On Trains & Buses

With what has been witnessed elsewhere, it has been a surprise that we haven’t been hearing about bus service subsidy cuts here in Cheshire East. That changed a few weeks ago and a number of bus services that have been identified as low priority are now facing withdrawal of council funding.It seems that the trend in other places such as Warrington, North Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northamptonshire finally has reached us too.

One surprise in there is Arriva’s Sunday service 10A between Macclesfield and Bollington. One time that I used it, it seemed well used but one occasion does not tell the whole story. It seems that they have decided to continue operating service 14 from Macclesfield to Langley on a commercial basis so that gives some hope for the 10A, even if you do wonder how long the 14 will continue on Sundays.

Of less surprise is the fact that the 108 serving Stockport, Macclesfield and Leek on Sundays is at risk as is the summer Sunday service 27 from Macclesfield to Knutsford. Indeed, there are other rural services like these that rate low on the priority list too but some are going to operated commercially. What will be interesting is seeing how long they last.

However, school services seem to be bearing the brunt of the cutbacks and it is their cost of operation that seems to be cause if you take into account the council figures. Nevertheless, it is pity to see withdrawals when you consider the contribution of the school run to morning and evening traffic levels.

To its credit the council has tried to let bus users in on what is happening though signs on bus stops could have appeared sooner; I only spotted them this week. On their website, there is a page devoted to Public Transport Criteria information and the relevant documents from the most recent council cabinet meeting are also there to be found too. Until Friday, it seems that the situation with regard to some services is fluid but we only can hope that there is as much continuity as possible when decisions have been taken and how things will take shape at the end of October.

While the changes are unsettling and will be seen as short-sighted by some, they aren’t as bad as the stories heard in other parts of the country. For one thing, North Yorkshire has gone a lot further than this. What be seen from various documents is how many subsidised bus services are under observation. These include the evening Monday to Saturday 130 service between Macclesfield, Wilmslow and Parr’s Wood and there are a few others like it in there too. In a time when usage and cost are being scrutinised, we do not need to be losing necessary bus services that folk get about so vigilance and support for services is vital. With the squeeze on the public finances, nothing can be taken for granted.

On Saturday, I embarked on a trip to Wales and I happened to have the misfortune to travel when there were problems with a set of signals in the Trent valley. That meant that a connection from Stoke-on-Trent to Crewe was late because it was a London Midland service from London to Crewe. That meant that my planned journey from Macclesfield to Bangor no longer was possible.

The 13:13 London Midland service turned up after the 13:34 East Midlands service from Derby so I was travelling on that instead. The result was that the 13:49 Virgin train to Chester left without me even with its being delayed too. It was the 14:23 Arriva Trains Wales service that got me there where I caught a train to Llandudno Junction from where I took another to Bangor, where I arrived at 16:35 and not at 15:28 as I had hoped. Even so, no serious damage was done to my plans and I enjoyed a lovely sunny evening regardless.

That last outbound train spent longer in Conwy than expected. A train conductor had not warned cyclists that they needed to be at the centre of the train to disembark. The result was that the rest of us were left waiting while the cyclists realised where they needed to be and made their way there. Only for having the man staffing the refreshments trolley in our carriage, quite a few of us would been ignorant of what was going on. It was another example of a day when trains were in no hurry.

On the return journey the next day, there was only one delay and that was due to train coupling in Llandudno Junction. The sunny weather had lured a fair few folk to the north Wales coast so Arriva Trains Wales were making sure at least one of their services was long enough to convey all who came to catch it, something from which other operators would do well to learn. Six minutes may have been lost but that was no perturbation to my journey home because there was enough slack to cope with it. My arrival time in Macclesfield didn’t have to change like that in Bangor the day before.

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.

Last week, the 18:39 130 bus service from Wilmslow to Macclesfield was early both nights that I happened to use it. It was an observation that set me to thinking whether we need a change of timetable for those times of year when the schools are not open. After all, it’s amazing quite the difference on the level of road traffic that you see at mid-term breaks compared the times leading up to and following them.

Some operators who mix in schoolbus services with their normal passenger workings do have different times of operation according to school term times and holidays. If you want some good examples of that, just take yourself off to the remoter reaches of Scotland. Argyll, Lochaber and Skye especially come to mind and it’s all down to the sparse population densities caused by history and geography.

Around more populous parts like Cheshire, it’s a different story because bus companies are not as dependent on schoolbus contracts for their businesses as happens around Argyll. You get the same service level for normal passenger workings regardless. What is the point of my piece is that variation in traffic levels have such a variation in bus journey times that I am left wondering if learning how timetables could be changed might be a good idea. There was a time when the I blamed the school run for all of this but I now recognise that there is more to the quietening of roads of this. In fact, it seems that timing of holidays from work by parents makes up the greater share of this.

Having different timetables for school term and holiday times sounds like causing a certain amount of upheaval for passengers but there are precedents for this in the form what is offered on bank holidays and around Christmas and New Year (sorry to mention those at this time of year, by the way). We have become accustomed to having different bus times for those occasions so why not have them more widely so long as bus companies don’t go using the exercise to curtail bus services as well. There is logistical overhead in doing this and some thought is needed when it comes to providing the timing information at bus stops. However, this is the sort of thing that goes on already and harmonising the term and holiday timings might even make it easier for the travelling public. These days, we have internet journey planners in the Traveline too and there’s also the ongoing GPS tracking of buses. All in all, the more that I think about instating school holiday bus timetables, I start to wonder if it hasn’t been suggested before.

Here are a few rural Welsh railways with websites devoted to their promotion. The information has been moved from elsewhere on the web during a spring clean so that it lives on. Hopefully, some can make use of this posting.

Conwy Valley Railway

It’s nearly ten years since I first travelled along this stretch of the National Rail network and guidebooks were issuing warnings about the future of the line. Then, an elderly diesel multiple unit was what plied the scenic route but more modern 150’s carry on the service these days. The operator has changed too with Arriva Trains Wales having taken over from a now-defunct First North Western in the intervening years. The website is a Conwy Borough Council microsite and very useful it appears too. So far, all those fears from a decade ago have proved unfounded though trains are replaced by buses in the winter months and there is the hourly X1 Llandudno-Blaenau Ffestiniog service operated by Express Motors on other days of the week too. With its passage through the pretty alluring countryside and its connections to the Ffestiniog narrow gauge railway, let’s hope that its future isn’t imperilled by an inclement economic climate or public spending cuts.

Heart of Wales Line

This website comes from the Heart of Wales Line Forum, one of several community rail partnerships in Britain, and it does look as if they promote a railway that needs it. Despite their best efforts, the service level comes to four trains each way from Monday to Saturday and two each way on Sundays. It’s a long rural line too as it winds its way from Craven Arms in Shropshire to its eventual destination of Swansea. Trains don’t start from or terminate at Craven Arms though because Shrewsbury is the actual northern terminus and I have seen the single carriage train that plies the line attached to a two-car set at Crewe on Sunday mornings. Now that I think of that, I wonder if it still is the arrangement even if a vague memory leaves me with the impression that it has changed. On the Welsh side of the border, the route does wind through at least one narrow valley before round the Brecon Beacons National Park, first to its north but then to its west. The latter has been planting ideas of exploring the park’s western reaches from this line though that has yet to come to pass. Well, it’s never any harm to have ideas in mind…