Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

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RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(09/07/2014 13:55)507009 Wrote:  The day tickets are bad enough at £5, ridiculously costing more than an all-zone Saveaway which would allow you to use the trains and ferries as well as all bus services within the region. The train is far cheaper for a Wallasey - Liverpool return journey at £3.40. Quite simply, a £5 return journey on the bus is appalling value.

Returning to St Helens, I doubt anti-social behaviour is a significant factor in their decision making. After all, they regularly use the VLW deckers on the 10/10A and previously had Bootle's 4415 on loan. This suggests they are/have been seriously considering an upgrade to deckers on the route and, as a regular user, I can confirm this definitely needs to happen. There are serious capacity problems on the route and this has been the case for years. Even back in the dark days of B10Bs, Flytes, Paladins and Ultralows plying the route, the overcrowding was serious.

I did point out that there are no parallel trains with the 432/433 and 437 they take a totally different route to Liverpool, so you would have to add a bus fare on top to connect to any train from Wallasey, and Saveaway Tickets for cross river cost about the same anyway.

I used the 10/10A for years on a daily basis,Anti Social behaviour was a regular on those buses specially at school times and in the evenings,i use it less now but the same types of idiots are still around,i`m sure it`s hell on some evening journeys,back in the days of MTL they moved away from deckers for that reason,the last new ones MTL got for the 14s had lockable doors to run with the top decks closed in the evenings ,a single decker at least has a safer feel for passsengers and more accesable seating ,many older passengers would never go upstairs ,they don`t on routes that use them now and will stand downstairs and leave empty seats upstairs. it`s also the reason for the very visible cctv screens that stagecoach use on a lot of their newer buses and the bus lane issue has made running times worse lately.