New Cheshire East bus review

[iMarkeh]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(06/07/2020 10:48)knutstransport Wrote:  Based on a Knutsford Town Council survey this is how much demand there is for different services from Knutsford:

Town Centre 66%
Macclesfield 52%
Altrincham 50%*
Wilmslow 50%
Knutsford (outside Town Centre) 41%
Northwich 34%*
Airport 27%
Warrington 24%
Holmes Chapel 4%
Other 16%

* Some of this demand is down to Northern not providing a good rail service between Northwich and Altrincham via Knutsford e.g. RMT strikes affecting Saturday services for so long and frequent cancellations due to staff shortages.

Some of the complaints include:
- Re-routing the 88 via Longridge means there's no services to/from the bus stop outside the medical centre on Mobberley Road.
- Infrequent Macclesfield services makes getting to and from hospital appointments difficult.
- 88 bus services no longer offering good connections to London bound trains at Wilmslow.
- An Over ward resident complained about buses being packed at times making it difficult for her to travel on the bus with her weekly shopping.

And there were lots of comments about lower frequency meant they used the bus less - in one case someone said they now have to make journeys by taxi instead of bus and only make around 1/4 of the journeys they made before the cutbacks due to the taxi costing more.

There was actually some praise for the 89 timetable, in that people liked the fact it is more consistent than the old 289 timetable - although perhaps not as much now D&G moved the first Knutsford-Northwich journey to be off-pattern!

The town council consider the reinstatement of a town circular service to be a necessity.

What is clear is there isn't justification for running a hourly frequency to Wilmslow and a 2 hourly frequency to Macclesfield and that Cheshire East were perhaps right to dismiss the idea of a subsided Holmes Chapel-Knutsford bus. However, if there were hourly Knutsford-Macclesfield buses and they provided good connections with trains to/from Crewe at Chelford, perhaps people wouldn't bemoan the lack of a Holmes Chapel bus so much.

The proportion of people saying they were very satisfied with the bus service was a whole 0%, with less than 10% saying satisfied.

The satisfaction makes sense when you consider what the buses looked like a few years ago compared to now.

For Holmes Chapel, I think any route would be more used by Holmes Chapel residents going to Knutsford so the figures I think will be lower. I don't dispute demand may be low but I think for the route, it has been consulted at the 'wrong end'.

For the Airport, I would be interested to hear the reasoning for an Airport bus. I say this because if it's for leisure travel, you might as give up since leisure travel won't be used much. If for commuters (Airport City, Cargo Centre or MIA employees), there is a lot more chance of it happening. I would question the potential routings though as you need to maximise local travel as well as end to end travel. Perhaps Knutsford - Mobberley - Morley Green - Airport?

Macclesfield I think has potential for more services, just the services need to better suit the many shift times. Could AstraZeneca be added back in or was that useless on the 27?

I do agree with the town circular returning. The 300 was quite a good little bus. If it was reduced to hourly around Longridge then in the other 30-35 minutes run round trips to Beggemans Lane or High Legh to help the route serve more areas to benefit more people.