Mainline 71

For shopping, commuting, college or leisure, Mainline 71’s for you!

Arriva’s Mainline 71 service runs frequently, six times an hour for the main part of the day on Mondays to Saturdays, along the London Road between Maidstone, Allington, Ditton and Larkfield before serving the Kingfisher Road area, Lunsford Lane and Lunsford Park

Combined with Service 72 there are buses along London Road every 7 or 8 minutes.

Most journeys are run by our easy-access buses. These have pavement-level entrances, with no steps in the front half inside, so it’s easy for parents with buggies, shoppers with trolleys or heavy shopping bags, or for anyone else who would otherwise have difficulty negotiating steps to get on and off the bus.

Christmas and New Year bus arrangements
Special arrangements will apply over the Christmas and New Year period.

To see full details, please click here.

Revised fares from 4th December
As a result of continually increasing costs of providing your bus service we need to revise our fares from 4th December.

Please click here to see more details of the changes on services in Kent, click here to see the new prices of the range of great value-for-money Day, Weekly and Four-weekly Saver tickets for the Maidstone and Larkfield area and click here to see the new prices for the South East Saver tickets which cover all Arriva services in Kent and East Sussex.

Mainline 71 Logo Frequent buses
The times of Mainline 71 combined with the half-hourly Service 72 on the London Road, means there are buses every 7 or 8 minutes between Larkfield, Ditton, Allington and Maidstone.

There are also six buses an hour to Lunsford Park and a half-hourly service to Snodland and Holborough.

Commuter link to West Malling Station
Service 76 runs on Mondays to Fridays from New Hythe, Leybourne Park, Lunsford Park and Lunsford Lane to West Malling Station to connect with trains to London during the early morning period. Buses also meet trains at West Malling for commuters returning home from London after work.

Special bus add-on tickets are availble from the ticket office at West Malling station so that commuters can buy one ticket for their train journey to London and also use it on Service 76.

To see the timetable for Service 76, please click here.

Turn up and go!

With such frequent buses along London Road, you can ‘turn up and go’, so if you miss one you know you won’t have long to wait for the next one!

Along the line of route, there are links to Sainsbury’s and South Aylesford Retail Park, Preston Hall Hospital, Morrison’s at Larkfield and Tesco’s at Lunsford Park.

Beyond Lunsford Park, some buses run half-hourly to and from Leybourne Park and to Snodland and Holborough.

In Maidstone, Mainline 71 buses serve the High Street and Chequers Shopping Centre, dropping you in the heart of town with no parking hassle. The service also benefits from the London Road bus lane at peak times, so why not leave the car at home and let Arriva take you into town!

Money-saving tickets
If you travel regularly, cut the cost of travel by using a Maidstone Day, Weekly or Four-weekly Saver. These cover the area out as far as Allington, but there is also a Maidstone Plus saver which lets you travel as far as Lunsford Park,
Leybourne Park and Snodland on Mainline 71.

These are all available from drivers, or via your mobile phone, but you can also buy the weekly and four-weekly Maidstone and MaidstonePlus tickets from our Travel Shop in the Chequers Shopping Centre and from local shops displaying the PayPoint, payzone and epay signs.

The Four-weekly Savers can also be bought online at a reduced price. Visit http://www.arrivabus.co.uk/ to buy your tickets and to find out more about buying tickets via your mobile phone.

Visit the Arriva Travel Shop
The Arriva Travel Shop is also the place to find out more about Arriva’s other services in the Maidstone area. You can also book days out and short
breaks by New Enterprise Coaches, buy tickets for National Express coach services throughout the UK and Eurolines services into Europe, as well as
Shearings Coach Holidays. The Travel Shop is located in Chequers Shopping Centre by the entrance from the Bus Mall.

For bus times throughout the UK, call Traveline on 0871 200 22 33 or visit http://traveline.info/.

If you don’t normally use the bus, then perhaps you should give it a try!
There’s no parking hassle, as Mainline 71 stops in the heart of town. You will also be helping to reduce pollution and doing your bit to cut Maidstone and Malling’s ongoing congestion problem. You might even find the bus is cheaper and more convenient than you thought.

Are you paying through the nozzle to run your car?
If you normally travel around the area by car then take a moment to compare the price of a four-weekly ticket with the cost of four weeks’-worth of petrol or diesel.

Click here to take our simple test. You might be surprised at how our prices compare with the cost of running your car!

Bus travel is probably more convenient and cheaper than you think!