News and Events

16 April 2009

* The Big Lemon wins the Dandelion Award *

The Big Lemon has recently won The Dandelion Award, which "recognises the extraordinary efforts of businesses throughout the UK to improve their own and others performance on issues surrounding Sustainability" (www.sustainedmagazine.com/sponsorship)
This is the first award we have won, and to be honest, we're over the moon and extremely proud that our project has received such an endorsement.  Previous winners have included Suma Wholefood, Sustrans and The Eden Project.  Sustained Magazine, which runs the Award, has written a feature on The Big Lemon in it's current edition: http://issuu.com/sustained/docs/009/47
We will be taking one of our buses to UK Aware, the sustainable lifestyle show at Kensington Olympia this Friday and Saturday, 17-18 April, where we will be presented with the Award.  If anyone would like to come, we have been given a special code: to claim a FREE e-ticket, go to www.ukaware.com and enter the code UA09BL - this will allow you to book one free e-ticket per email address.
There is one unfortunate irony however - in order to take our bus to London we must pay the daily charge for the Low Emissions Zone at £200 per day.  The zone is designed to clean up London's air and encourage businesses to use cleaner vehicles, and requires vehicles which do not comply with the standard to pay the charge.  Although our vehicles are amongst the most sustainable and low emissions buses in the country, the fact that they are old and therefore do not comply with the required engine specification means we have to pay the charge, and Transport for London makes no allowance whatsoever for biodiesel vehicles.  We have appealed against this, but without success.  The only thing for it now is to tell Boris he's bonkers, and try and get the rules changed.  Please help us by doing this here: www.thebiglemon.com/boris. 
Lastly - a big thank you to all of you who have helped make The Big Lemon what it is and helped us become recognised in this way.  We have had a huge amount of support from passengers, well-wishers and stakeholders of all descriptions and without you all, it quite simply wouldn't happen.  So thank you!

8 April 2009

The Big Lemon joins the Brighton & Hove Tourism Forum

For more information on what this means, visit

www.engagesolutions.org.uk

31 March 2009

* Survey on Music & Adverts *

We have recently carried out a survey on attitudes to music and video screen advertising on buses. thank you to all those who took part - here are the results

21 March 2009

* Easter Running *

From 21 March until 17 April we will be running daytimes only until 1930. The last bus from Old Steine towards the Universities is at 1840, and the last bus from Falmer Station towards the City Centre is at 1905. Normality returns on Monday 20 April.

10 March 2009

We've bought a coach!

It's a 57 seater and very comfortable!

To book it, click here

3 February 2009

* Normal services resumed *

Following disruption of services yesterday after the snow, normal service has been resumed.

Thank you

4 January 2009

New improved service starting 12 January 2009

Following our passenger survey (click here to view PDF copy) we are introducing an improved service on 12 January 2009 with increased frequencies at the busiest times. The downside is that the price of a single fare will have to increase to £1.50 to pay for the extra costs, but as our survey shows, most people asked said they would prefer to pay a bit more for a more frequent service. The good news is that all other prices will stay the same.

Click here for Spring 2009 Service Information

Click here for the new Timetable (starting 12 January)

Our new driver, Doug, joins Christian, Tom, Neil and Wayne behind the wheel (not all at the same time!)

Today we joined the world of advertising, with an ad on the inside of the bus for G-Whizz Cycles (www.g-whizzcycles.co.uk), and a big ad on the back of the bus for First Capital Connect (www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk)

This helps us earn important income whilst promoting other sustainable transport options.

We will advertise anything or anyone which/who fits in with our ethos. We are especially interested in advertising green, ethical and/or local products and services - for further information please email us with your requirements.

12 July 2008

Our members club is launched, the first of a new kind of club which aims to transform the way public transport is run, bringing the power back to the passengers!

Click here for more information

Service 42 stops at the end of the day for the summer - Back in September!

The Big Lemon does its first Wedding Bus!

We hope those who used it enjoyed themselves and we wish the bride and groom every happiness in the future

The Big Lemon's covered its costs this month for the first time!

The Big Lemon's Big Party

LemonAid

The Big Lemon is back and Baba Slips, Jake Beattie and 'The Melodica, the Melody and Me' are all playing at our benefit gig to mark the launch of our new service. This promises to be a musical extravaganza to remember so come and join the party, support these great bands and spread the Lemon love!

Small print: It costs £4 and you have to enjoy yourself

The Big Lemon is back on the road!

You can view an MS Word Timetable here

Investors' Open Afternoon

From 4pm at our Depot - open to investors and potential investors to see life behind the scenes and discuss future opportunities.

Promotional Lunchtime Party!

We will be having a party on The Big Lemon Bus to tell the world about our new service.

Noon - 3pm at Sussex University Campus

Today we had a meeting at Sussex University where we set up The Big Lemon's first Members Club, the Lemonheads.

The Club will be involved in the development of The Big Lemon and its services, and help spread the word to a wider audience.

For information about joining the Club, please email us.

SERVICE SUSPENSION

The registration for our previous service between Falmer Station and Brighton Station came to an end today.

We have registered a new service with the Traffic Commissioner, but unfortunately he has not authorised us to start the new service until 28 February 2008, despite repeated requests to authorise it from today so we could move from one service to the other without a break.

As a result of our experience so far, we have registered a slightly different service for the future. Unfortunately we found that not very many people wanted to go to Brighton Station, even though we were the only bus service linking Lewes Road and Brighton Station regularly throughout the day. We also found that during peak times the area around Brighton Station gets incredibly congested, and sometimes it took us 20 minutes just to get from the Clock Tower to Brighton Station and back. As a result we have decided to terminate at Churchill Square, and expect this to improve our punctuality during busy periods.

Many students will be pleased to hear that as the evenings are much quieter on the roads, we can afford the time in the evening to go through Sussex University Campus from 1915 onwards, and we will also be running later at night, with the last bus back from Brighton leaving at 0130.

We will keep a close eye on timings and look into the possibility of serving Varley Halls and Brighton University Campus at Falmer for future evening services.

If anyone has bought a weekly ticket or a Lemonade pass and not used it fully, you will be able to use them on the new service from 28th February, or you can send them in for a refund. We will accept weekly tickets bought within the last week of service in January for a full week starting 28th February, so if you like our service, it would be better to hang on to it.

We have heard today that The Traffic Commissioner has refused our request for a shorter notice registration for a third time, which would have enabled us to continue our service without a break.

As a consequence, we have to stop our service tonight and resume on 28 February. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Today we relaunched our service, with revised frequencies. This service expires on 29th January, and we have applied for a new service to continue from that date onwards.

We have recently received the news that our application to the Traffic Commissioner to cancel service 42 with immediate effect has been refused. We have written to the Traffic Commissioner, Mr Philip Brown, to ask him to reconsider the decision, and have asked friends and supporters to write too.

As many will have heard, unfortunately we had to stop running our Service 42 on Friday 30th November. We had a review of the service that week and concluded that we had to slim down and concentrate on the busy times, as we were losing too much money on those times of day that were too quiet. We had planned to run till Christmas Eve, and then start a leaner service using fewer drivers, fewer buses and fewer costs, in January. Unfortunately this meant making most of our drivers redundant, and when the difficult financial situation and future redundancies became apparent to all involved, we started losing members of our team until we did not have enough people to run our service at all. I had actually considered this as a possibility, and even been advised against telling the staff the situation until the last day of the service; however, I don’t consider that to be fair treatment and so decided to take a risk and share the situation with the team at the earliest opportunity. I also obviously wanted to share our plans with the passengers, and I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on without first telling the staff. Unfortunately the worst-case scenario rapidly unfolded, and as soon as I started implementing Plan B, the circumstances had changed again, and Plan C was needed. We also had 400 litres of fuel stolen and someone tried to run the batteries flat in all of our buses, and it soon became clear that we were not going to be able to run a reliable service, so I decided it was in the interests of the passengers to have no service rather than a patchy one, as at least they’d know not to wait for us.

We have had a number of meetings this week to find the best way forward, and the plan now is to apply to run the leaner service we had planned next year, whilst working on developing Passenger Clubs for different areas in the longer term. These would involve inviting people who wanted a local service in their area to submit their interest by starting or joining a Club in their area. Club members would be asked to pledge a membership fee, but they would only pay it when the membership reached a certain number, and the service could be started. Then membership fees would be collected to pay for the service implementation, and members would get a discounted (possibly half price) fare. The general public would be able to use the bus too but they would pay full fare unless they decided to join the club. Members of the club would be able to have a say in how the service operated, and the more members there were, the more comprehensive the service could be. Members would also benefit financially if the service was profitable, and could get incentives from introducing other members, much like a bank might give £25 or a bottle of wine to you for introducing a friend to the bank.

As a way of saying ‘Thank You’ to our customers and spreading a little Christmas Cheer, we are going to run a free service tomorrow during the periods 8-11am and 3-6pm, along our route 42 according to our normal timetable. We will then spend the interim part of the day at the Universities and Falmer Station talking to passengers, and getting feedback. There is a rumour that Father Christmas might join us – indeed I did hear that he has a bus-driving licence…

All the best

Tom Druitt
Managing Director

New week ticket introduced:

£7 for 7 consecutive days.

Tom receives Certificate of Professional Competence in National Passenger Transport, allowing him to be The Big Lemon's nominated Transport Manager. Read the story here.

Congratulations from a member of the public followed a few days later, here. Thank you!

4th December 2006

The Big Lemon has launched a MySpace page! Show your support by logging on and becoming a friend today. www.myspace.com/thebiglemon

Tom was interviewed live on BBC Southern Counties Radio - telling listeners to Drive Time about his plans

15th November 2006

Tom passes his bus driving test!

Read the story here