First provides new buses for Bristol International fleet
From Sunday 4th April, important changes to the Flyer Service will be introduced.
The frequency of the bus service will increase from running every 15 minutes at peak to every 10 minutes from key locations including Bristol Airport, Temple Meads and the Bus Station. The route will change to suit the more efficient service with key hotels such as the new Radisson Blu hotel, the Bristol Hotel (formally Jury's Bristol) and the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel all being served. The new route will cover The Grove, Prince Street and College Green. The service will continue to stop at Clifton Triangle but will no longer stop at Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill, however these Clifton destinations can be reached from the Clifton Triangle or College Green stops by connecting with the local First Buss service numbers 1, 54, 54a, 40, 40a and the 8 and 9 services.
Twelve new buses, each costing £180,000, are on order as part of improvements to the Bristol International Airport Flyer. The new fleet will replace the nine coaches currently operating the service which links the airport to Bristol Temple Meads, Marlborough Street Bus Station and other city centre locations.
The new Volvo vehicles, supplied by Wright Bus of Belfast (which also provides buses to Transport for London), will be wheelchair accessible and passengers will be able to take their luggage on board with them, providing peace of mind and speeding up the boarding process.
Each bus will feature leather seats and wood effect flooring, as well as free Wi-Fi access and power points to charge phones and laptops. The new vehicles will also deliver improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions reductions as they are compliant with Euro 5 standards and run on AdBlue, which reduces emissions of oxides of nitrogen.
The first six replacement buses will be delivered in the spring, with the remaining six arriving in 2011.
The planning application for the development of Bristol International to enable the airport to handle 10 million passengers per annum (mppa) in 2019/20 contains a raft of proposed public transport improvements, including the introduction of Flyer services to Bath and Weston-super-Mare. The airport has also set a 15 per cent target for public transport usage by passengers at 10 mppa.
The name of the Flyer services will change from the 330 and 331 to A1 and A2 in order to differentiate between the National Express 330 service which also calls at the airport.