A summer timetable on Whippet’s Universal routes

Between 29 June and 30 August, Whippet will be running a revised timetable on its Universal routes, U1 and U2. And the reason for this summer timetable? The operator is taking advantage of reduced traffic congestion during the summer months to speed up journey times. Yes, if you can reduce congestion on the roads, then buses will run faster and more people will get more quickly to their destinations. Enjoy it while it lasts!

The Universal summer timetable can be downloaded here.

Postscript

The effect of congestion on bus services was succinctly explained to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Transport Committee…

I can give you a good example from Professor David Begg who calculated for London [TfL buses] that the shortfall between revenue and cost was roughly equivalent to the cost of congestion.

That is to say if you removed the congestion, you would do what 9,000 buses currently do with about 5,000 buses […] Because they would move more quickly, the service would be more attractive, more people would use them […]

And I can’t highlight enough that […] one of the reasons why there is a decline […] But a key one is the unattractiveness of the speed of the service, because in some urban areas, frankly, bus speeds drop below walking pace, because when you get down to four miles an hour, you can walk it anyway and, secondly, it’s unattractive and people are making other sorts of journeys and doing things differently.

So bus priority and bus speeds is a key element in making the service more attractive […] in […] areas where the bus gets priority […] the beautiful sight of the bus running up the inside of a lane of stationary cars is not lost on the occupants of the cars […]

[Leon Daniels OBE, presenting the Independent Review of Implementation Pathways for Bus Franchising Scheme to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Transport Committee, 17 June 2026]

View the Agenda reports pack for full details of the report. The webcast of the meeting can be found on the Transport Committee, 17 June 2026 page. Leon Daniels speaks on the subject of congestion from around 3hr 16 min.