service revisions from Mon 20 July

From Monday 20 July, we will be making two permanent service cancellations, whilst also making improvements to other routes. 

service cancellations

Pink 22 from Reading to Caversham Heights will no longer run following successive falls in customer numbers. Berry 23/24, pink 25/25a and aqua 28/28a will all continue to provide frequent services from Reading to Caversham centre and school route 81 will also continue to run to Caversham Heights during term time. Some areas of Caversham Heights will also continue to be served by Thames Travel X40.

Customers who have bought a season ticket to use on pink 22 that expires after 20 July can contact our customer services team for a refund on the remaining part of their ticket on a pro-rata basis. 

Route 12 from Reading to Twyford will also no longer run as customer numbers haven't met expectations since the service was introduced in November. However, Thames Valley Buses routes 127/128/129 will continue to serve this area, along with Carousel Buses routes 127/850 as was the case prior to November. 

other timetable changes and improvements

The improvements on other routes see aqua 28/28a having a more direct route from Reading to Henley. The service, which has been a major success since its introduction, will use Reading Bridge and Prospect Street instead of Caversham Bridge. This will cut journey times to Henley by around 5 minutes whilst maintaining connections to Caversham centre and providing a service along the full length of Henley Road for the first time. 

The timings of pink 25/25a to Peppard Common will be adjusted alongside this to create a more coordinated frequency with aqua 28/28a between Prospect Street and Reading.

Little berries 29/29a to Lower Caversham will be doubled in frequency on Sundays to run every 30 minutes, with 29a journeys via Caversham Centre introduced to match the rest of the week.

There will also be minor timetable changes to improve punctuality on orange 13/14.

Whilst we would like every change we make to be positive, in this case we have had to make the very difficult decision to stop running pink 22 to Caversham Heights. A fearsome combination starting with a poor recovery from the pandemic, followed by extensive road closures, competition on the busiest sections of the route and rising costs, has led to pink 22 no longer covering even its basic running costs. We can't expect users of other bus services to pay for that on an ongoing basis. Whilst we appreciate that this will be a great loss for the people who still rely on pink 22, some alternatives are available a short distance away - whether it be a school bus, our services to Caversham centre or other operator's services. 

We do not take decisions like this lightly, but we have not been able to identify any alternative after making significant efforts to regrow patronage. Our objective is to provide the best possible service for Reading that we can, but it has to be within our own financial means. The rest of the network changes are broadly positive and reflect that overall patronage has grown by nearly 1% over the last year.