Just to pick up on one part of this latest comment:  Our lovely (VERY) expensive ticket machines provide us in the 'back office' and at home and on our mobile phones when on 'holiday' if we want, with fantastic data.  They relay information back to us in realtime (to the second) so we know where the bus is, who is driving it, the speed it is travelling at, the direction of travel, we can see every ticket issued, where it was issued, child, adult, concession etc, the value of the ticket and we can also message the drivers and they can respond via the ticket machine (akin to text message), when stationary, of course.  I have just ran a sales report to find out what the takings were on the 06/01/2014 and to my surprise the data is still there.

We are just in the process of rolling out 'schedule adherence' whereby the ticket machine will tell the driver if he/she is not running to time and if not by how much so they can try and adjust accordingly.  We now also have constant summaries at the office, so we can see if there is a bus or buses struggling to keep to schedule at a glance.

Further to this, we have just ordered a brand new set of machines at an eye watering sum which will allow contactless payments.  No, according to the manufacturer, the old ones could not be upgraded with card readers?  This will be with us 'within days'.

The next thing on the cards is an app which is in development to allow the passenger access to that tracking data on their phone so it will be possible for you to track the bus in realtime. 

Sorry more words than i intended, but all good news hopefully!

Thank you for your support.

Just a couple of corrections !  Faresaver have operated evening and Sunday services in the past, on the 231, 234, 265 and 271/272 services.....  oh and the 299 and 635 as well!  These were all under contract to the local authority at the time.  In subsequent years, First bus won these contracts and for no reason other than this Faresaver did not operate evenings or Sundays.  Now, once again we have the contract to run the evening service on the X31 service.  The Sunday service is now commercial (i.e no subsidy) as of 05/01/2020, if the first day were anything to go by, we didn't cover the cost of wages let alone fuel, wear and tear and overheads, but lets hope this improves as spring approaches.

We do pride ourselves on service reliability and it is with great reluctance that we fail to operate a service.  Apologies if your bus was 20 minutes late, we do have one of the best service reliability figures in the WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) area.

As for the X34 evening service can we point out 'once and for all' that this was always a council contract and it was Wiltshire Council who deemed not to continue this service.  Again, if the loadings on the X31 evening service are any indication, there is no way that this service would stand up financially without support.

Thank you for your comments and please do use our buses as much as possible!

The multi-operator ticket (Avon Rider) on the X72 and D3 corridor would not have happened without Faresaver pushing for it.  We would like to extend it across a wider area.

Just to provide some info from an Operators point of view. Most operators now have tracking incorporated into their ticket machines and have since 2012. There is a cost associated with this that operators pay for (data transfer/SIM costs) to the supplying ticket machine/tracking company. BaNES Council undertook an exercise soon after operators had these machines to to upgrade their bus stops with RTI^▸ (Real Time Information (displays)). The cost of installing the infrastructure was paid by the Council. Operators do not get paid for providing the information to the Council but rather contribute funding towards the ongoing maintenance and data processing costs associated with the system. Whilst there are very few RTI systems in Wiltshire any services which go into BANES, such as the X72, 272, X31, 265, can still be tracked using RTI on several apps which use the data e.g UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Buschecker.
There was talk a few years ago from Wiltshire Council of installing RTI screens at key locations across Wiltshire, Bus Stations, Railway Stations, Market Places etc but since budgets have been cut further in the last couple of years it has gone all quiet again.

This offer applies to all concessionary pass holders including those in Somerset and Bath and it also includes Disability passes who are entitled to free travel after 0900/0930.

I can confirm that these rumours are indeed true. Since the 1st April when the new concessionary validity periods came into effect Faresaver have offered concessionary pass holders travel at child rates. This does not only apply to Wiltshire services but also those which go into BaNES and Somerset where there has always been a 0900/0930 start time. It is indeed correct that there is very little difference between the reimbursement for concessionary passes and the value of child fares so we don't anticipate to be any better or worse off. However by foregoing a full adult fare we may be 'worse off' but we feared we might lose these people altogether and then nobody wins - our charitable act for the year!

Good to be here Graham, although predominantly train related topics here we like to be up to speed on the bus front. This bus along with three others are based at our Melksham outstation and so the cleaning of them involves a bit more...... thought! Always good to hear feedback good and bad, although we prefer the good and when I see buses like this on the road my heart sinks. I would say I'd prefer running buses in Spain where it rains less but then the buses would just overheat more!

MX56AAO normally used on the 69, otherwise known as the Zigzag service. Our guess is that this bus was cleaned a day or two before this photo was taken but when you are traversing the lanes of Wiltshire to the likes of Broughton Gifford it doesn't take long to get like this! Sometimes feels like you are fighting a losing battle in the winter months!