May 2025 saw the return of an old friend. After being scrapped nearly nine years ago, Blackburn’s Outer Circle bus service has been reinstated.
Our local council has secured around £3.7M government funding from the Department of Transport’s Bus Services Improvement Grant (BSIP). This has led to bus routes coming back which were removed, including Blackburn’s Outer Circle. Vision Bus of Blackrod will be operating this service.
The old Outer Circle, which was scrapped in 2016, was a very handy bus service, especially for workers, schoolchildren and Rovers fans. Being a suburban route, it was able to travel round some of Blackburn’s industrial estates as part of its route. It was also very popular among Rovers fans due to calling at Ewood and picking up after matches and going in both directions all around Blackburn’s outskirts.
It was also very useful for travelling to the Royal Blackburn Hospital, both for staff, patients and visitors. Parking at the RBH can be a nightmare after driving into the hospital grounds and car parks. This is going to become even more of a problem due to housebuilding in this area and greater traffic is expected due to a need for road upgrades. So the return of the Outer Circle has come at a good time.
My chance to be reunited with this bus came a couple of weeks after the service was reinstated. The bus I caught was very clean and modern and its driver helpful and friendly. This conveyed me from Revidge to Ewood for my dinner from my favourite pie shop – Leaver’s.
On the down side, you cannot use Vision tickets on Blackburn Bus services and vice versa. So buying a one day ticket for one journey is not a good idea. But if you’re going to be using it more than once, it is. No problem if you have a NOW ticket.
Now is probably an appropriate word for the Outer Circle bus service. It’s great to have it back, but if people don’t use it, then we’ll lose it again. Various ideas need to be looked at to encourage passenger usage. There seems to be very little advertising of the service at the moment. This needs to improve.
Another suggestion is to divert the route into the bus station from its nearest point at Daisyfield. This will add another option for town centre passengers to reach the suburbs if their normal service finishes earlier than the Outer Circle. Hopefully passengers will start to use this very handy service once again.
