GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

[knutstransport]

RE: GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

(21/01/2016 17:23)GHA Coaches Wrote:  You are correct that a Plaxton Interurban Coach was used for a two days on service 27 and this was due to a shortage of vehicles at Winsford Depot however this has now been resolved following the return of several older Solo's which had been away for upgrade to DDA spec.

Ah OK, there was a number of unusual workings for the Winsford depot recently many of which have been posted on here.

The strange thing about using a coach on the 27 route was that presumably it costs a lot more to use a 50+ seater coach over an approx 30 seater Solo/Dart and while some passengers may like the greater comfort of a coach I imagine most would prefer the weekday timetable to go back to it's pre-October 2012 level* over getting a coach instead of a bus.

* October 2012 was when High Peak decided to reduce the frequency from hourly (between around 7am and 7pm) using 2 buses to every 90 minutes using 1 bus and increase the return fare for Knutsford to Macclesfield from £3.50 to £4.80 overnight (under pressure from Cheshire East council to run the service commercially when it was previously contracted), on top of that the revised service wasn't very punctual. Then High Peak wondered why loadings had dropped so much. While there are now more services than they were in the October 2012 timetable, there are still less than in the pre-October 2012 timetable.