On Trains & Buses

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.

Arriva’s Monday to Saturday mainly half hourly daytime bus service 16 between Altrincham, Sale and Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens is being withdrawn from April 27th. With bus budget savings of around £7m needing to be found by Transport for Greater Manchester, it is difficult to see its getting replaced unless an operator like first or Stagecoach steps in to provide an alternative.

Final details of cuts to North Yorkshire’s bus services are available and it is not a happy picture. It all starts in April but there is some solace in the introduction of summertime Dalesbus services around the same time. Many of these are seasonal weekend services but anything is better than nothing for visitors to Yorkshire’s dales who want to travel by public transport.

There are more changes to Cheshire East bus services from the end of April. Early morning Monday to Saturday journey on High Peak service 58 between Macclesfield and Buxton are being tweaked as follows:

Current 06:40 from Buxton to leave 10 minutes earlier at 06:30

Current 07:45 from Buxton to leave 3 minutes earlier at 07:42.

Current 07:10 from Macclesfield to leave 5 minutes earlier at 07:05.

Of these, only the 07:45/07:42 runs on Saturdays according to the High Peak timetable and the first Saturday departure from Macclesfield in at 09:15 and that comes as a surprise to me. It also rules out early starts from the Cat and Fiddle Inn for walking outings.

Less favourably, Saturday journeys on Arriva’s service 130 are changing due to the withdrawal of financial support from Transport for Greater Manchester. The full impact of this is as yet unknown to me but I will post details as soon as I get them. The week commencing 2014-04-27 is to see the introduction of these alterations as well as those applying to buses between Buxton and Macclesfield.