Arriva's no 5 Mold to Ellesmere Port (via Cheshire Oaks) service is to be cut back from Jan 26 and will only serve the section in Flintshire between Mold and Deeside Industrial Park. This is due to funding cuts by Flintshire County Council.
It's funny as Cheshire West contribute towards the cost of the 5 and so it's rather strange that it's not being continued on that basis.
The new 5 timetable seems to have been put together by someone in who hasn't checked the actual passenger flows. Either that or someone is about to start wasting in the region of £30-£40k per year on additional school buses (if so, what an absolute joke). The Mold Campus bus picks up most of it's kids in Garden City yet the school trips now won't serve Garden City.
People in Garden City will be forced to walk from Station Road to Queensferry Asda for the bus, or wait for irregular P&O Lloyds bus which doesn't serve most of Garden City.
People going to the industrial estate for work can no longer do so either as there's only 1 bus now which will be for a 10pm shift change (which is funny as there is no late evening service now, and the authority is screaming poverty and apparently making these cuts to save money, but somehow they have funds for evening services in the new timetable!)
Flintshire did this to themselves. Arriva put in a silly high bid and somehow won and now Flintshire can't sustain it. It was always going to be the case and I could have predicted this a long time ago. The service has been hacked at so much to the current bare bones service, and no one can rely upon it anymore as it doesn't serve most demand points. Claps all round for Flintshire Council, killing off core bus services one at a time. It genuinely scares me to think they will get more powers when franchising comes in! It's beyond incompetence now.
I have yet to see any evidence to suggest the Cheshire West and Chester Council are going to step in and salvage some or all of the axed route. It will leave the Wolverham area of Ellesmere Port, which is not the wealthiest, with no buses at all (except on Sundays).
To think in 2016 there was an every 20 minute service there. Slowly hacked away at by Stagecoach (when the 6 came off and was replaced by the 5/5A) and then further hacked away at because of these tenders. Such a shame really as the services in the area were well used under GHA.
I did see Arriva wales put a cancellation notice via VOSA for the 5 and registration of a 11A? From Deeside to Mold
The 11A is a new hourly Chester to Deeside Campus service (with 1 morning extension to Flint). It slots nicely into the service from Chester creating a 15/15/30 frequency. Towards Chester though, it's a bit of a mess with the gaps being 21/9/30.
