On Trains & Buses

Cheshire East Bus Funding Cuts: More from D&G but still no news from Arriva

Posted on November 12, 2012

Reading time: 2 minutes.

There have been updates to the Cheshire East Council Bus Subsidy Reductions and Bus Service Changes page today. Most are new links to D&G Bus timetables that are set to come into force in January. One of these is for the 38 between Macclesfield and Crewe. Sunday evening services are set to finish with the 17:35 from Crewe and the 18:50 from Macclesfield since D&G are unwilling to operate them without council funding, confirming what was in the offing from last week. There is a new timetable on their website with this information and it’s a shame to see those Sunday evening services going and I hope that it’s not forever. Also, their Cheshire timetables page also is a good place to be looking for other service changes by the latest round of funding cuts too.

As yet, there is no word from Arriva about what is happening to services that they operate which are going to lose their funding. Monday to Saturday evening journeys on the 10 between Macclesfield and Bollington is one that has attracted a good deal of interest and publicity but there are Macclesfield evening town services affected for the same days. Early Saturday morning journeys on the 130 from Macclesfield still face an uncertain future while the fate of their Monday to Saturday evening services is sealed unless a surprise is sprung on us yet. Form last week, we know that D&G are not going to offer these on a commercial basis.

The passing the 56 day bus service change notice period last week must have triggered all the alterations that we have seen so far. It does make you wondering what is happening with Arriva’s operations. Are there discussions going on behind the scenes of which we know nothing as of now? Enough grotesqueness has appeared already and we still are left wondering what more is to come. Is pointless to hope that this round of cuts will be the last? That’s the way that I’d like it to be but doubts exist in my mind about it. Whatever comes next, my plan is to continue sharing the main points of detail on here as I have been doing so far.