New Cheshire East bus review

[iMarkeh]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(23/06/2019 09:05)T42 PVM Wrote:  Only thing i would ask if where are Labour going to find the money to fund extra Peak Services (Or anything else for that matter!). Bus funding has been cut repeatedly since 2010.

I think CWaCC has a large reserve and are promising improvements to trains (above what is on minimum specs so would have to be funded by them) and new bus routes (which they havent been able to afford for years). Perhaps CEC also has a large reserve or perhaps they are wasting money in some areas. Labour councils tend to find more income somehow to spend more as well. Aren't council taxs higher in Labour areas than Tory. In which case, that is how they will fund the changes.

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review
New contract to be awarded for Northwich, Winsford, Middlewich, Leighton Hopistal, Crewe to Shavington service starting in Feb 2020: https://www.northwichguardian.co.uk/news...-hospital/

[mikestone]

 RE: New Cheshire East bus review
When was there last a Sunday service between Crewe and Northwich - personally I doubt that actual use of such a service will come anywhere near what survey results suggest.

[K10K11]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(25/12/2019 16:33)mikestone Wrote:  When was there last a Sunday service between Crewe and Northwich - personally I doubt that actual use of such a service will come anywhere near what survey results suggest.

I think the 31 Crewe to Northwich had a limited Sunday service in the 80s, although even that might have just ran as far as Winsford. And the 37 used to run hourly on Sundays but again that stopped at Winsford.

The section in Crewe to Leighton is an obvious link which could do with reinstating, but I can honestly see any extension to Middlewich, Winsford and Northwich being well intentioned but short lived.

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(25/12/2019 16:33)mikestone Wrote:  When was there last a Sunday service between Crewe and Northwich - personally I doubt that actual use of such a service will come anywhere near what survey results suggest.

Not sure there's actually been a proper review or any survey. It seems a lack of Sunday service to Leighton Hospital has been raised as an issue by both councils and their solution is a combined 31 & 12 route to run on Sundays.

I do recall around 12 years old that on a Sunday at Northwich Watling St you could see 2 or 3 Arriva buses simultaneously stopped there. I'm not sure exactly which routes ran and to what frequency but it certainly wasn't a single bus doing one run to Rudheath, then a run to Barnton and then a run to Weaverham.

It is worth remembering Middlewich has no train services so probably needs a Sunday service more than most towns.

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review
From Cheshire East council meeting notes

Quote:Cheshire East has one of the lowest levels of per capita bus use in England, with an
average of only 10.6 trips annually per resident by bus. Bus patronage declined by 22%
between 2009-16 in Cheshire East; a more significant decline than occurred nationally.
Contributory factors to this decline include the geographical nature and demography of the
borough, with high car ownership levels and a number of remote rural areas which are
challenging to serve with conventional bus services. Congestion is also identified as one
of the causes of reduced bus patronage, owing to adverse impacts on the reliability and
attractiveness of bus travel. The trends in local bus patronage place considerable
pressure on the viability of commercial bus services, whilst requirements for additional
public subsidy place increasing pressures on scarce Council budgets.

So nothing to do with services suffering more from subsidy cuts than in other areas.

And when they say 'congestion' they probably mean trying to have one service for too many different markets like the 88 Macclesfield-Knutsford going all around the houses between Knutsford and Chelford and the 88 Knutsford-Wilmslow serving roads which were previously served by the 300 Knutsford Circular and less recently an Alderley Edge-Brook Lane-Chapel Lane-Wilmslow local service (I can't remember the service number.)

[K10K11]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(05/05/2020 16:42)knutstransport Wrote:  From Cheshire East council meeting notes


So nothing to do with services suffering more from subsidy cuts than in other areas.

And when they say 'congestion' they probably mean trying to have one service for too many different markets like the 88 Macclesfield-Knutsford going all around the houses between Knutsford and Chelford and the 88 Knutsford-Wilmslow serving roads which were previously served by the 300 Knutsford Circular and less recently an Alderley Edge-Brook Lane-Chapel Lane-Wilmslow local service (I can't remember the service number.)

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistica...r-journeys

On the above page if you look at the BUS0110 table which has the journeys per head of population from 2009/10 to 2018/19 you'll see the rate of decline over that full period in Cheshire East is 35%. In 2018/19 it was 9.8 journeys per head, with only Rutland and Windsor/Maidenhead very slightly lower. As a comparison, Cheshire West has 27.4 journeys per head, down from 34.2 in 2009/10.

In fact, the decline in Cheshire East since 2017 has been nearly as much as the decline over the previous 8 years.

[iMarkeh]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review
CEC could easily sort out the mess they created. It's a lack of willingness to do so combined with the major commercial operator slowly winding down and not caring about service quality and the other major operator not really wanting commercial work and instead milking revenue from the tenders.

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.

[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.

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review
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.