Passengers left confused due tolack of timetable information

The splitting of the 344 Hastings-Northiam route into two separate and differently numbered services with timings and frequency changed has been the biggest cause for concern.

“It is always horrible coping with changes which affect how we go about our daily lives,” said Pat Hughes, Rye and District Community Transport’s Operations Manager, “and those in Peasmarsh, Beckley and Northiam have the most to deal with.

“Several Peasmarsh residents have spoken to me and we’ve looked at how they can make their journeys.

“Getting used to differently numbered buses is a worry too.

“We anticipated there would be hiccups but the biggest has come from Stagecoach with the complete lack of timetable information for the 100 and 101 services at the Rye Station bus stops, just a notice telling people to ring Travel Line or use their smartphone.

“The new 101 service is a really good development enabling Camber and Rye to have (with the 100) a proper half hourly service through to Hastings (and an hourly Sunday service) and people have been very enthusiastic about it. But the 101 leaves Rye 16 minutes earlier than the old 344 did and for people wanting destinations on the old 344 route the lack of information at Rye has been dreadful.

“We understand that Stagecoach had a huge task to produce hundreds of new bus stop timetables and it is not surprising that they were not all ready in time. But someone should have recognised that some information must be put in place, even if it was simply a temporary listing of the bus departure times to the destinations. On Tuesday that is exactly what we at RDCT produced and stuck up on the timetable case at the 100 and 101 bus stops.

A hand written sign would have sufficed. We produced small 326 timetables for Tilling Green residents and delivered them to the whole estate on Sunday and spoke to the individual passengers who might have been affected by the small adjustments to our 326 service.

Our biggest change is the introduction of the Saturday service and we are looking forward to the first run on May 2nd.”