A new bus service which runs between Macclesfield and Manchester Airport has been cancelled just five weeks after being launched.
The D&G Bus 130 Service launched on April 1st and travels from Macclesfield to Macclesfield Hospital, Alderley Edge, Wilmslow, Styal and terminates at Manchester Airport. The cancellation is effective from Monday 18th June, meaning the last day of operation will be Saturday 16th June.
The 130 Service was re-routed to Manchester Airport in April to retain a direct service for Wilmslow and Styal and to offer new connections from Macclesfield and Alderley Edge.
Chris Almond, Bus Network Manager D&G Bus Ltd, said "The reason for the cancellation is that we are not making enough money on the service - in this case the money taken on the bus does not even cover the operating costs so we are in the position where we are incurring a considerable loss to provide the service."
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
One being the lack of integrated ticketing in Cheshire East. Unlike in Greater Manchester there's no ticket which allows you to travel on one operator in one direction and on a different operator in the other direction. The only way to do that is to buy two single tickets and single tickets are very expensive.
That leads on to another problem. Operators only get part reimbursed for accepting passengers with bus passes and the rate they get reimbursed at is proportional to the cost of a single journey made by a fare paying passenger. This means operators can effectively have a catch22 situation on routes where most of the passengers are pass holders.
They'll also be an hourly train service from Styal to both Manchester Airport and Wilmslow very soon, which will almost certainly reduce the viability of Styal having a bus service to those places as well.
They sent out a bulk mailing with a free ticket for their first iteration of their 130 service, the one to Handforth Dean, at just about the time they changed their minds and rerouted it to Manchester Airport.
They did not send out a bulk mailing about the Manchester Airport service, at least one didn't drop on my mat in Wilmslow, so presumably very few people knew about it.
The plans for the hourly service to Styal have existed since May 2017, when I posted here about them (on 30/5/2017 I see), so D&G will have known about them then, or should have done.
The Northern franchise was let on the basis that there would be two waves of improvements - one set in December 2017 and the second in December 2019 but for various reasons the December 2017 ones (which included an hourly service for Styal) didn't happen on time and it's only been in the past few weeks that Northern have confirmed which enhancements are going ahead this month. (Some have been postponed again until at least December 2018.)
With regards to who is competent. I'd suggest it's Cheshire East Council who are incompetent - cancelling the 200 bus contract on 1st April meaning if it wasn't for D&G stepping in (with a commercial service) Styal would have had no public transport at off-peak times for 7 weeks. If Cheshire East Council had done a proper bus review for council awarded contracts (opposed to one where they suggest cutting services right back to the bare minimum unless people object too much) then bus services would be much better now and we wouldn't risk losing connections every time a route or section of a route loses money.
"Services 88 and 88A change from 22 July 2018: Times are revised to improve reliability. Service 88A is withdrawn due to low passenger numbers, but serve 88 will divert via Longridge to provide an hourly Monday to Saturday service. Some villages will not be served at peak times."
88 is Altrincham-Wilmslow-Mobberley_Knutsford(-Macclesfield sometimes)
88A is (was) Colshaw Farm-Wilmslow-Mobberley-Knutsford
I don't know where Longridge is, but possibly this information is useful to someone!