On Trains & Buses

There seems to be an element of concern when changes to bus services that serve Cheshire East are announced and this collection is no different. There is one with timing changes in the form of First’s service 20 from Leighton Hospital and Crewe to Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent for when Stoke’s new bus station opens. This is the safer type of announcement that is preferable, but there are others that aren’t such non-news as other forthcoming changes announced by High Peak on their website. Otherwise, it is a rough and tumble mix that proves that the world of Cheshire East bus service provision is far from stable yet.

Knutsford Service 300

Firstly, there’s the matter of services changing over from council financial support to commercial ventures. One of these is Knutsford town service 300 and the operator is High Peak. However, there is a route change in the form of the withdrawal of the Tabley Road and Queensway extension. This commences at the start of April.

Macclesfield to Crewe Service 38

Monday to Saturday evening services on route 38 have been operated by Arriva and were going out to tender again. However, D & G are going to offer these on a commercial basis from the start of June, and it will be interesting to see how they get on with the journeys. There is one withdrawal as a result of this though since it means that the 23:35 journey will no longer run and the new operation will begin from the first Monday of June. Their depot is in Crewe so it’s not hard to see why that last journey to Macclesfield has been discontinued.

Macclesfield to Knutsford Service 27

Commercial enterprises need not always succeed and High Peak are withdrawing their service 27 between Macclesfield and Knutsford from April 3rd. Having travelled on this service on Saturdays towards the end of last year and seeing reasonable patronage then, this looks disappointing. There were many tweaks to the timetable and the latest one took effect this past Monday so it looks as if these proved to be vain attempts to sustain the service given the latest sad announcement. Cheshire East Council are looking into replacement options so we’ll need to see what they will put in place as a replacement. That 18:40 departure from Knutsford to Macclesfield would have allowed a lovely longer day out around the former and that looks unlikely to survive any changeover.

However, there was a mention of Cheshire East Council’s cabinet supporting the idea of financial support for Macclesfield to Knutsford bus service around the time of the widespread bus funding cuts being announced. Maybe we might see a service offered by GHA on this basis yet? Well, they have been successful in recent contract tendering so their Macclesfield outstation might see more action to follow their gaining Macclesfield to Prestbury and Wilmslow to Manchester Airport council contracts in recent times.

Macclesfield Service 1

Another loss will be Macclesfield town service 1 from the bus station to Forest Cottage. This is a short that always looked a little odd so it may not be so greatly missed. High Peak were the operator and there’s the 58 service between Macclesfield and Buxton that offers a partial alternative anyway. The last running day will be March 16th.

Crewe Service 6E & Crewe to Northwich Service 31

There are to be changes from March 24th to Shavington and Crewe to Leighton Hospital service 6E with D & G taking over the Monday to Friday council contract to go with their Sunday and bank holiday work on the route. Accordingly, Arriva also has pulled their commercial 6E service on Saturdays. It seems that the losing of contracts can result in other effects and that it isn’t only Arriva that are doing this. In fact, they’re also discontinuing the 20:18 Leighton Hospital to Northwich journey on the same day as the 6E changes.

Northwich to Sandbach Service 37E

Monday to Saturday evening journeys from 20:00 are being withdrawn from April 7th and I remember one parked in Sandbach (a 23:04 journey) awaiting passengers a few years back that didn’t show much sign of patronage. So this announcement might have been foreseen and there is no talk of replacement options either.

Wilmslow to Stockport Service 378

April 7th is to be the day when the loss of Sunday services and Monday to Saturday evening journeys is to commence. Interestingly, the Sunday journeys on the curtailed route (it terminates at Grove Lane) are to continue on a commercial basis and there is no talk of the same for the Monday to Saturday evening journeys. There also is to be some re-timing of journeys too, especially the last Monday to Saturday commercial journeys of the day from Wilmslow.

Only change ever is constant and there are a few new developments to share regarding bus services in Cheshire East. The bigger announcement is that BakerBus will be operating the Macclesfield towns routes 5 and 6 on Sundays and bank holidays. There is no change in timetable announced, but it still doesn’t look much of a thank you for their operation of same routes commercially on Monday to Friday evenings.

The timetable for the replacement of the 391 service starting in March, the P1, has been published, and it runs from Middlewood to Hazel Grove via Poynton. GHA are set to run it from around 07:00 until around 18:30 so it’s very much a daytime only affair. The timetable is hourly, and it looks like a one bus operation like the 200 between Wilmslow and Manchester Airport or the 300 Knutsford town service. That probably is the most cost-effective way of doing things so it’s hard to see how more money could be saved apart from running less journeys.

The timetables for the 392 and 393 services from March have yet to be made public and changes are coming. Even with what I reported on here before, I am left wondering if these will be full Macclesfield to Stockport routes operated by High Peak. Only time will tell if those hopes have been misplaced as has been my understanding.

When GHA took over the Sunday 130 route between Macclesfield and Manchester, the timetable got tweaked, so all departures from Macclesfield are five minutes earlier than they were. Journey time then is an hour and twenty-five minutes with all Manchester departures at 29 minutes past the hour. Like before, the last service from Manchester only goes as far as Wilmslow. Otherwise, the timetable is not overly dissimilar to that operated by Arriva though I do wonder if it might become more Macclesfield-centric in time with their having a base near the town; currently, the Manchester bias of the service is maintained.

Apart from the above, there are temporary route changes due to roadworks. Middlewich is affected until late in February and services 37 (Northwich to Sandwich to Crewe) and 42 (D&G Congleton to Crewe) are diverted. Crewe services 8, 8A and 9 are affected by roadworks on Middlewich Street in the town from tomorrow until next Tuesday except for Saturday and Sunday.

There may have been a time that I might have thought that bus services didn’t change so quickly in Cheshire East but that’s not how it feels now so I have gone for a more standard title. It feels easier than trying to come with new ones all the time and the article hopefully passes the proverbial Ronseal test too.

Update 2013-01-31: March timetable for Macclesfield to Stockport bus services is now online. Most services go via Bollington and Pott Shrigley with only a few going via Adlington. The former is the route of the 392 and the latter the 393, so this is a big change. Hopefully, it’ll do nothing to undermine the sustainability of the service with the possibility of more council funding cuts not being one that can be discounted.

It’s come to my attention at short notice that G.H.A. Coaches are taking over the Sunday Macclesfield to Manchester service from Arriva on next Sunday (2013-01-13). Whether that means that Arriva weekly and four-weekly tickets will be accepted remains to be seen and I wouldn’t bet on it unless I hear confirmation first. On the D & G Sunday service on the Crewe to Macclesfield route 38, I have never seen anyone proffer an Arriva saver ticket so I wouldn’t be surprised if the same applies here. Looking at Traveline, the timetable is staying the same for now though the Cheshire East Council website suggests to the contrary. Unfortunately, the change involves yet more fragmentation and that hasn’t helped the cause of some of our services recently; the lost Monday to Saturday evening 130 journeys come to mind here. Will it also further test the appetite that Arriva’s Wythenshawe depot has for running the 130 and would getting G.H.A. to run the whole thing be the sort of development that we need? Maybe now isn’t the time for such experimentation but I and others have had more revolutionary thoughts so what about it? There are more questions than answers on the topic and such is where we find ourselves in these times.

Speaking of G.H.A., they are set to operate a partial replacement for the 391 service from 4th March. The new service is called the P1 and we have yet to see details of the timetable for it. There seems to be a growing trend of G.H.A. winning more council contracts recently with the 200 Wilmslow to Manchester Airport and Connect 19 Macclesfield to Prestbury services going their way too. Given that the company is based in rural Denbighshire, this may come as a surprise but I think that they have an outstation in Macclesfield that originally started with schoolbus services before they gained the Connect 88 between Knutsford, Wilmslow and Altrincham.

The mention of Poynton allows me to relate that High Peak will be taking over the 392 and 393 services from BakerBus from the start of March too. It’s a pity to see a quality operator like BakerBus losing out like this, especially given that they brought newer buses to the route when they started on it a few years ago. Those were different times though and the the announcement of the P1 makes me wonder if the truncation at Hazel Grove still applies or if there might be through ticketing via the 199 Skyline service between Buxton and Stockport to compensate for it. It’s an interesting possibility.

High Peak are not done with tweaking the 27 service between Macclesfield and Knutsford though and there are major route alterations to come from 11th February. Some journeys were numbers 27A but no longer will be the case. Beggarman’s Lane will not be served and that’s not exactly a surprise since I saw no one living there use the service on the journeys that I used. That now means that any journeys going via Over Peover and Whipping Stocks Inn will be routed via Ollerton and Knutsford train station instead. The Monday to Friday Over Peover service level is to be cut though with only the following journeys going that way: 1000, 1130, 1300 and 1430 from Macclesfield; 1045, 1215, 1345 and 1515 from Knutsford. That makes me wonder about those going to work at the Barclays site of Radbroke Hall who used to travel by bus and how they managed now. Saturday services are unaffected but that’s little consolation to them. On the subject of workplaces, the Alderley Park loop is getting shortened only to serve only Mereside and not Alderley House. Only for the speed bumps in that place being very harsh, it would be difficult to comprehend why this is being done but bus suspension damage cannot be cheap to fix and there have been complaints from a bus company operating there in the past.

So, while I was thinking that it would be quiet on here for a while, I found the above today. There may be a big upheaval in progress following last year’s decisions on funding cuts but it seems that other changes are not excluded either. What we really need is more news like the investment being made by D & G into Crewe town service 1 but I am sceptical about that at this stage when Cheshire East bus services continue to get rough treatment and one wonders at what we could hear later in the year.

Bollington once had its train station on a railway that extended from Marple to Macclesfield. That is no more and much of the route of that railway is the Middlewood Way, a recreational cycling route between the two places formerly connected by a train line. Some of the alignment near Bollington has a truck depot across it and more of it may have been used for the Silk Road feeding the A523 into Macclesfield from Hazel Grove.

That former railway also served Higher Poynton and the platforms remain and get used as picnic areas by passing walkers, cyclists and equestrians. However, Poynton still has a train station while Bollington doesn’t. That means that residents of the latter need to get to Macclesfield or Prestbury since they have the nearest train stations. Of the two, it is the former that has the more trains due to its being a principal station on the West Coast Mainline.

Given the latter fact, it’s just as well that there is a plentiful supply of bus services connecting Bollington to Macclesfield. The 10 and 10A are the main ones with the first of these offering a half-hourly frequency during daytimes from Monday to Saturday. The latter runs all day on Sundays and lost its subsidy last year, thankfully without any reduction in service frequency. The equivalent Monday to Saturday evening services are set to lose their council funding next month and vigorous campaigning on the part of Bollington Town Council have Arriva trying it out as a commercial operation. Hopefully, a good level of support from residents will see it continue as it does on Sundays.

There’s a service 11 to Kerridge too that adds to those going towards the Happy Valley, as Bollington is known due to having good mill owners in its industrial heyday. It doesn’t go the full length of the town but turns from the main road partway. It is a Monday to Saturday daytime operation with an hourly frequency. The operator is BakerBus on a council contract and it escaped attention during the 2012 cuts. Before BakerBus, Bostocks had the contract and Arriva had it before them again.

The last bus service for mention passes through Bollington on its way from Macclesfield to Stockport, the 392. The frequency is two-hourly and it too is operated by BakerBus on a council contract. The withdrawal of the 391 in Poynton means that it hasn’t escaped the current cuts. From the beginning of March 2013, it is set to terminate in Hazel Grove, a disappointing development.

There once were Sunday bus services along the route of the 392. Last year’s cuts saw the end of them with the 108 between Stockport and Leek withdrawn. That had three journeys a day in each direction and made walks around Leek more a reality for the bus user. That, in turn, had replaced a Sunday 392 that ran on a similar frequency though the last 19:00 departure from Stockport was a pointless affair.

Bollington is well supplied with bus services and those who will fight to retain them too, the latter being an especially rare commodity in recent years in Cheshire East. They will need to continue their efforts, methinks. It helps that Bollington is a good place to visit thanks to its location among hills and all the things that happen there thanks to a sense of community that needs exporting to other parts of Cheshire.

The 130 bus service is one that I use regularly to get to and from work so I have a vested interest in seeing how its timetable will look next month. The latest round of bus subsidy cuts have taken their toll and only the Sunday service seems to have escaped. However, if there are any more funding reductions, it too could end up on Cheshire East Council’s cross-hairs. The same cannot be said for the rest of the week.

Today however, Arriva have registered changes to come into force for the end of next month and these have appeared on Cheshire East Council’s website. In their own way, they are quite extensive with lots of little reductions to come. The timetable has yet to become available but this is a flavour of what the changes are.

Monday to Friday services only see one change in the last departure from Macclesfield at 18:10 will terminate at East Didsbury instead of going all of the way into Manchester as it does now. This makes it like the 17:40 and means that the last two journeys of the day from Macclesfield are similarly curtailed so the more regular services offered by Stagecoach will be needed to continue further.

It is the Saturday services that see the bigger changes with the current 06:45 and 07:45 journeys from Macclesfield starting from East Didsbury instead. Also, the seemingly useful 18:35 departure is set to get axed too. Is this possibly another casualty of the abolition of the evening journeys between Macclesfield and East Didsbury? After all, it is unlikely that you will leave Macclesfield for a night out by bus if you cannot make it back in the same way. The last Saturday change is confusingly described but my take is that any journey currently starting from Brunswick Street in Manchester will start from East Didsbury instead.

Such is the extent of the change made by Arriva and D&G’s service withdrawal that a summary is in order. So, here are a few tables with service start and end times to show how savage the service cuts will be. Sunday evening services amazingly persist and show what has been lost for the other days, partially saving me the need to show how things are at the moment. Hopefully, they’ll save folk from getting caught out.

Towards Manchester Piccadilly Gardens (M) or East Didsbury (ED)

From Manchester Piccadilly Gardens (M), Brunswick Street (B) or East Didsbury (ED)

Last buses from Wilmslow to Macclesfield

Seeing all of the reductions leaves me wondering if we need to rethink the operation of the 130 to make it more sustainable. Splitting it has been a suggestion that cropped up in a comment on a previous post. After all, train services between Macclesfield and Manchester are such that buses over the equivalent road route are less attractive and the same has to be said for Wilmslow too. The merit of buses is that they connect intermediate points and those connections suffer whenever services are withdrawn to the extent that we are about to witness next month.

One thing that strikes me about bus services that have escaped unscathed such as the 200 between Wilmslow and Manchester Airport (now operated by GHA) is that they don’t much in the way of buses and drivers. Being able to have just a single bus and driver at a time seems to be the best recipe for keeping a service by the lucks of things. That was the intention of the timings for the evening 130 services between Macclesfield and East Didsbury but I now reckon that the length of the route still may have been too long for it to truly work as it should.

Following on from the above, I am coming to think that the 130 should be split. The Cheshire portion would be between Macclesfield and Handforth since that would take less than an hour to go one way according to the current timetable. Having a local operator who would stick with the route would be beneficial too since the level of commitment from either Arriva or D&G has done nothing to inspire confidence.

Though it proved very useful when train services between Macclesfield and Manchester were blighted by engineering works around a decade ago, I now wonder if keeping the route as it is now is a luxury that we cannot afford. My suggestion would mean that a gap needed sorting on the Greater Manchester end and it would be interesting to hear how that would look. Anything has to be better than a declining service level and apparently uncommitted operators.