It's amazing how much you rely on a fast and frequent bus service when you have one. Then when you move house you realise how poor a lot of bus services are. I've recently moved. Where I previously lived there was a bus to Piccadilly (the 86) at least every 5 minutes through the day and every 10 minutes in the evening. Now I live on the 41 bus route, which has some journeys run by Stagecoach and some by Finglands. They seem to run to time but because there are two operators, the six journeys per hour aren't scheduled sensibly. Rather than run every ten minutes they run something like this...
Finglands bus
2 minute gap
Stagecoach bus
18 minute gap
Finglands bus
2 minute gap
Stagecoach bus
18 minute gap
etc etc...
Ridiculous! I can walk a bit futher down the road and catch a 109 (every 30 minutes) or a 114 from over the road (every 30 minutes) but it really does make getting a bus a logistical nightmare - risk walking for another bus or stand and wait for a 41.
Oh and at peak times the 41 takes an hour to get to town!
Yesterday I decided to try getting the tram from Sale into town instead. My journey went like this:
Bus 19A to Sale: £1.50
Tram into Manchester: £3.00 return
Taxi back to my house from Sale because I just missed the 41: £4.50
I saved a load of time but it cost me £9!
I vow to find a solution! Writing to Stagecoach and Finglands to ask them to work together to provide a better service will be a start!
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2 comments:
When I travel to Manchester for the weekend I catch a 41/42/43/48 (pretty much all the same route) and I agree the timing of the buses is just bizarre! I always try to catch the Finglands ones because of the cheapness (and I hate Stagecoach). Sometimes you are lucky or sometimes you wait for ages while 4 Stagecoach buses pass by.
Hey, I have a blog about the 43 bus in mancheser - micro-travel writing. It's always stagecoach for me, thats the only one that goes from where i live. you should check my blog.
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