A RECORD number of households have had printed bus timetables put through their doors to inform them about Morebus services following the demise of Yellow Buses.

Morebus has had around 180,000 timetables delivered across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole after taking over nearly all the routes once run by its rival.

Buses in the area went through a major upheaval in August when Yellow Buses went into administration and stopped trading after 120 years.

Morebus – part of the Go-Ahead group – mounted an operation to replace nearly all the Yellows’ services within days, drafting in vehicles from its sister businesses and hiring more than 70 former Yellow Buses drivers.

The only services not to end up under Morebus control were three routes contracted by BCP Council, which were awarded instead to Hampshire-based Xelabus under the Yellow Coaches name.

Nikki Honer, head of marketing at Morebus, said: “Given the dramatic changes that have happened in the bus service in the conurbation, we decided that there are a lot of people that were reading a lot of social media groups where people were making up their own stories about what was happening.

“We did a lot of press announcements at the time and got a lot of coverage but if you were away that week – and I it did happen in the holiday season – a lot of people were not sure.

“It became more simple in the fact that there was one core operator, but some of the routes weren’t exactly the same or not the same frequency.”

Although Morebus is encouraging use of its app and website, Ms Honer said the printed timetable helped make as many as people as possible aware of the new services, including people from vulnerable groups.

“Our aspiration going forward is to reduce the print runs because we’re sustainable,” she said.

The demise of Yellow Buses was the biggest collapse of a bus operator for more than 30 years.

The last Yellow services ran on Thursday, August 4, and many of the same drivers were behind the wheel with Morebus that Saturday.

Real-time information boards were updated and physical timetables were put out to 400 bus stops in one day.