When asked by Bury Council leader at the last GMCA transport committee meeting on 17th March, following a slightly tethchy cross-room exchange between Simon Warburton (TfGM’s Transport Strategy Director – of whom it was announced 1 day before this meeting that he would be leaving to take up Executive Director of Transport in West Yorkshire CA – it doesn’t seem to be announced in proceedings, PR possibly post-dated) and Cllr Bray (Lab, Tameside) who wasn’t happy regarding the lack of communication of good news items and information to members, the lady with the absolutely unenviable task of being the ring master for this transition to franchising, Anne Marie Purcell, admitted she “wasn’t aware” of Bury depot.
It closed in 2017, forcing services and 300-odd staff to decamp to First’s then-remaining depots in Bolton and Queens Rd causing a slight increase in some dead mileage and irritating passengers. The building is now a car dealership – boasting that the site previously taken up by over 100 buses (including the mega-capacity bendy Scanias on the 135 forcing that service to revert to double-decks lowering overall capacity) is now “The Car Depot” and home of the UK’s “biggest indoor heated car showroom” offering free cappuccinos, massage chairs, putting mini golf and a chance to ‘update the ‘gram’ with selfies next to sports cars – an absolutely mighty win for public transport in Manchester! A dropped ball or two on local democracy’s side I think, it should have been bought by TfGM due it’s very strategic location, the car sales-people certainly thought so as it’s only 3 minutes to the M66. Another depot with a fantastic location which was/is forgotten about is Rusholme (closed Jan 2019) on the Oxford Rd/Wilmslow Rd corridor which has been abandoned and seen break-ins, squatting and huge illegal raves.
I can see why Ms Purcell wouldn’t have known about Bury depot and I can’t blame her, the dulcet accent suggesting a heritage from the far-western end of the M62, as her job is to understand the network as it stands today and how it will look in the future, but I think it could probably be beneficial in some respects for TfGM to understand how we ended up in the position we are now and why the network looks as it is as we go into franchising and begin to think about unravelling and improving things. Not one person is going to know absolutely every detail about every bus route and history, so hope there’s some knowledge to be leaned on.
I certainly don’t envy the task lay ahead of her and the team, she seems very suited to the role and handles the question barrages from councillors very well, but I would wish that TfGM take on Cllr Bray’s points about information sharing and talk to the employees that are ultimately effected by this collossal shakeup of probably Manchester’s biggest industries.
Stamps
The GMCA Transport Committee last met around 4/5 months ago, the meeting before that was in February. Why the massive gap? It’s now been binned and replaced with a new ‘Bee Network Committee’ with mostly the same members. It first met on 27th July with a big juicy inaugural AGM meeting – the first item of business was a rubber-stamping of Mr Burnham’s appointment as chair replacing Cllr Aldred, Bury’s leader Cllr O’Brien becoming vice-chair. One of Mayor B’s first comments in the Chair? The chair won’t be at every meeting!
He was 1-hour late to the GMCATC meeting on 17th Feb missing most of the Bee Network delivery, rail and bus network updates. Question is: was he using public transport or his Insignia rocketship at twice the speed limit? And the guy replacing Mr Warburton? TfGM’s head of development Martin Lax. Local councils were encouraged to setup local Bee Network Committees to “ensure better control and coordination over deployment of services” – isn’t that giving up the control Mayor B wanted TfGM/GMCA to have and the reason we’re in this situation?
As the meeting got seriously under-way, money soon started being thrown around like confetti with £6m toward the Metrolink tram/train-ready replacement bridge at Greek Street in Stockport, £2.45m for average speed cameras, £2.72m on the ‘Outline Business Case’ on improvements/redevelopment of Bury Interchange and a smattering of further ‘Outline Business Case’ work for Quality Bus Transit corridors around the Tranche 1 area and a few other schemes (one includes Oldham Mumps, with £680k of study to presumably attempt to backtrack some of the mess created by demolishing the roundabout to allow Metrolink access to the Loop line from street level and improve bus journey times – £4.5m to alter the traffic lights to give priority to the bus lanes?!), £1.35m on designing improvements to Stockport station, and Keolis Amey getting an extension of their Metrolink contract until 2027 (further discussions around this extension were carried out behind closed doors). Also it seems the tram/train idea has resurfaced which should be interesting.
Slipped into the sizable reports pack, which admittedly I haven’t looked at entirely yet, was a 45-page draft “Greater Manchester Bus Strategy” (starts p65). One committment is to try to “maintain the £2 single, £5 daily and £21 weekly adult fare caps until at least March 2025”, with no fare rises to pay for the services and inevitable wage/inflation/costs rises, will more money be sought from tax?
Some other key points picked out from a skim-read:
- “Tackle pavement parking to remove obstacles …access[ing] stops” – this should have been the case long ago, the amount of cars I witness wilingly blocking bus stops at the end of their empty driveway is irritating. Residents could get fruity. Good.
- “Optimise all existing compatible traffic signal infrastructure to delivery [sic] priority for buses” – TfGM finally admitting their interesting traffic light phasing is the root cause of bus delays? Good.
- Customers being actively “encouraged to submit a complaint” and “build additional opportunities for feedback… so customer comments can be addressed and, where appropriate form part of franchising contract management” – translated: equals more money for TfGM. No encouragement of compliments? Bad. I worry for driver wellbeing if they’re being constantly bombared with complaints, increased stress levels in making sure they do the right thing and improve. Circular. Mayor B knows well about driving stressed and missing important road signs and rerouting for diversions – try doing that with 70odd people shouting at you. Not good.
- “Using named services to highlight different types of service… encourage more people to recognise and use them. Witch Way branding for route X43 between Burnley and Manchester and the historic Trans-Lancs Express name, used on a service between Bolton and Stockport, have been used successfully to market bus travel (particularly express services) to new users.” – comes after the removal of the Vantage busway livery! Hopefully means a desire to return to the ultimate orbital, north-south, coach-seated trunk route the TransLancs 400 (hopefully coupled in with these east orbital Bus Corridors). Brilliant.
- “Our ambition is for the full electrification of Greater Manchester’s bus fleets (and supporting infrastructure) by 2032, with 50% of the fleet to be zero emission by 2027.” – jolly good. It included a link to a data dashboard tracking the number of ZE vehicles on fleet
- “Providing services to major town and employment centres during the night” – a return to night buses, hopefully throughout the week this time. Good.
- “Explore introducing a lane rental scheme or similar, where agencies who wish to undertake roadworks would pay local highway authorities for the duration of their works, incentivising quicker completion.” – ask any driver, car or bus, about roadworks and they would have suggested this. Agencies love to throw up traffic management for another agency to dig a hole, then being left for a week or two with nothing happening, the hole being filled in by another agency, a few more days for another agency to repaint the lines, then a few more days for the traffic management company to return to remove their equipment is annoying and inefficient! Good.
More digestion when I can bring myself to read the 150 page report pack. It seems they’re making all the right noise and understand the challenges of winning back thousands of disenfranchised people to bus – hopefully this gargantuan task can be done. Still no word on the Bee Network app.
Sources: WYCA
