Diamond Bus North West

[gilesbus1]

RE: Diamond Bus North West

(07/11/2019 07:28)M60lad Wrote:  Another route lost on 582 route which used to do well was Paul Hughe's 592 Shakerley-Bolton service trading as Atherton Bus Company, this always used to do quite well for Paul and would always leave Bolton full and was always driven by Paul himself who was a wondeful and friendly person and looked after his passengers.

As for other problems that 582 has yes I will go with timings as most daytime journies between Bolton and Leigh only get 30mins to do the full journey and you can spend most of that time depending on the time of day queing in traffic up St Helens Road and because of this and the frequency of 582s during the day (its classed as a frequent service) you can end up with the one behind and even the one behind that catching up with the one in front meaning at least 3 are running virtually together all the way from Bolton-Leigh so by the time the buses get to Leigh there's been a gap in service.

Getting into Leigh can also be a problem sometimes losing more time for 582s with traffic on Leigh Road queing from just before Kirkhall Lane all the way into Leigh adding another 10 or more minutes onto the journey.

Personally I think the answer would be to increase the running time to 582 to give it more time to do the full route as I thik this would help as I dread to wonder what the loss mileage is like for 582 sometimes as I do know that from time to time the odd 582 does or did end up running empty from terminus to terminus to try and get it back on time.

Yep I agree with most of this, the issue with Kirkhall Lane is that many people use it as its an access route to the large ASDA and therefore several cars queue to access ASDA in the reverse journey, and also as has been said before a number of side roads opening on to Leigh Road then the Avenue lights themselves cause much of that.

Real improvements would be for larger 55 seat saloons on tri-axles, similar to those based on Alexander Dennis E200MMCXL chassis as sold in New Zealand to a number of operators, there are no major sharp turns so they should not be an issue with access, the step entrance saloons that were used, after all were fine. Iit would be even better no doubt if such machines could be given BYD Electric running units/chassis, so as to meet green standards, however not sure ADL will ever offer the XLB model in the United Kingdom, and neither are there any plans currently for BYD to provide chassis for such a model.

As for the empty trips I have seen several of them, which are a pain in the neck if your stood at a bus stop, I remember an occasion when 3 vehicles past all running empty from Leigh back to Bolton and ending up waiting about 25 minutes while this happened, I think that some times controllers want to get stuff from one end to the other but not the stages in-between.