New year revamp for Glasgow Citybus

We want to encourage more people to ditch the car and hop on the bus so have made a number of changes to make bus more accessible to both old and new customers. This included operating more night-time journeys, serving more of Glasgow’s city universities and colleges and introducing a mobile app and website which allows users to buy discounted tickets, track their bus and navigate to the nearest bus stop.

The upgrades follow our online customer satisfaction survey. From the findings, we discovered many local people wanted later buses and would welcome a mobile app to buy bus tickets, track and plan journeys. The survey also highlighted the majority of customers found Glasgow Citybus drivers polite, ticket prices reasonable and travelling to work the most popular reason for travel followed by education.

The changes to the route took effect from Monday 06 January and include:

• Service 15, Milngavie to Glasgow, operating an extended route to Glasgow Cathedral and serving Strathclyde University, City of Glasgow College and Glasgow Caledonian University.
• Service 17, Duntocher to Glasgow, operating late night journeys. 
• From 1815, service 17 operating every 30 minutes, with the last bus departing Duntocher at 2201 and the last bus out of Glasgow at 2315. 
• In Duntocher, service 17 no longer serving Auchentoshan Avenue or Morrison Street. It now goes straight along Beeches Road to the end then turns left.

The West Coast Motors mobile app includes Glasgow Citybus services. The app has limited time only Glasgow Citybus ticket promotions of £2.99 for an unlimited 24-hour ticket and a £14.99 for an unlimited weekly ticket.

Richy Graham, operations manager at Glasgow Citybus, said “We really hope our changes encourage customers to use the bus more often plus entice more people out of cars and onto bus, after all one of our buses could take up to 49 cars off the road.”

The news of investment has been welcomed by Ross Greer, MSP, he added: “This is brilliant news for local residents, who’ve been telling me for years of the need for expanded bus services locally. As a regular user of the 15 and 17 myself, I know exactly how helpful the extended route and later operating times will be. To go from facing the potential loss of the 15 just a few months ago to this is a huge success story.

“Glasgow Citybus have listened to their passengers and invested in their service. That faith now needs reciprocated by local residents. These services will only continue if enough people use them. With congestion increasing, local air pollution a real issue and Scotland’s transport emissions rising despite the climate emergency, leaving the car at home and getting on the bus is something we all need to do as much as possible. Expanded, affordable bus services make that far easier.”