New Cheshire East bus review

[iMarkeh]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(09/07/2020 12:15)knutstransport Wrote:  Not sure of the relevance of the GHA 88 timetable. When D&G first took over the 88 they ran half-hourly Altrincham-Wilmslow-Knutsford with a 65 minute journey time, a 20 minute layover in Knutsford and a 5 minute layover in Altrincham. Someone at Cheshire East decided the 88 having a layover at Knutsford and the Howards 27 having an even longer layover in Macclesfield wasn't cost effective and the layover times needed to be reduced to bring down the subsides.

GHA and Arrivas 88 only used 4 buses with journey time around 55 min. D&G have added on 6 minutes between Altrincham and Wilmslow Station and a further 4 minutes between Wilmslow Station and Mobberley. There's also an additional 9 minutes between Mobberley and Knutsford but some of that is understandable with the diversion.

I think the end to end 88 has too many issues as services are trying to accomodate too many markets and what has happened is they tried to serve so many that they ended up serving none. I say this on the basis that there are college, school and staff buses which now take people to the places which the previous routes did or could have done but because the timings are so off, the schools/colleges/workplaces are now funding buses to run so they can get people where they need to be without huge gaps in the timetables.

We can keep going around in circles as the Knutsford buses situation has been mentioned multiple times. I just hope this new bus review, which the thread was originally started for, makes some changes for the better.