On Trains & Buses

Death by Twitter?

Posted on July 3, 2010

Reading time: 3 minutes.

The posting rate has gone down here to one a month and Twitter may be to blame for sapping it. Mind you, personal fatigue and other distractions may have had a role to play too. After all, it’s not as if the world of public transport is going to stay as quiet as it is at the moment.

For one thing, there are those cuts in public spending that loom large on the horizon. Then, there’s a transport secretary who may not be as enthusiastic about the subject as his predecessor. Well, he has been displaced from a possible role in the Treasury by the politics of coalition governments. The combination makes for testing times ahead and may make for much commentary.

The A34 bypass works trundle onward with the A535 being closed for while with Bollington Lane being reopened in the meantime to take strain. The result is that you cannot fail to notice the extra traffic on the A34 and it’s just as well that the summer school holidays are coming soon.

Elsewhere, the road system is showing the signs of a rough winter with a partial collapse on the A537 between Henbury and Broken Cross. There now has been an imperfect repair (aren’t they all these days?) and I hope that no harm came to anyone beforehand.

Victoria Road in Macclesfield has seen some resurfacing of the loose chipping variety that looks a rough job though that may change as the new surface settles. Let’s hope that it lasts better than previous attempts of the same kind on the A34 around Siddington and the B5087 around Over Alderley. They look a bit more sorry these days with some evidence of surface cracks in the case of the former. In fact, the whole road surface between Monk’s Heath and Siddington is well cracked and similar road conditions can be found on the A537 around the “Birtles Bends”.

All of these observations come from another factor that may be cutting down on new entries on here: my cycling to and from work during the long spell of fine settled weather than we have been enjoying for what feels like months now. That has seen to it that my bus travel has been curtailed though things now look less settled than they were.

Still, I have noticed a bus running on service 27 between Macclesfield and Knutsford with is electronic destination display not working. That sort of thing has happened before with those buses with paper signs appearing on screens during the time before a new display was instated. This sort of thing even afflicted a vehicle on the 130 with one side not showing anything at all. Has Arriva fixed that one yet?

To finish, you could summarise this post in a single sentiment: the cracks are showing in the transport infrastructure so how are any savings going to be made? Currently, it looks as if the cuts are going to hurt, regardless of the political rhetoric surrounding them. It was only a few years back that the now defunct Cheshire County Council proposed drastic reductions in evening bus services. The result was considerable negative feedback and much of those plans were rescinded. Could they appear again? If so, we need to make a stand in order not to let things go too far.