Confusingly, being in Cheshire means that we have access to not one but two Wayfarer tickets for getting out and about certain places using public transport. They are very different as I discovered when I asked for one a bus to Buxton one day; what I got wasn’t the ticket that I expected!
What I had expected to get for my money was Transport for Greater Manchester’s Manchester Wayfarer ticket. For the £10 adult tariff, you can have a sheet of folded card where you scratch off the year, month and day for when you want to make use of it. The fact that it’s a multi-modal ticket makes it very useful because you can mix and match train and bus services on a day out.
The extent of the rail network in which the Manchester Wayfarer is valid is more than that in Greater Manchester itself with parts of Cheshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire included. Looking at the full map will tell you where you can go using the ticket.
The region within which the Manchester Wayfarer can be used on bus services is greater than with trains. Looking at the full map shows that parts of Staffordshire and West Yorkshire are included along with those in the validity area for train travel. It strikes me that a day out from Manchester to Ashbourne becomes a possibility and there’s a lot to be said for that flexibility.
In addition to the £10 adult ticket, there are other Manchester Wayfarer ones. For instance, there’s a £5 one for folk aged up to 15 or 60 and over along with holders of the National Concessionary Travel Pass. There’s a group one too for £20 that is an option for family groups. The maximum number of folk over the age of 15 for this four-person ticket is two but that still suffices for days out with kids in tow.
What I got on that bus that Sunday morning was a Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket printed using the vehicle’s ticket machine. This, as the name suggests, is for train and bus travel within Derbyshire and to only certain points outside the county’s boundaries. One of these is Macclesfield but the centres of Sheffield, Burton-on-Trent and Uttoxeter also gain coverage on journeys to and from the county. That Stockport wasn’t included became clear to me on attempting to travel to there from Buxton on the 199 bus service that then was operated by Trent Barton. The Wayfarer got me as far as the county boundary and another ticket was needed to get me the rest of the way, highlighting that I didn’t have the Wayfarer ticket that I thought I had.
The adult version of the Derbyshire Wayfarer costs £11.10 and allows you to have a child under the age of 16 travelling with you without the need for another ticket. There’s a concessionary version too for £5.55 which bizarrely allows you to bring a dog instead of a child and there I was thinking that dogs didn’t need tickets for using public transport! There’s a group ticket too for £20 that has the same rules as per its Manchester namesake. That’s not because Beeston and Nottingham train stations sell variants costing £15.80 for the adult version and £7.90 for its concessionary counterpart so that you can explore parts of Derbyshire with one of those stations as your starting (and ending) point.
So, what I needed to do on that Sunday was to go to Macclesfield’s train station for a Manchester Wayfarer as I have done a few times since then. While its Derbyshire equivalent is widely available on buses, trains and train stations, you need to go to train stations, Transport for Greater Manchester travel shops and some bus company offices for the Manchester one unless you get it by post. The great thing about these scratch and use rover tickets is that you scratch off the date panels only when you need to use a ticket, so you can have a few of them in hand until you want to travel using one. That makes the postal way of getting them less odd than otherwise would be the case.
Once you realise which Wayfarer is which, these are very useful rover tickets for their respective areas. Their having different names would make matters clearer, but that’s the only thing that is to be said against them. Unlimited multi-modal travel for a day for a small fee is no bad thing at all, especially with the monetary pressures that affect many people.
Update on 2016-05-10
The Derbyshire Wayfarer now costs £12.30 and the Manchester Wayfarer costs £12 from a train station.
Update on 2017-11-10
The Derbyshire Wayfarer now costs £12.60 and the Manchester Wayfarer costs £13.
Update on 2023-04-22
The Derbyshire Wayfarer now has bus-only and bus-and-train versions. The first is cheaper than the second and the information is available from Derbyshire County Council on their website.
Northumberland’s bus service have seen big changes within the last few months so I have decided to highlight them here. Unfortunately, it only was reshaping this website in recent weeks that alerted me to what has happened. Ideally, I’d like to share the information before any changes have taken place so it’s a case of better late than never…
The main recipients of the upheaval have been users of longer distance bus services through the county. The ones that are no more are as follows:
- 501 Newcastle to Berwick-upon-Tweed via the coast
- 505 Newcastle to Berwick-upon-Tweed via A1
- 518 Newcastle to Alnwick
The first two of these ran via the A1 to Alnwick before taking their different routes north from there while the latter ran by the coast to take in places such as Amble, Warkworth and Alnmouth. Now, they have been replaced by two services:
The first of these essentially is a renumbering of the old 505 where the second is an amalgamation of the 518 and the 501. That makes the latter a very slow service since it takes four hours to get the length of its route. It is an hourly service with not every service extending north of Alnwick and that part of the route hasn’t lost its daily hourly service. The X15 takes less time to do its route but it still in no quick service since the train does the same distance in around 45 minutes and it takes more than double that (nearly two and a half hours in fact). Sunday frequency now is two hourly and it doesn’t extend beyond Alnwick like it does on other days of the week when it’s the extensions north of Alnwick virtually are two hourly on a service that is hourly on the southern section.
There is one other change that arrived later than the others, coming on the very first day of this month as opposed to the middle of the previous one, September 16th as it happened. It now looks as if the creation of the X18 partially removed the need for the former 410 Alnwick to Bamburgh via Beadnell and 411 Beadnell to Berwick-upon-Tweed via Bamburgh services because those services finished at the end of September. What began running on October 1st was the 418, a new service that operates Monday to Saturday between Alnwick to Belford service that goes via Beadnell and Bamburgh. The timetable shows a service that has two journeys going the full length of its route on all its days of operation and an extra Belford to Craster return journey from Monday to Friday. Looking at how it compares to the X18, I am left wondering how it got retained but that I suppose that argument applied to the former 401 and 411 services too. Local needs are important so who am I to question what has been retained. So long as folk know what’s there for them, that’s the most important thing.
With all this upheaval, one has to wonder what advantage comes from it. There is one though: connections to places like Bamburgh and Craster from Alnmouth train station have become more frequent although they still aren’t perfect. You still have to cross reference train and bus times to get them to work or enlist the services of Traveline. Otherwise, route changes like the ones that have been implemented do need good communication and I hope that has happened given that the telling of folk about bus services is far from ideal at the best of times. Something tells me that the changes have needed time to bed in and I hope that things are settling down now and with no loss in ridership too.
After next to four years of this site being on WordPress.com, I decided that it was time to go independent with it. If you have been here before, then you shouldn’t see too much changes in appearance apart from a restructuring of content.
Wanting to have this as more of website with a blog attached was the reason for the move. WordPress still powers things behind the scenes but having more more control that I can achieve the aim of having something that collates longer living travel information as well as new and views on current events. Experiences will continue to feature too as things go from here.
My hope now is that this builds as a public transport information for Cheshire East and beyond. Wherever things go, I hope that they will continue to have value for you. If you have any suggestions, just let me know. Freedom from the constraints of where this thing used to may allow them to become a reality.
Yesterday, I found a sign attached to a bus shelter on Churchill Way in Macclesfield calling for support for a campaign to convince Cheshire East Council to retain its financial support of the Monday to Saturday evening bus services between the town and nearby Bollington. The campaign seems to be co-ordinated by Bollington Town Council and has made the front page of the Macclesfield Express too.
That recites arguments about the town being cut off in the evenings and other places are facing the same fate in Cheshire East too. The 130 Macclesfield to Manchester (Parr’s Wood only at times) service was not mentioned in the article, but its Monday to Saturday evening journeys are to lose support too and more places are affected by that decision as will the planned cuts to Sunday evening bus services on service 38 between Macclesfield and Crewe.
Once upon a time, it was possible to talk of making more of an effort to encourage folk to use buses with there being so much of a sense of threat to the continued operation of services. However, that that hasn’t happened is now endangering their continued existence due to dependence on the public purse and maybe the livelihoods of those who need the services for getting to and from work. Some possibly could be operated on a commercial basis and that may happen yet though this is a scary way of finding out which services are or are not sustainable.
The other matter that gives me pause for thought is the way in which the consultation was carried out by the council. On a previous time, there were suggested cuts and the public were invited to respond. The latest review didn’t take that format but rather a survey of bus usage and a series of daytime roadshows, probably held when some who depend on the service whose withdrawal is proposed were at work.
A better way would have been to do that usage survey, held those roadshows when working folk could make them and to have feedback on any proposals. However, it seems that the next stop for the proposals will be a Cheshire East Council cabinet meeting on October 18th without any feedback from the public. The way it has been done looks like an attempt to railroad the cuts in order ensure that they get carried out.
Of course, there still is the matter of local democracy and local folk emailing the likes of Bill Livesley (one of Bollington’s Cheshire East Councillors) to register their opinions on what is planned. With the number of services likely to be affected, it looks as if a fair few councillors need contacting over the matter.
Also, the sum of money that is involved is not that large at around £500,000 and the current budget stands at around £2.2m, again not a large amount given some of the sums that you hear in the media these days. However, the council is seeing cuts in its funding from central government, so I suppose that savings have to be found somewhere. Also, I am left wondering if a moderate increase in council tax would not help with this though many in the borough probably do not fancy the idea of paying more tax and the council is controlled by the Conservatives.
In addition, there is the issue of free travel for older residents and what that is costing. Apparently, Cheshire East’s population is set to get older, so this problem will increase. In fact, some have gone with the idea of the pass entitling you to reduced fares throughout the day and not just prior to 09:30 as is the case at present. With older people being more likely to vote in elections, this is a knotty problem that is set to stay with us for a while yet.
All in all, the consultation was well and good, but I reckon that it could have involved the public more. Having some public comment on the proposed cuts may make it a two stage process, but it has to be better than hearing about cuts without much of an opportunity to provide feedback on them. Last year, there was even less involvement so what we have this year has been an improvement, though there is room for more. Our austere age is presenting some awkward choices for us, but we need to be careful about the loss of bus services. Maybe we should make more use of them to avoid what is happening though the unsettling aspect of the whole business well may have the opposite effect, particularly when we need to encourage less car usage because of road congestion and other sensible reasons.
Cheshire East Council’s Public Transport Consultation has yielded its results and they don’t look all that pretty. Many services face extinction and it could happen just before Christmas according to the proposed timetable. Details of the affected services are divided into schoolday and non-schoolday categories and there’s overview of services receiving financial support too.
While it is a relief to see some pivotal services saved from cuts, there is a surprise too in the form of financial support being recommended for service 27 between Macclesfield and Knutsford. From next month, I was led to believe that was becoming a commercial operation. Maybe that’s like the bus stop sign professing the return of the sadly defunct Sunday journeys of service 108 between Stockport, Macclesfield and Leek following their demise last year. That sign in Oakgrove turned out to be incorrect so it might be the same with the aforementioned recommendation too. Events may have overtaken the consultation.
Returning to the planned losses, school services seem to be taking quite a hit again this year and it looks as if even more of them will be affected than last year. Some non-school services such as the 390 between Poynton, Bramhall and Stockport or the 391 between Middlewood, Poynton and Stockport face total withdrawal altogether. There are more services facing cuts than these but I have selected several for special mention below some that stand out for me. One only can hope that no more savings are needed but it could prove a forlorn one again in 2013.
Service 108: Macclesfield-Leek-Ashbourne
Friday and Saturday only evening journeys, one morning journey from Leek to Macclesfield and Fallibroome High School and afternoon journey from the latter to Sutton: the first of these would be a loss for anyone fancying a day out walking in the Staffordshire Moorlands and Derbyshire Dales but a journey a few years ago had few passengers on it until Macclesfield so these were vulnerable in an era when public spending is under pressure.
Service 378: Wilmslow-Handforth-Stockport
The proposed cuts would leave only a Monday to Saturday daytime service with train travel being needed at other times. This looks like a stark option so axes are in action here.
Service 130: Macclesfield-Wilmslow-Manchester
Monday to Saturday evening journeys between Macclesfield and Didsbury are set for the chop. Sadly, they were seen as marginal during the last round of cuts and seem to be a target this time too. It makes me wonder how anyone working late at Alderley Park (there are some) is supposed to get home; it sounds like more expensive taxis are set to be all that they have if the service goes.
Early Saturday morning services are to be another casualty and it seems that train travel is being cited as an alternative to both. That argument has appeared before but it means that so many spots currently being served will lose what they have. This also was one of the services attracting the most public input and nearly a fifth of those were using it to get to work!
Services 5 & 6: Weston Estate Circular (Macclesfield)
Service 9: Moss Rose (Macclesfield)
Service 10A: Macclesfield-Bollington
Though these are three different services, they face the same cut: the loss of Monday to Saturday evening services. Interestingly, the 10A Sunday service came off council support last year and is run commercially now so there may be hope for some of these journeys. Otherwise, it’s a case of using the more expensive taxi option or walking (always of no cost, of course).
Service 38: Macclesfield-Crewe
It’s the Sunday evening services that are in the firing line here. There was a time when I found these useful though they weren’t so well used so I can see why they are a target. Around ten years ago, there was a proposal to axe all evening journeys on this service but that thankfully never came to pass.
Service 84: Crewe-Nantwich-Chester
This is another trunk service facing the axing of evening services and it seems to be all four of them on every day of the week. Again, train travel has been suggested as an alternative but it still looks like an austere proposition.