After yesterday’s snow, public transport seems to be returning to normal though there may be changes from the usual timetable in the morning. For one thing, the Bletchley disruption on the WCML is continuing and some train and bus operators in the south-east are still experiencing some difficulties. Of these, Southern Trains is just one with their website’s front page being a summary of service running information; their website must have run into bother earlier.
Other websites felt the strain too and the new Greater Angiia (formerly National Express East Anglia) website got a baptism of fire. Like Southern, it too has a front page giving a service overview but there’s their JourneyCheck page and Twitter feed too and that has been very active over the course of today. The rest of the website doesn’t seem to have been put into place though.
Yet another website that went down on everybody was that for Arriva Buses. Nevertheless, bus users in Yorkshire and the Northeast of England were well served with Twitter feeds. One wonders why we don’t get the same in the English Northwest too. After all, there is a Twitter account but it never seems to get used.
Though the BBC did sterling work when it came to overviews, Twitter seemed to come into its own (Facebook may have done the same but I am keeping out of there given Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to privacy and the IPO that has happened) during the weekend, especially with everything developing so quickly. In fact, you could tell where the snow was by the number of disruption information tweets. Some operators ran into the 1000 tweets (includes retweets and replies too) per day limit though waiting until after 00 or 30 minutes past the hour was enough to get going again, albeit with a 20 tweet per 30 minute quota as I found out for myself last night. Some operators have backup accounts for dealing with this situation so you have to ask what the 1000 tweet limit really achieves.
Along the way, I got to learn of some new operators: Marshalls of Sutton-on-Trent and Premiere Buses (of Nottingham, it seems). Links to both have been added to the bus companies page on here and it’s always good to grow more comprehensive.
Around Cheshire, most major roads are now clear though Bowers weren’t too trusting of the A537 for their 58 service between Macclesfield and Buxton. Buses were serving Bollington and the 130 to Manchester seemed to be going too though the live bus tracker seemed to be playing its usual non-availability games as it has been for the last few weeks. Both today and yesterday would have made good days for having it going given the weather that we got.
Continuing with road conditions, there is a lot of slush about the place and I don’t fancy the outcomes if either that or any standing water froze tonight. So far, temperatures seem to be holding at 2° C so there’s hope that any frost will not be so severe and there was a lot of melt-water around when I was last out and about. Cheshire East Council don’t seem to be taking chances though and there are gritters out and about again tonight although there’s no sign that pavements are being gritted by the council; maybe that’s being left to householders (before Christmas 2010, there was a statement to that effect from the then Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond) and I was out clearing that next to mine today. With all the lying snow and the threat of ice, we’ll have to see what the morning brings when it comes.
Tags: Trains, Arriva, Macclesfield, Manchester, Cheshire, England, Buses, Weather, 130, Timetables, Wilmslow, London, Bowers, Cheshire East Council, Derbyshire, Bollington, Buxton, Road Conditions, 10
Snow arrived today as promised and travel disruption ensued. At the time of writing, Arriva Yorkshire and Nottingham City Transport are operating no bus services at all rail and disruption is hitting both the East Coast Mainline along with services around Bolton and Blackburn. More generally, bus services are experiencing difficulties across the north of England and into the English midlands so it’s best to check with your operator to make sure that your service is operating.
Twitter has been a good place to see what’s happening and those of us who are on there need to watch our daily limit of 1000 updates (20 per half hour, it seems) too. Even transport operators such as Virgin Trains and London Midland have been known to hit these limits on days like yesterday when severe disruption was caused by a derailment near Bletchley. For these eventualities, they have been known to open more accounts so you wonder what the limit achieves.
More roads than those used by buses get affected too and the A537 between Macclesfield and Buxton and the A54 between the latter and Buxton are closed tonight. It is an open question as to whether Bowers’ service 58 between Macclesfield and Buxton will operate tomorrow given that it was off the road last Saturday. Today, it kept going until at least 15:00 since I spotted one on the Cat and Fiddle Inn’s webcam.
Whatever you do tonight, I hope that you stay safe. Tomorrow could be interesting as well though we are promised milder weather as the new week wears on. It seems that Ireland has been unaffected by wintry weather apart from disruption to U.K. flights. That really drives home how regional how weather can be.
Tags: Trains, Arriva, Virgin, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, Buses, Weather, Timetables, Bowers, Yorkshire, Congleton, A537, Derbyshire, Buxton, Road Conditions, London Midland, Nottingham, Nottingham City Transport, A54
It now appears that the current economic climate and the curtailments in public spending have affected two companies based not too far away from where I live. The first is the merger of the operations of Bowers and the Trent Barton depot in Dove Holes near Buxton. Apparently, Centrebus and Trent Barton are embarking on a joint venture that is to be based in Dove Holes with the Chapel-en-Frith depot looking set to close. The name for the new company is to be High Peak and is to grace the roads of Cheshire as well as Derbyshire since Bowers run quite a few services around Macclesfield and Knutsford. The 199 Buxton-Stockport-Manchester Airport route is another one that is bound to be moved to the new company and that means that Greater Manchester will be included among the areas served too. The long distance Transpeak service between Manchester, Buxton, Derby and Nottingham is to stay operating like it does today with the Dove Holes depot staying in use as the northern base. It is going to take time for the changes to come into place but this autumn could see the first signs of the merger once the reorganisation along with the paperwork and authorisations that it entails have been completed.
In another development, D&G has felt the effects of bus subsidy cuts made by Stoke-on-Trent City Council. That situation must have made an approach by Arriva regarding acquisition of D&G’s North Staffordshire business look very attractive. The result is that Arriva is buying it to build up Wardle Transport, a subsidiary that it has in the area. After the sale, D&G will continue to trade from Crewe and its sister company in the West Midlands, Midland, is unaffected by the change.
The announcements for both of these changes mentioned the reality of a more challenging trading environment. This is the more pertinent for D&G because one of it founders set it up after the Labour party’s landslide election victory of 1997 in the hope of the then new government increasing the funding for bus services, something that actually did happen. Now that the proverbial pendulum is swinging in the other direction, we are seeing signs of consolidation and, in some unfortunate cases such as McKindless in Glasgow (once Scotland’s largest independent bus operator), company failures. While there can be no doubt that the bus business is facing a changed environment, it might have its upshots too with higher fuel costs and a reduced standard of living making families’ having an extra car more expensive than it was. If that were to increase bus patronage, it could compensate for the reductions in public spending but only time will tell whether or not that comes to pass, especially with some councils such as Northamptonshire having some very draconian proposals.
Tags: 199, 27, 300, 58, 60, 64, Arriva, Bowers, Buses, Buxton, Centrebus, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Cheshire, Connect 19, Crewe, D&G, Derby, Derbyshire, Dove Holes, England, Glasgow, High Peak, Macclesfield, Manchester, Manchester Airport, McKindless, Midland, Northamptonshire, Nottingham, Prestbury, Spending Cuts, Staffordshire, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Transpeak, Trent Barton, Wardle Transport, West Midlands, Whirley
The current round of snow is having quite an effect on the transport network in some places. Thankfully, Macclesfield doesn’t seem to be the worst hit though there must be a considerable snow covering on the hills not far from the town and Buxton cannot escape either. The A537/A54 are closed to traffic so things cannot be good up on the heights. If it’s like what we got at the start of the year, they’ll need snowblowers to clear roads.
Bowers are unable to offer the full service that they usually do and the 27 Macclesfield-Knutsford route was only operated for part of the afternoon and it looked as if the same applied to the 19 Macclesfield-Whirley-Prestbury service. They are based in Chapel-en-le-Frith so that cannot help them. It’s one thing to struggle to get buses out from a depot but it’s another if drivers cannot get there in the first place.
From the bus tracker, Arriva seems to be able to keep the 130 Macclesfield-Manchester service going though there are delays and thoughts of them persuaded me to work from home today. A look at their latest update conveys to me the impression that we are getting off more lightly than some other places. They have created a summary in PDF so as to stop people hammering the website like they did at the start of the year.
One look at an update for the north of England confirms that a number of places cannot be served by rail, even, and Northern Rail has details on its website too. Sheffield is but one badly hit area and a work colleague of mine has a foot of snow covering his garden! No wonder First cannot run buses around the city. Northumberland and parts of east Yorkshire are taking the brunt of the weather and the disruption by the appearances of things. All in all, it seems that the weather is getting the better of the railways in places.
Ireland may have a maritime climate but it too is feeling the effects of the cold spell. Though most trains are running (only Docklands station in Dublin is not getting a service this evening), if subject to delays, the Irish Rail website is getting hammered. That may be due in part to the problems that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are having. The former’s services stopped around 20:00 this evening and the latter has been struggling to run services up and down the east coast of the country, to point that 19:30 was the end of operations for the day on many of them. The severe weather pages of the Irish Department of Transport are another calling point for general information, particularly about road conditions and any gritting.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given its reputation, Scotland has got a right blast of the arctic conditions with even Edinburgh’s Lothian Buses being unable to offer a full service. The mixture of hilly terrain and hefty snowfalls must be at the heart of the problem but one only can imagine how much more challenging it is in the Highlands though train running problems are happening throughout Scotland.
Though numerous, what I have collected here is only a sample of what is happening out there. Maybe, it is too hard to keep on top of it all when you have a day job in another profession but I’ll see if I can share what I can on here.
Tags: 130, 19, 19X, 27, Arriva, Bowers, Bus Éireann, Buses, Buxton, Cheshire, Connect 19, Derbyshire, Dublin, Dublin Bus, Edinburgh, Ireland, Irish Rail, Knutsford, Lothian Buses, Macclesfield, Manchester, Northern Rail, Northumberland, Road Conditions, Scotland, Scotrail, Trains, Weather, Yorkshire
A sunny morning was enough to send ideas of improving on my Buxton photo collection into my head and me off on a spot of local travelling. The pondering carried on and designs on traveling to Bakewell came on steam too. They were strong enough to get me picking up a £10 Wayfarer ticket from Macclesfield’s train station before hailing a very full service 58 to Buxton. Much to my surprise, most stayed on it until Buxton itself because I might have expected most to disembark on the way up Buxton Road before leaving Macclesfield.
The day was largely grey by the time that I reached Buxton so no Buxton photos for me then. Inspection of bus timetables sent the idea of going to Ashbourne into my head. After all, it is a part of Derbyshire where I hadn’t gone before and a cloudy day is a chance to see somewhere new. A lack of sun and a chilly breeze were enough to send me onto the next service 42 (like the 58, also operated by Bowers). Along the way, the day cheered up again and I was surprised to see it leaving the A515 for a narrow lane but this was the deviation that serves the pretty place that is Tissington village. That was the only time that it left the A515 until Ashbourne was reached with the terminus being a collection of stances that passes as a bus station.
After spending an hour around a sunny Ashbourne and sampling a little piece of the Tissington Trail, it was onto the last stage of the journey: the 108 from Ashbourne to Macclesfield operated by Clowes with the support of councils in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire. That service left with just two passengers on board but more were to join in Leek and near Bosley so it didn’t stay that empty all of the way. The route stuck with the A52 for longer than might be expected and there were some strange twists and turns before it passed Cauldon to join the A523 at Waterhouses. From there, it was all direct through to Leek and Macclesfield though it started to feel before Leek came into view.
All the buses on which I travelled were well used though none was as full as the Optare Solo that took me away from Macclesfield in the first place. That was the one conveying young families along with the now habitual contingent of bus pass holders and others like myself. In fact, all services were used by both young and old alike with the 42 dropping off some Indians in Tissington.
With its YJ05 registration, the Optare was the newest bus that I used and the age profile of the others was such that they dated from the mid/late 1990′s. Both were Mercedes midibuses that once were common around Macclesfield with a P-reg one operating the 42 and an M-reg one working the 108. Ride on all of these, even the older ones, was better than on some recent journeys between Wilmslow and Macclesfield on Arriva’s 130. In fact, the Clowes bus still retains its welcome sign and seat upholstery from its time in Arriva hands.
All buses operated pretty much to time and the timetables made it all work even when things were being worked out on the hoof rather than being planned beforehand. Now that I have seen how to get to Ashbourne, exploring the countryside surrounding the town is more of a possibility. Who knows what might come of that?
Tags: 108, 42, 58, Ashbourne, Bowers, Buses, Buxton, Cheshire, Clowes Coaches, Derbyshire, England, Leek, Macclesfield, Peak District, Ticketing, Timetables, Tissington
