Reading Buses has today (August 27) announced that the company will be changing a number of timetables from next week (Monday, September 2).

The company said most of the changes are minor and involve the re-numbering of school buses to make them easier to understand for school and non-school customers alike, but some timetables will see other changes.

Robert Williams, Reading Buses’ chief executive officer, said: "It's the time of year when we do our usual set of timetable changes.

"This year however, we have focused on tidying up the network so most of the changes are very minor, and are just good house-keeping.

"We have renumbered our buses for schools from 81-93 so parents and students can more easily recognise their buses, and everybody else doesn’t have to worry about term dates affecting their journey.

"Some other changes are necessitated by either requests from customers and local authority stakeholders as well as our own research. For most customers, there will be little or no change as many of the changes are minor tweaks that help improve reliability."

The summary of the changes are:

  • All school buses renumbered and moved away from the main timetables
  • The leopard sees the removal of the diversion into Bohunt School at school times to simplify the timetable and improve reliability. This is replaced by the introduction of brand new routes 92 and 93 designed to meet the needs of the growing number of students attending the school
  • The leopard will also be affected by major roadworks with the closure of Nine Mile Ride between California Country Park and Arborfield Green. A free shuttle bus will run to keep the isolated communities connected to the diverted service
  • Emerald 5 returns to its full frequency after the minor reduction for summer
  • Emerald 6 also returns to full frequency after the minor reduction for summer but also see some minor tweaks to improve spacing in the afternoon
  • Route 9 stays mostly the same, apart from the removal of the 0540 journey from Reading and the round trip at 1945 due to lack of use. The previous 9.30am Mereoak journey to town will now start from Whitley instead.
  • For sky blue 16, there's a minor timetable change to remove journeys which only run in school holidays
  • Purple 17 returns to its pre-summer timetable, but includes an increased 5 minute service between 8.08am and 8.23am from Tilehurst towards the Three Tuns to reflect an increase in usage
  • The little oranges 19 a,b,c have an amended timetable to help improve reliability including requests made via Wokingham Borough Council who support this route
  • Pink 22 sees most early morning journeys from Caversham Heights start 5 minutes earlier to help improve reliability of following journeys
  • Yellow 26 has a minor timetable changes Monday to Friday to improve reliability
  • Lower Caversham Shuttle 27/29 sees no change to times, but some renumbering of journeys to make the routes easier to understand - all journeys using Caversham Bridge will be numbered 27 and all journeys using Reading Bridge will be numbered 29
  • The Connect Henley routes 151, 152 and 153 see their timetables change slightly to improve reliability. A slight change to the route in the town to avoid congestion at the car park.

Reading Buses say that all these changes should help towards improving their network and the usability of their services.

Full details, including timetables and maps, can be found on reading-buses.co.uk.