On Trains & Buses

A thought struck me while looking at the service frequency for D&G’s service 42 between Congleton and Crewe via Holmes Chapel. It is hourly Monday for the full route and two hourly on Saturdays for the same (it runs only between Leighton Hospital and Crewe on the intermediate hours); there is no Sunday service. Arriva’s 130 exhibits the same type of behaviour with an hourly daytime frequency on Saturdays and Sundays while it is half hourly during the other days of the week. Intuitively, you would have thought that, away from the rush hours, less folk would be using buses on a main work day in comparison to Saturday when the shops are open for the same hours and there are more folk off work to visit them. However, it doesn’t seem to go like that. Confounding factors might include folk spending their free time at home and not travelling about or people using services that are closed at weekends. Both of those could explain why the streets of Macclesfield are next to empty of an evening; if there is nowhere to go then nobody comes. Another thing to remember is that there is an inclination to spend a whole day going somewhere for some activity rather than dividing it up into short chunks. All of these must affect patronage and might explain why the service level of a Sunday simply drops over a cliff. All in all, the behaviour of hoards can be very odd and I suppose that it has its effects on bus timetables too.

Part of last Saturday’s journey to Burnsall had me using service 74 from Ilkley to Grassington. It is a subsidised service operated Monday to Saturday by Pride of the Dales on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council. The route travelled ensures that only small single decker buses are used with Optare Solos being the mainstay these days. An arch over the route at Bolton Abbey precludes the use of double deckers while the narrow road from Barden Bridge to Burnsall by Appletreewick (pronounced as “app-trick” by the locals) is challenging enough for a Solo driver let alone that of a larger vehicle.

The use of smaller vehicles would lead you to think that not many use the service and I was surprised to see the extent of the patronage of the 11:35 from Ilkley last Saturday. In the event, I was lucky enough to get on first and find a seat right at the back so that my rucksack didn’t get in the way of anyone and allowed others to sit around me because I knew that we’d struggle with the numbers. In the end, there was standing room only (with any of these looking unsteady on the legs being offered a seat) and I was inclined to wonder if my getting off at Burnsall would involve displacing standees from the vehicle only for them to have to re-embark afterwards. However, enough left us at Bolton Abbey to ease that possibility although there was a dog owner sat in the middle of the floor later on. Neither was I the only one to leave at Burnsall either so that made things easier and no more disturbance was caused than was needed.

Last Saturday saw me journey by train to Ilkley. Due to work being done by Network Rail, I ended up going around by Bradford, something that I had never done before. A feature of the way that I went was that I ended up hotfooting it between train stations in Manchester and in Bradford. For the former, I could have used the Metrolink but it’s just as quick and easy to walk (around 20  minutes for me); that comment applies as much when the trams are running as it does at the moment when improvement works are in progress with trams replaced by buses in the centre of Manchester. In Bradford, the transfer took around ten minutes and that was even with my never visiting the place before. Its nearby neighbour Leeds seems to have all of the buzz and bustle but Bradford has its quiet appeal too so another visit seems appropriate.

Even with the walking, connections were being made with ample time and all was well until I tried to get from Bradford to Ilkley. Between Shipley and Guisley, there is a single track chord linking the Airedale and Wharfedale lines and all that’s needed to cause a spot of chaos was for a train to break down and that seems to be what happened. The 10:16 from Bradford was what I had in mind but that was cancelled and I ended up on the Skipton train as far as Shipley to pick up a train from there. In fact, this was to be the train that I would have caught in Bradford if it wasn’t to terminate in Shipley and turn around there. A train did turn up but no passengers were taken on board and that after it being late. When that sort of thing happens, you can imagine the mix of confusion, anger and annoyance among those awaiting the service (contingencies were beginning to enter my mind). It didn’t help that we had to cross from one side of Shipley station, not the shortest of walks, to the other either. Luckily, the 10:53 did arrive on time but the observed confusion, miscommunication and lack of communication did nothing to inspire confidence. It was no fault of the station staff because they did their best but those in the Northern Rail control room could do with learning something from this. Thankfully, things sorted themselves out by the time that I was going home again after a good walk by the Wharfe and that worked out as expected. As with everything, you get extremes of flawless working and total breakages.

I was up in Edinburgh for the last weekend of August and noticed that a goodly number of bus stops were supplied with display boards showing when the real number of minutes until the arrival of the next bus(es). The arrangement of the information seems to be by service number rather than time with there being two slots per service. There is some sense to this if you are after a particular service but, if you are of a more flexible mindset, it may seem a little strange at first. Another peculiarity is that the very useful offering only applies to Lothian Buses and not other operators in the city like First or Munros. In fact, Lothian’s services can be so regular that you wonder why satellite tracking is used for them at when it would make far more sense for longer distance services entering and leaving the city while plying their way to destinations like the Borders or Fife. The counterpoint to that is that it saves you having to inspect bus timetables attached to bus shelters and people standing or sitting right in front of them.

The relevance of all this to Cheshire is pertaining to its current piloting of bus tracking services 27 and 130. It is needed especially badly for the 130 with its propensity for getting delayed along its route, particularly at busy times. As if to remind me of the point, the one taking me to work this morning was the most of twenty minutes late. However, my impression is that you need to start up a computer to get the information, as useful as even that it. However, the last thing that you really need to being on going out the door in the morning is going through of starting a computer up to see when the next bus is due and then shutting it down afterwards. That sort of thing can cause you to leave it on all of the time, hardly an environmentally friendly practice. An obvious alternative to this is delivery via mobile phone (text messaging would be handy for those without web enabled handsets) or displaying the time until the next arrivals at well used bus stops like what is in place in Edinburgh. In reality, I can see this type of installation having to await the outcome of the current pilot but I still feel that it’s where things should be headed.

Roadworks seem to have invaded Chester Road after something of a respite. It doesn’t help that the gas network is continuing to be the subject of attention around Macclesfield. The same blighters seem to have targetted the A6 between High lane and Disley too as I found when I was out on my bike last Saturday.

The trouble with roadworks is that they often reduce a road from carrying bidirectional traffic to being a one way street, not that I saw much evidence of temporary traffic lights on Chester Road this evening. Such a situation means that any roads have to be in negotiating mode rather than expecting everyone else to give way for you as did a certain chap driving what looked like a Transit pickup while I was on the bus home. The result was that the bus driver stopped the vehicle and switched the engine off to have a cigarette until the other party got the message. After all, the Transit wasn’t on his own side of the road so the bus driver’s actions perhaps were understandable. After all, he did have the bigger vehicle and cars right behind him so reversing wasn’t going to be as easy as it was for the other guy. Naturally, an exchange of views took place and the van driver was told that he would be there until the police came if he didn’t budge out of the way. It looked like we might be there for some time so I disembarked for a longer but far from unreasonable walk home and left them to it. As it happened, I was soon to hear the sound of a vehicle reversing warning system as the van driver had taken the hint and the bus passed me while making its way. A little more patience and my walk would have been shorter but who was to know? The same could be said for the other drivers who were in the business of turning tale to go another way.