The BNC kicked off their “busy year ahead” by sitting on 25th January. Mayor B turned up 1hr 26minutes late and immediately got to work angrily berating Avanti WC’s managing director for poor reliability/performance (who I must say handled it very well), and as usual a few bullet points of interest to me:
- TfGM/KAM were awaiting a reply from the manufacturer whether the crossing track defect at Victoria which closed 2CC is repairable – meanwhile services are suffering some ‘reliability issues’ due to being forced onto the slower 1CC bottleneck.
- In a PR on the 6th, it was confirmed the track is undergoing repairs off-site at the premises. I always thought the new 2CC arrangements at Victoria were slightly baffling (but I’m not a professional enthusiast!), maybe confirmed by the “specialised crossings” now needing repair!?
- It also confirmed that the Shaw & Crompton short-workings from East Didsbury will terminate at Exchange Square starting Monday 12th, relieving pressure on 1CC and leaving Victoria-Shaw with only the 12-minute Rochdales.
- KAM’s contract extension to 2027 was finalised and confirmed.
- BNC have sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport with a view to looking at a greater deployment of speed cameras and seeking a clarification of what is guidance and what is regulation in relation to DfT circular 01/2007. The draft 50 page Vision Zero strategy document is in the agenda pack.
- Weekly bus punctuality data would be published at 0830 every Thursday morning on X (with a monthly ‘omnibus’ on the website)
- Pilots for the new ‘bikes on Metrolink’ policy (last reviewed in 2010 – when the M5000s were still building in numbers and possibly still outnumbered by the cramped T68s). TfGM staff went on a trip to Edinburgh to find more about their bike policy and they noted that some passengers were irritated by Uber Eats riders using trams to save their legs!
- Proposals being developed with LAs for new rail stations in Cheadle and Golborne, and further schemes for AfA, redevelopments etc for a slew of other stations in the works.
- Yet more works at Salford Central begin early 2025.
- Again, I do think Cllr O’Brien is the best choice for chair.
Elsewhere, outside of GMCA Towers:
Middleton Bus Station closed on 4th February for 5 weeks whilst resurfacing works crack on (geddit?!). Services displaced to local roadside stops. Presumably not wanting the affect of inconveniencing passengers and closing a town’s bus station for over a month to take the shine off the start of Tranche 2 they’ve chosen to affect everyone now. The ‘notes to editors’ section of the press release on TfGM’s news hub refers to operator Stotts as “Stocks”. Meanwhile Stockport’s semi-underground bus station is nearing completion.
Whilst Mellor get their production lines back up to speed after being bought from administration at the back end of 2023, they’ve been keeping themselves busy by filling their paint shop with vehicles from First to go into Bee livery and they’ve been cracking them out at supersonic speeds. On an aside, a few buses with exhaust retrofits paid for with help from GMCA/TfGM have found themselves leaving GM and being shipped off to other areas to improve the air quality in, er, not Manchester!
In a strangely surprising move, First have registered a football service out of the blue (GEDDIT?!?!?!) with an interesting routing. Limited stop “MC13” will run on “occasional days” to City home matches from Wrens Nest via Royton and Chadderton. It might possibly be the first commercial service to run wholly within Manchester under franchising if it survives until T3?
Such good work PR agency Dinosaur did on GNW’s Elite Bus Driver campaign that Go Ahead have copy+pasted it for the North East division, with an identically slightly cheesy photoshoot in the same Top Gun style. A launch event took place with huge flame throwers placed literally inches from deckers. Thankfully winds were low. It must be a nice but slightly weird feeling to see a massive 5m high photo of yourself on the side of a bus coming toward you at a relief point!!
Route 151 finds itself with yet another new operator. On the 28th January Diamond took over from Stotts who took over again from Little Gem who extended it to Ashton who took over from Stotts. Elsewhere, the first rewrite of the T1/Sub-area A schedules took place with timetable punctuality amendments across many routes but no specific changes detailed. Possible slight retimings to equal out ‘competitive’ departure times at the stations? Talks underway with GNW to increase PVR in April. Apparently, a renumbering of the Wigan locals to bring back the ‘6’ area prefix dropped by Stagecoach (10 becoming 610 to avoid confusion with the Brookhouse 10, for example) is on the way, alongside the de-renumbering of the Rosso ‘R’ prefixed services back to their old numbers.
Stagecoach 19336 lost its roof after hitting a tree in Chorlton at about 8am on 2nd February. No injuries.
Scam ads (pictured) for a fake Bee Card filled with a £150 travel card for £2.35 have suddenly exploded across social media in the last week or so. Please do not get taken in. The scammers were in the comments with a picture of a scaled down card photoshopped in front of a validator at Deansgate.
Starling Bank are now the first title sponsors of the Bee Network Beryl bicycle hire scheme in TfGM’s “biggest sponsorship deal” in history. “Starling Bank Bikes” comes along with their new office in St Peter’s Square with up to 1000 new jobs. Lets hope this sponsorship allows the scheme to expand outside the heavily South Manchester/student-skewed current service area.
