Eastern Counties Omnibus Company/Suffolk County Council East Suffolk bus map - Nov 1979

This map was featured in the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company (ECOC) ‘East Suffolk’ timetable booklet effective Sunday 18 November 1979 which was produced jointly with Suffolk County Council. The foreword reads ‘This timetable booklet replaces the 1977 edition and includes for the first time details of all bus, coach and rail services in the Ipswich, Felixstowe, Hadleigh, Saxmundham, Stowmarket and Woodbridge areas, and has been produced jointly by the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company and Suffolk County Council as part of the Council’s policy to encourage the use of public transport’.

Prior to the late 1970s ECOC timetable books only included services of a limited number of other operators.

In the ‘Ipswich Area’ timetable dated 5 May 1968 (which actually covered the area to the east of a line drawn from Thetford to Sudbury etc and south of a line drawn from Thetford to Saxmundham) only included timetables for one service operated by Burwell and District (the Wednesday only service 7 from Burwell to Bury St. Edmunds) although Premier Travel did slightly better with timetables for service 38 (Wickhambrook-Haverhill-Saffron Walden), 44 (Stradishall-Kedington-Haverhill-Cambridge), 53 (Halstead-Great Yeldham-Haverhill although most timings were actually operated by Eastern National between Halstead and Great Yeldham) and 55 (the Wednesday only service 55 from Haverhill to Bury St. Edmunds). There was one page listing the services operated by Ipswich Corporation Transport and a second page summarising the first and last buses on ICT services.

In the ECOC West Suffolk timetable dated 25 July 1976 it was only Theobald’s Coaches that had their timetables included for their Sudbury town service, Sudbury-Haverhill and Clare-Bury St. Edmunds services.
From the late 1970s ECOC included more independent operators timetables in their publications before the advent of the timetable books published jointly by ECOC and Suffolk County Council.