GMCA met on 26th September. Highlights:
- An annual ticket for the bus network priced at £800 will be introduced at T3. To aid with the up-front payment TfGM have teamed up with local credit unions. Bravo. The only current annual ticket I could find is the county card, including trains, at £1530 (RIP System 1).
- Not quite ready in time for T3 are the daily/weekly fare caps and PAYG multimodal ticketing across bus and tram. Ready for March, though.
- Weekly bus tickets are getting knocked down by a quid from T3, resulting in the end of the current stupid mess that is 4x weeklies being cheaper than the 28-day monthly, which will now be £80, £5.40 cheaper.
- The paper single ticket will become a 1-hour ‘Hopper’ ticket.
- The recompense scheme for T3 passengers facing a slight fare increase will continue (est. 3% of passengers). It will also include those who buy the SuperSaver in Salford, which is being removed at T3, and uni students in September who unwittingly bought the cheaper Stagecoach-only student passes which becomes invalid and useless from January.
- A potential expansion of the Care Leavers scheme until April.
- To date, amongst other bits of improvements, they’ve installed “bus priority technology” at 85 junctions. Nice.
- Mayor B and his counterpart in Liverpool, Steve Rotherham, have formed the ‘Liverpool Manchester Railway Board’. Quite a oldy-worldy name!
- They’ve spent £0.07m so far on “Customer Travel Information Digital Improvements”, upgrading the website’s technology and Metrolink data feed to provide the Co-op Live, Airport, Google and CityMapper with reliable live information. £1.8m was requested to complete the first phase of work.
- £4.444m was requested (to add to Network Rail’s £5m and Northern’s £0.492m) for Salford Central’s Enhancement Scheme.
- Active Travel England have awarded the GMCA £3.8m for walking & wheeling and crossing improvements across 9 schemes.
- A 2023 GM Travel Diary survey showed that there are around 100,000 trips made per day in taxis!
- There are only 181 licensed electric taxis in GM. A number obviously wildly under-represented by the fact that most taxis operating here aren’t even registered in, er, GM, instead many drivers using the services of Wolverhampton and their slightly more lax vehicle requirements.
- 60 EV chargers are being installed across GM for exclusive use by GM-licensed cabs. Wonder if that’s causing any arguments. 57 are currently live. Priced at 50p/kWh (for reference, the Shell on Regent Rd is currently charging at 89p/kWh).
- The fully electrified bus roll out to be moved forward 2 years from 2032 to 2030.
- Confirmation that electrification work will shortly be commencing at Queens Road, Hyde Rd, Middleton and Ashton. Many thought they wouldn’t bother electrifying Queens Road, mainly due to TfGM’s desire to flog it for housing, but seems they are cracking on. I’d imagine a gantry system similar to what was used at Oldham will be adopted. More chargers added to Piccadilly Approach (for the 15 year old full diesel deckers running the Free Bus?), and at Bolton depot.
Aside from the usual excitement in the BNC meeting, there is some murmurs of agreement in Wigan this week.
Bee’s first new bus route will commence on 28th October, linking Scholes to Middlebrook Retail Park. The 615 (GNW) will run via Whelely, New Springs, Aspull, Bolton and Horwich Parkway. Part of the route replaces the 715 along Bolton Road in Aspull withdrawn by Diamond in early 2020. It’s only a 12-month trial though.
The 132 (DBNW) connecting the town with the Trafford Centre is seeing a doubling of frequency to half-hourly.
ALBuM (the Association of Local Bus Managers) has finally broken it’s silence on the absolutely pathetic decision of TfGM/GMCA to award all but 1 franchise to the ‘larger operators’ absolutely decimating family run and local small businesses.
We hope that all local authorities considering the franchising model will recognise the valuable contributions that small and medium-sized companies have made and continue to make. Local authorities should strive to support SME companies in all their procurement activities, including bus services.
ALBUM Press release
Vision were the only ‘small’ victors, winning some school lots in T1. Others, like Stotts (running for over 60 years), won nothing at all. Stotts lost around 20 buses of work. Buses reports that operators loosing out in the last round to be awarded, the T3 schools, were Ashcrofts, Atlantic Travel, Bullocks Coaches, Olympia Travel, Stotts, Swans and Belle Vue, who particularly bore the brunt by loosing their current 30 buses worth of schools work. They run quite a reputable and respected school bus operation. Hopefully their new Flixbus partnership can replace some of the losses.
It’s quite angering.
The Competition and Markets Authority have also waged in, advising anyone else considering franchising their bus networks to make sure their plans ‘make appropriate provision for SMEs’. How much of an affect that will have is yet to be seen. Eyes peeled on how East Yorkshire and Liverpool handle SMEs. Go Ahead confirmed at the Public Transport North conference last month that it is hoping to bag successes in Liverpool’s transition.
Perhaps it’s worth exploring whether the contract awards going forward in GM should be voted on democratically by the Bee Network Committee? Not by a secretive process behind closed doors with absolutely no transparency?
Who would vote to shut down a local family business of 60 years at Christmas time? Is it a good idea to politically link these things? At least we would get more of a say who is actually operating the network and how it’s ran, not just a blase look at the funding, dishing it out, reading a report, and passing it onto officers to execute. Councillors would be more involved in the operation of the BN and working to make it a success for their electorate, more incentivised to campaign for improvements in their area. What was the last big decision they made relating to the network? They’re buried in paperwork and reports. Something to think about.
Updated 13/10/24 1700 to add last story.
