On Trains & Buses

Yorkshire may be getting a taste of the Tour de France in July but Ireland is having a flavour of the Giro d’Italia in May. As a result, there is a mixture of special additional services and alterations to normal services in Northern Ireland between the eight and eleventh of May inclusive.

Information from Stagecoach North East for services around Newcastle, Sunderland, South Shields, Teeside and Hartlepool.

This is the information from Metrobus: A Sunday service will operate on Good Friday 18th April, Sunday 20th April and Easter Monday 21st April. A normal Saturday service will operate on 19th April.

There are three seasonal bus services starting on Holy Thursday in Northern Ireland and they continue until the end of September too. Here they are:

252: Larne to Coleraine

402: Coleraine to Carrick-a-Rede

405: Mourne Rambler

The first two of these are coastal services sampling the delights of County Antrim’s coastline and the third one allows you to enter County Down hill country. All are worth savouring.

A community company calling itself Western Dales Bus is addressing a need for bus services around Sedbergh, Dentdale and Wensleydale that cannot be served by a commercial bus company. Volunteers drive a minibus provided by Cumbria County Council that works journeys connecting with trains on the Settle to Carlisle railway line.

A Saturday service is offered year round between Dent train station, Sedbergh and, with one return journey, Kendal. Summertime sees a similar offering running to its own timetable on Sundays and bank holidays too. On the extra days, there are extensions to Hawes too. This summer service started from 2014-04-01 and it’s good to see its like returning and 2014 is its third year if I remember correctly. Nevertheless, I believe this is the first year that a community company is doing the honours and I hope that they do well because this is lovely and quiet part of the world.

Aside from gaining the TfGM contract for evening journeys on service 247 between Altrincham and the Trafford Centre or tweaks to times for services 18, 19 and 263, there also is some chopping in the form of the complete dropping of service 16 between Altrincham and Manchester as well as curtailments of early Saturday morning journeys on service 130 between East Didsbury and Manchester city centre. More details are on the Arriva website if you need to know more.

Arriva has announced the bus services that they will operating as part of the Sunday and bank holiday DalesBus network on their website. It all starts on Easter Sunday (2014-04-20) and there is the omission of 2014-07-06 due to the Tour de France. Aside from that special occasion, these are useful options for getting out of places like Wakefield, Leeds, Dewsbury and Selby into countryside that is a world away. Wharfedale, Nidderdale, Wensleydale and Swaledale get the connections and Arriva are but one part of this effort.

Recently, I learned that summer Sunday and bank holiday bus services around the Brecon Beacons will not run this year. There has not been as much noise about the threat to the BeaconsBus network as its MoorsBus counterpart but it is in the same situation due to concessionary fare cuts in Wales. So far, the only possible mitigation is the continued operation of a bike bus but there needs to be some grassroots movement like what has come about in the North York Moors. What about it? It might be too late for 2014 due to seemingly short notice but could something happen for 2015?

Herefordshire Council is reviewing their bus services now and cuts are in the pipeline. You have until 21st April to make your views known. £1m of savings are being sought so this is not going to be a painless exercise and an annual subsidy budget of around £1.6m with an annual concessionary travel reimbursement budget of around £1.4m put the two-year saving target in perspective. Maybe a council tax rise would be better?

Few places in England are escaping the chill wind of bus service cuts with Greater Manchester now joining their number. Only generalities are known for now but subsidised bus services in the area are under threat and Arriva’s service 130 between Macclesfield and Manchester is et to lose funding for Saturday services with changes coming into place from April 27th. Quite what form these will take is unknown to me at the moment apart from a general comment about some journeys not going between Parr’s Wood and Piccadilly Gardens but I will share more details when I do. Other services may see reductions in time.