New Peterborough bus route linking city hospital and Serpentine Green to open shortly

The trial service, provisionally called Route 29, is being funded by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority as part of the Department for Transport’s Better Deal for Buses scheme.

The mayoral authority, which is headed by Mayor James Palmer, has previously said: “Talks with Peterborough City Council’s Transport Committee have established the wish for more orbital buses to reduce travel into and back out of Peterborough city centre.

“To explore and quantify the need, it is proposed to commission an orbital bus route linking parts of Orton and Hampton north direct to the city hospital using the parkway network to cut travel times; and south to the Serpentine Green shopping centre and superstore.

“It is thus routed to useful passenger destinations at both ends.

“If required, the bus can run via the unused Orton Southgate bus gate and extend to new developments in the Hampton area.”

The combined authority has now revealed that it expects the new orbital service to open in late February after carrying out a tendering process.

Further details have yet to be revealed, but trials are expected to begin with an hourly route running between the morning and afternoon school times on five or six days a week.

The estimated cost of supporting the new service after tendering has been estimated at £30-40,000 a year for five or six journeys a day on five or six days a week.

The service is expected to eventually carry 6,400 passengers a year, with an estimated subsidised cost of £5.15 per passenger.

The combined authority has previously stated that a bus service for the Manor Drive estate (at Paston Reserve) was rejected following discussions with the city council “due to the lack of a bus turning circle”.

It has also rejected an off-peak Peterborough–Orton service as it is “unlikely to carry many passengers”.

It added: “Discussions with residents suggest that using the Orton Southgate bus gate would be unpopular – it was built 15 years ago and has never opened.”

Currently, the vast majority of bus services in Peterborough are run by Stagecoach, although the combined authority has bus franchising powers allocated to it by the Government.

The public body began working on its Bus Reform project in 2019 to look at “innovative ways in which bus services can be drawn together into a better-functioning integrated transport network”.

The project includes proposing an alternative way of commissioning subsidised bus services, but the combined authority noted: “The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted the financial performance of the bus industry and passenger behaviour.

“Work to model the impact of moving to a partnership or franchise model has necessarily been delayed as we seek to understand those impacts and the potential path to recovery.”

Moreover, the Government is aiming to publish a National Bus Strategy soon which is also delaying the project.

In the meantime, the combined authority is carrying out trials which include the new service in Peterborough and a new service in Fenland and Huntingdonshire which will give direct links from March through Wimblington, Doddington, Chatteris, Warboys onto St Ives.

The combined authority added: “This will support an area that is significantly underserved by public transport and faces linked issues of deprivation.”