A slew of service changes have kicked in this week. Back when I started this blog on the day Shudehill Interchange opened I bemoaned the lack of links from south Manchester to Shudehill, thus making cross-city travel inconvenient unless your northern destination is served from Piccadilly. Arriva have made a move in the right direction with the extension of the 16 and 16A services across to Shudehill via the Northern Quarter during Mon-Sat daytimes. Only one bus every 30 minutes, but it's a start.
Also of note is the first of First's new 'feeder' services (mentioned in a recent 'Buses' magazine article). Service 67L takes some of the strain off frequent service 67 by serving parts of Irlam though Mon-Sat daytimes. However, GMPTE's online timetable library hasn't updated with the details yet so I can't comment further.
Other than those two there's just a few changes of operator on tendered routes, including Arriva no longer operating the 177, 178 and late evening 109. They have however increased the frequency of the commercial service 263 from every 15 to every 12 minutes. They've also introduced evening and Sunday journeys on the 263 every 30 minutes - something I'm amazed they didn't do before!
Many thanks for all the comments on my last post. I'll be tying them into a more conscise argument in a separate post when I've got time.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Friday, April 14, 2006
Bus Wars Reignite
Recently we've been through quite a quiet period in terms of competition in Manchester. We had JP Travel's 118 service launching an every 20 minute frequency between Piccadilly, Moston and North Manchester General Hospital, causing First to modify their 51 service to directly compete with it, but apart from that and Ashall's Coaches having a brief dalliance on the 263 Manchester - Altrincham service, not much has occurred, competition-wise in the last year.
That is, until this month when GM Buses (that'll be UK North pointlessly using another name then) increased their prescence on the 192 route with a bus every 5 minutes between Manchester and Stepping Hill Hospital Monday-Saturday and introducing Sunday journeys too. Bear in mind that Stagecoach was previously running a bus every 3-4 minutes on this route and there's now a frequency of something like evry 2-3 minutes on the 192. Competition is fierce between the companies and the stop outside Spar on Piccadilly in the city centre is chocablock with buses trying to pick up passengers all day. Meanwhile, UK North/GM Buses/whatever they call themselves next complain about Stagecoach allegedly blocking stops so they can't pick up passengers and both companies launch ultra-cheap loyalty tickets providing a week's travel on the route for a pittance.
Of course, this can't go on forever. The numbers don't add up, you can't run that many buses forever on a route unless they're picking up a healthy number of passengers. Whilst it does provide an amazingly frequent service for people travelling down the A6 while it lasts it shows up the other extreme of the problem with privatised bus services. While I'm in one part of Manchester struggling with too few buses, another part of Manchester has too many!
That is, until this month when GM Buses (that'll be UK North pointlessly using another name then) increased their prescence on the 192 route with a bus every 5 minutes between Manchester and Stepping Hill Hospital Monday-Saturday and introducing Sunday journeys too. Bear in mind that Stagecoach was previously running a bus every 3-4 minutes on this route and there's now a frequency of something like evry 2-3 minutes on the 192. Competition is fierce between the companies and the stop outside Spar on Piccadilly in the city centre is chocablock with buses trying to pick up passengers all day. Meanwhile, UK North/GM Buses/whatever they call themselves next complain about Stagecoach allegedly blocking stops so they can't pick up passengers and both companies launch ultra-cheap loyalty tickets providing a week's travel on the route for a pittance.
Of course, this can't go on forever. The numbers don't add up, you can't run that many buses forever on a route unless they're picking up a healthy number of passengers. Whilst it does provide an amazingly frequent service for people travelling down the A6 while it lasts it shows up the other extreme of the problem with privatised bus services. While I'm in one part of Manchester struggling with too few buses, another part of Manchester has too many!
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