if I can pay £4.80 for a cab for two or more people. How can you make a town reliant on buses and then charge a fortune???
Hope it still.going to come from.Brighton Station to Compton Ave towards Queens Park as I have to get it back after spending a weekend with my partner and also going down Montpellier Road
Is this open to the public?
I live in the area and have given up trying to catch the 18s into town. The nearest stop to me is Down Terrace – you look at the B&H bus app and it’ll tell you there’s a bus due in a few minutes, but then if you look at the bus tracker you’ll often discover that it’s already been and gone and is waiting down on Queens Park Terrace at the end of the route, with the next still showing as being somewhere in town. It’s been an unreliable route since the day it was introduced! Why has it taken them so long to do want to do something about it after years of ignoring residents? I can only guess it’s finally started to make a big enough dent in their profits to rattle them… I usually just walk into town now.
Why is no bus from mill oak to preston park without chance bus or down to asda then