On Trains & Buses

City of York Council also is having a consultation on services to which it wants to cut funding. All supported evening and Sunday services could see funding withdrawn and some services are affected too. Being a city, the effect may not be what it is in rural areas but it is a sign of the times in which we live.

Dorset is seeing services change or being withdrawn within the next few weeks. Many of the ones to stop running currently operate on just one day of the week, so I suppose the council got to questioning the need to retain these. However, one partly commercial service is being lost even if the council is stepping in to replace another one that is shortened.

Bus routes cut or merged as Kent County Council bids to save £400,000 on rural routes (article from KentOnline)

Derbyshire County Council is proposing the abolition of their subsidised bus network like what has happened in Cumbria. This is planned for October 2017 and there is a consultation ongoing until 2016-04-24. It sounds short-sighted and I already have made my views known. It helps also that this is a survey that is easy to complete.

The start of 2016 is set to see these bus service changes in Cheshire:

2016-01-20 Service 9/9A (Routemaster Buses)

Service reverts to the previous route.

2016-01-16 Service 8: (Routemaster Buses) Crewe – Wistaston

Commercial service withdrawn.

2016-01-11 Service 20 (Routemaster Buses) Crewe – Ruskin Road – Kingsway – Beech Drive

Route and timetable revised.

2016-01-04 Service 8 (Routemaster Buses) Crewe – Wistaston

New Monday to Saturday commercial service to replace withdrawn Arriva service 8.

Service 9, 9A (Routemaster Buses)

Timetable and route revised to link with new Routemaster 8 service.

Service C84 (Routemaster Buses) Chester – Crewe

New commercial service part replacing withdrawn Arriva 84 journeys to/from Chester.

2016-01-03

Manchester Bridge, Crewe roadworks from 3 January to 6 April. D&G service 8, 8A will run to a revised timetable and will operate in a clockwise direction around the Sydney and Elm Drive estates.

2016-01-02 Service 8 (Arriva) Crewe – Beech Drive – Crewe

Service withdrawn

Service 8 (D&G Bus) Crewe – Beech Drive – Crewe

New Monday to Friday commercial service to part replace withdrawn Arriva service 8.

It does appear that rail services in the north of England are facing a transformation that begins from next April when Arriva takes on the Northern franchise and First continues with Transpennine Express without the involvement of Keolis. Only time will tell how it all goes but here are some links in the meantime:

Massive boost to rail services brings Northern Powerhouse to life

Transforming TransPennine Express

FirstGroup plc welcomes award of TransPennine Express rail franchise

Some of the above take the form of press releases while others provide further information. There may be time yet for me to provide some commentary of my own to follow the above, but I hope that these will be useful for now.

From 2015-12-19 the following Cheshire bus services will be withdrawn:

RR3 Disley – Macclesfield X20 Middlewich – Cheshire Oaks X81 Winsford – Hanley

From 2015-12-21, the following Cheshire bus service changes will come into place:

27X Macclesfield – Knutsford: service withdrawn, registration cancelled. 36 Crewe – Haslington – Sandbach: service now only operates during school term time. 12:25 from Crewe withdrawn. 11:55 from Sandbach withdrawn. 39 Macclesfield – Congleton: service number changed from 39 to 87 to avoid number clash on network. New 07:00 journey from Congleton added. 18:00 journey from Congleton withdrawn. 12:00 journey withdrawn and 13:00 journey added. 44 Crewe – Nantwich: service now only operates during school term time. 38 Crewe – Congleton – Macclesfield: most of the extra commercial journeys introduced on 2015-08-31 have been withdrawn. 88 Knutsford – Wilmslow – Altrincham: timetable revised with some journeys added or extended. 130 Macclesfield – Manchester: timetable revised and runs on Sundays only.

From next Sunday, Arriva will be altering some services around Crewe, Northwich and Winsford. Service 85 from Winsford to Winsford Industrial Estate is to be withdrawn with some Monday to Friday morning and afternoon journeys on service 29 from Northwich to Over St. John’s getting re-numbered 29A and re-routed to replace it. The Saturday service frequency on route 29 is changed to be hourly. Saturday timetables also are revised for service 6 between Crewe and Brookhouse and service 8 between Crewe and Wistaston Green. Otherwise, service 84 between Crewe and Chester will have its route revised in Chester to start and finish at Chester Railway Station with some timetable revisions too.

These are some changes to bus services in Greater Manchester:

Service 43A High Park to Carr Lane Replaced by service 43 for evening and Sunday journeys with the Russell Road section of route no longer being served.

Service 46 Russell Road to Carr Lane Service is re-routed from Carr Lane to operate via Duke Street and Shakespeare Street (omitting Cemetery Road), before going via Lord Street, London Street, Sussex Road, Norwood Avenue (omitting Hoghton Street, Manchester Road, Hawkshead Street and Tithebarn Road). Journeys in the opposite direction reverse this route.

Services 43 and 46 will each revert to a 30 minute frequency.

Service 44 Crossens to Formby Evening and Sunday service will be increased to operate every 30 minutes between Crossens and Formby but will omit Walnut Street in both directions.

Telford & Wrekin council are embarking on a public consultation regarding the bus services that they support in their area. Apparently, it is only 2% of the total provision and costing around £1.7m per annum. Still, you do wonder if there are larger items of expenditure to interrogate and this is the story with much bus service funding in the U.K. Also, the consultation page on their website was not working when I looked.