Southampton Maritime Festival

Many months work has gone into the first Southampton Maritime Festival to held in Southampton Docks. The festival which is being organisedby Southampton Heritage Federation and the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology with kind sponsorship from ABP and support fromSouthampton City Council. The event being held on Sunday 5^th & Monday 6^th May 2013.

Our involvement is providing a free bus service to various parts of the city centre. Back in December 2012 we attended a planning meeting for the festival where a number of routes were talked about. Bus stops around the city that needed to be served were mentioned. The stops are West Quay Car Park, Central Station, City Centre and Ocean Village. A number of routes were disused over a few weeks and in the end 2 routes were picked. The main route will serve West Quay Car Park, Central Station and City Centre. The other route will serve Ocean Village.

On 28^th February 2013 to make sure the routes would work a trial was done and a few changes were made. The Ocean Village route will serve the Town Quay area and then head to Ocean Village due to work being carried out in Ocean Village and the bus being unable to stop in the coach bay by the Ocean Car Park. Also with major work being carried outside Dock Gate 4 extra time was add to the timetables.

1 - JOW 499E in Southampton Docks

Both routes will be every 30 minutes and extra buses on standby if needed. Buses that will be used are 1 – JOW 499E, 64 – FTR 511, 71 – LOW 217, 133 – TTR 167H and a number of other buses may be used. A number of local bus groups will also be coming along. As it’s the first event held numbers are not known and how many people who are going to use the buses is unknown so only when the events starts will we know how successfulit’s going to be. A lot of planning has gone into getting buses in the right place to be used and in the coming weeks they will be fuel washed and checked over to make sure they are ready for service in Southampton once again. After the event we will look back at the event.