On Trains & Buses

Those who have been here before will notice a few changes. With spring on the way and the chance to play with a new WordPress, I decided that I’d refresh the site’s appearance and brighten it up a little bit. The weather’s very grey where I am writing this in the U.K. and a spot of sun wouldn’t go amiss so I thought that sprucing up the appearance of this thing might offer something to visitors in the meantime.

Macclesfield has been beset by another set of road work. This time, the centre of attention would appear to be Fallibroome Road (single line traffic under temporary traffic light control) and the roundabout at the junction between it, Victoria Road and Priory Lane. My bus to and from work goes by here so let’s hope that the traffic doesn’t back up too badly. There are excavations ongoing and new pipes in evidence so my guess is that the water company has struck again.

I was over in Ireland last weekend and managed to fit in a visit to Wicklow’s hill country. One occurrence that sticks in my memory is an all too rare good tale. I was awaiting the 145 from Bray to Kilmacanogue at Bray train station and a helpful bus driver ask me where I was going and gave a lift up as far as the main street from where I could have a better chance of catching the bus that I was after. This was done free gratis and it is a favour that’s all too rare in the U.K. and it’s nice that it still remains in the country of my birth and upbringing. Of course, the helpful driver worked for the same company as that which ran ran the bus that I wanted, Dublin Bus, but a good welcoming impression was given nonetheless. A bit more of that in these depressed times and returning the favour with more paid patronage would be in order.

Arriva has come up with a new website for www.arrivabus.co.uk. Everything that used to be there remains, albeit that locations have been changed about. I was looking for timetables and they were duly delivered. However, some for Arriva Midlands were incomplete with blank pages in PDF files but that can be remedied by a trip to Traveline. Even so, it’s something that should be fixed sooner rather than later.

It would appear the 130 Macclesfield-Manchester service has been diverted from its usual route via Churchill Way in Macclesfield and now seems to go around by Bond Street and Catherine Street instead. That could come as a shock if you decide to await the thing on Churchill Way or King Edward Street so I thought that I’d better put the word out. As to whether the bus stops to pick up or set down passengers at any point along the diversion, that is something that I cannot say.

In  a move that could be confusing, the 288 service operated by Arriva and serving Knutsford, Wilmslow and Altrincham is set to be called Connect 88. It’s one thing to change operator and bring in new buses but changing the route name is another. A name change is a minor irritation but it can confound and I have seen search results for the 288 in the stats for this site. So, here’s a link to the timetable that applies from next Monday and further information on Cheshire East Council’s website: Connect 88. All should become clearer once you go over there.

Update on 2012-01-30: Above link updated because Cheshire County Council no longer exists.

Annoyingly, Arriva has omitted the timings of the Monday to Saturday evening service between Macclesfield and East Didsbury from their latest 130 Macclesfield-Manchester timetable. I suppose that their excuse would be that they don’t operate it themselves since BakerBus are doing the honours on behalf of Cheshire Country Council. So, to set things to rights, here are some timetables cobbled together from Traveline (the timings are the same for Saturdays regardless of the Monday to Friday trappings of what you find below):

Ireland’s CIE has ended with a €39m loss for the year and is talking of service reductions with its subsidiaries Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus garnering a mention. National Express is laying off 300 back office staff. Stagecoach’s Brian Souter is talking of hard times ahead and there is softening of demand on commuter routes with more people being out of work. All of this is hardly optimistic but it is a reminder that the transport industry is not immune to the economic pressures that we face. Let’s hope that we pull through what lies ahead of us without too many cuts to services.

A few years ago, I went checking out Dublin Bus timetables but met up with a problem: there was nary a sign of how long the journey would take, a slight disadvantage when trying to get somewhere at a particular time. Thankfully, that seems to have been resolved with approximate journey times now being given. It may not be fully comprehensive like other timetabling approaches but it’s a good enough guide for me.

Cheshire County Council has a very useful part of their website where you can get advance notice of any forthcoming changes. Frequent checks there should avert the sort of surprise that a notice on the 130 saying that service changes were due at the start of 2009. They kick in from January 4th in fact and involve an hourly service on Saturdays with no changes on Sundays and minor changes on other days of the week. We’’ll need to see how things pan out but any reductions in frequency have to be a disappointment and I hope that further ones don’t follow. While on the subject of changes,the 27 Macclesfield-Knutsford is facing as yet unspecified minor changes (I hope!) a week later. There used to be a time when these sorts of announcements tend to gravitate around September and October but January seems to be the point this time around.