Would a town circular be profitable though? You can provide 6 buses per hour if you want but if the bus doesn't go where people want to go, it will fail. Do people want to just go to Knutsford (bearing in mind the bus station is quite far from the shops) and isn't exactly the biggest town. Macclesfield or Wilmslow I think would be slightly more popular choices for fare paying passengers (pass holders will go wherever the bus service goes)
The down side though is because of the poor road layouts within Macclesfield, the journeys wouldn't be significantly better as you'd be forever looping the town. How many people are travelling through the town as well? The only potentially useful thing to come from this would be the south routes serving Tesco.
Well the 88A was viable, even when it went somewhere nobody wanted to go. A more optimised town circular could've worked but or friends never tried it. Anyways we're getting away from the main point which is our friends aren't a good bus company.
Not very well catered for though. And a reminder that the 88 only started serving there after they scrapped the 88A.
Thanks for clarifying this.
Ribble would be Stagecoach Lancashire and Merseyside, IIRC.
Interesting! Not sure competition is the best idea on this corridor!
I think D&G staying with Crewe-Nantwich could do well, doing high frequency along the core corridor. After all, that section is relatively urbanised and has higher passenger km than the rest of the route. Could also alleviate the overcrowding issue if D&G did a 20 minute frequency between Crewe and Nantwich and Stagecoach are hourly between Crewe and Chester. Of course all unclear right now.
What a mess of a timetable. This is the sort of thing a Birmingham Cowboy would come up with, not a multi national operator such as Stagecoach.
On the contrary I think it is pretty reasonable. I'd like to have seen an extra morning journey from Nantwich to Crewe arriving to form the 07.23 and/or run the first Chester to Crewe a little earlier to provide an earlier arrival at Crewe, but otherwise they have three vehicles on the 'longs' - two of which are sent out empty to Crewe first thing, reflecting the fact that Chester is the main destination, and one comes back empty from Crewe in the evening. They are also providing Crewe to Nantwich shorts between the peaks using a bus which would appear to do a Tarporley school run, with a meal relief at Crewe at 12.00. Anything more would probably be inefficient use of resources, let D&G take up any more weight on this section.
The Crewe-Nantwich via Willaston has really suffered. Previously, this corridor had a service every 15 minutes which was a sort of turn up and go corridor. Now its just hourly with some extras in the peak, but this means this corridor has lost over half its services in 4 years. Yes we are awaiting D&G (they say they've applied but not yet in public domain) but a competition on the route could just make things worse.
D&G filings still not on VOSA website.
The fact 2 buses go direct to Crewe is daft, they could at least run trips from Acton (near Nantwich) to Crewe to link up to these trips. I trust that drivers will mostly go via Brixton Roundabout else I'd say do an X84 from Chester but I think that would involve too much resource.
I feel like D&G may end up now just doing shorts and then pick up the longer distance stuff when Stagecoach throws it in in a few months because their timetable means it's us Purely speculation though.
It was Routemaster and GHA actually. Both now gone. Routemaster took the slot vacated by Arriva and retined it just before the GHA 82 from Tarvin to Chester. GHA responded by registering the 84 five mins in front of Routemaster. You would regularly see both buses following each other. I live on the route btw.
Weren't GHA mostly worried about retaining their market share between Tarvin and Chester so in their eyes had to do something as the market was then being split over 3 firms, not just 2.
An alternative scenario would be D&G noticing Stagecoach's registration for the 84 and coming to a conclusion that their own 84 might best be deregistered with the buses and drivers used elsewhere.
Yes very true, but the result was the market was not big enough for all and 2 companies went (GHA for other reasons as well, maintenance of vehicles) result was a worse service to the public, one bus every 60 mins on the Nantwich to Chester section..
The 88A was a commercial service run by our friends as a partial replacement for the 300 and went to the Colshaw Farm estate in Wilmslow, for whatever reason. As @markymark2000 explained, as it was a marginal route, it was cut to offset the losses caused by our friends making a balls up of the 130.
Ribble Motor Services is Stagecoach Merseyside Cheshire and South Lancashire whose registered address is East Lancashire Road. Gillmoss, Liverpool L11. They have depots in Liverpool, Preston, Birkenhead and Chester.
Thought the evening journeys were subbed by the council? People who work late do use those evening runs.
I believe its Monday to Thursday the funding.
