New Cheshire East bus review

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(06/05/2020 15:37)iMarkeh Wrote:  Until there is more competition for tenders and a company who wants to run low profit commercial routes. If GHA was still going, I don't think half the cuts would have happened. They thrived off low profit commercial and tenders and that kept council costs lower.

I don't think the merging of routes has helped either. When GHA last won the 88 tender there were 7 bids for the contract and I think GHA knew it would be competitive, hence why their bid was for it to be a 'Gold' route. Not sure who the other bidders were but Altrincham-Wilmslow-Knutsford could have been of interest to some of the Greater Manchester operators, particularly those who were already operating in the Altrincham area at the time. However, is that still the case if they have to run out as far as Macclesfield & Northwich?

Although, competition hasn't always been beneficial. Both High Peak and GHA were guilty of registering reduced frequency services commercially to try and prevent a competitor running the service under contract - in one case with GHA that was after they lost the contract for the 130 Sunday service to D&G. The problem that caused is when GHA collapsed Cheshire East no longer had funding set aside for 3 services, which they had previously subsided which resulted in even further reduced frequencies on the affected services and on other services.