Handy guide to night bus services

As the festive season approaches OIC Transport team and Stagecoach have pulled together a ‘quick guide’ to the late night bus services available on Friday and Saturday nights, for anyone out and about over the next few weekends.

And on online survey has been launched to gather feedback from the public.

The late night buses serve the East Mainland, West Mainland, and Kirkwall and Orphir on Friday and Saturday, and the X1 between Stromness-Kirkwall-St Margarets Hope has had late night runs added recently.

These services are being run at no extra cost to the Council with funding from the Scottish Government's Smarter Choices, Smarter Places scheme until March 2023. The continuation of them will depend on additional funding and of course demand and support from the public.

Laura Cromarty, Service Manager – Transportation, says the services need a good level of usage, with a review of the evening bus services underway to support the request for additional funding to continue the services in future:

"The trial of evening bus services was introduced after people told us they would really like to be able to access social and leisure activities in the evenings.

"The festive period is a great chance for people to enjoy an evening out with knowledge there is a public service bus to access.

"So I'd urge people to look at the timetables and even better give the services a try, and let us know what they think."

You can view the timetable (and all bus service timetables in Orkney) at www.orkney.gov.uk/bus.

You can provide feedback via an online survey here

If you are travelling over the festive period itself (Thursday 22 December 2022 to Wednesday 4 January 2023) remember to also check changes to Stagecoach's festive operating services.