Obviously I've tried the route out on visits to Manchester (as it is so famous) and wondered if they really need that frequency. Buses are very frequent on main road routes in Manchester generally but don't look anything like crowded, certainly nothing like inner London routes which are often less frequent. There have been frequency reductions in recent years but even in the Ken Livingstone years there were complaints about buses running every 10 minutes needing but not getting frequency improvements.
Obviously passenger statistics show vastly lower usage per capita so it makes sense that Manchester buses would look a lot less crowded. Clearly if Manchester buses were doing well then nobody would have been that fussed about franchising.
The big difference between London and other major cities is that London runs every 10-12 minutes on suburban routes in outer London as well, which might be every 30 minutes or worse in other cities. People actually use those kinds of routes in outer London because of the good frequency. If they ran every 3 minutes on crowded inner London routes that means less money to spend on outer London suburban routes.
Clearly it must make enough money else it would be cut back.
Theres a few reasons why people are so up in arms about the bus network is for a few reasons.
Firstly, unlike other PTE areas, TFGM hasn't created their own multi network/operator ticket and they do not support the one which already exists and as such, a lot of people don't know about it's existence.
Second reason is people see corridors like the 192 and Wilmslow Road and claim that they are massively overbussed and they want to take them buses away from people who use them because they have no bus. Clearly failing to see the logic of why move buses away from where they are used to instead go to areas where they aren't used.
The third reason, often the one which counteracts the second reason, is bus companies can decide which routes to run and at times. This of course counteracts the first one as people say "those buses are always empty, why can't they be on my route instead" followed by "bus companies only run what they can profit from". Go figure? Empty buses make no money so why would they run them? Clearly there's a reason! The issue with this arguement is that bus companies often tend to prioritise routes which people use regularly. Not routes for pensioners who want to go for a weekly trip to Tesco and maybe nip to Bingo one night.
What else do we add to this list. Manchester is a very left leaning city and people on the left side of the political spectrum, are more socialist and believe that any public service should be ran by the state and believe no one should ever make profit. Also remaining with people who lean quite to the left are becoming ever more entitled. People believe because they pay up taxes or have paid up in taxes, they are entitled to a bus which takes them from where they are, to where they want to go and they don't want to pay for it. You've got grannies whinging for a bus yet refuse to put a penny towards a bus "because I have always paid up in the past". It's entitled people not getting what they want and throwing their toys out of the pram for not getting a free bus every 20 minutes from their front door to the front door of where they are going. That is literally what it is. Who is to blame for them not having what they want, private bus operators. Buses not there to act as personal door to door transport is another mode which is commonly referred to as the Taxi. Sadly, people don't want to use taxis though because they cost money. Buses don't cost with a pass or are significantly cheaper if people do pay.
People see the model in London and glorify it. Make out like it has no faults and hence why everyone sits aspiring for 'London style transport'. No one mentions the cost of providing that. No one mentions that on average, Londoners have to walk further to the bus stops than in most of the rest of the country. It's not mentioned that it takes years and years to change a bus route there, irrespective of how basic it is. It's not mentioned the millions of pounds of deficit for the bus network which is subsidised by the tube, which no one else has. It's of course not noted that London's bus network is highly inefficient due to the "all buses end to end" rule as well as various other inefficient policies. It's not noted that while the single fares may be low, the fares for regular travellers are actually higher than areas like Manchester. People look at London with rose tinted glasses and set that as the precedent for everywhere else. It's not mentioned that Labour run Warrington Council's municipal bus operator is more expensive than private bus operators. They fail to mention the fact that Labour run Halton Council let Halton Transport go into administration because they couldn't be bothered to keep funding it. If you ignore all of the failures of the publicly run bus networks and look purely as "London has lots of big red buses which take lots of people between lots of places and the fare is £1.50", of course it looks like a perfect bus network. Of course people will want that. Andy Burnham has then kept fuelling that with constant lies about franchising and the private bus operators and even councillors blaming private bus operators for things completely out of their control, but fully within the control of TFGM or the city region.
Combine people looking at London with rose tinted glasses, with entitled lefties and elected officials, who are primarily left leaning, ramming it down peoples throats that the current system doesn't work. That is why we are where we are, to put it simply.
What I would put back to you is, if the current tendered bus market wasn't such a mess because of incompetent twits at TFGM who couldn't even organise a Christmas party at a brewery (you know the phrase), the local bus network would be significantly better. It's TFGM who keep messing up the bus network and then they throw the blame at local bus operators because that's easier than taking responsibility. You only have to look at the amount of money being wasted on the 42C which is funded and has 30 minutes of dead time at the terminus. How inefficient. Rochdale tender usage is significantly lower now than it was before because TFGM revamped the network and now it doesn't take anyone anywhere near where they need to go.
Until recently, so many instances of evening and night buses having a vastly different network to the day because it's too difficult to make networks line up. Tendered buses running with commercial buses because TFGM has put out a tender and not cross checked the times of the commercial bus. The last commercial bus may be 18:45 but TFGM put tenders out for 18:30, 19:30 onwards so wasting taxpayers money to take passengers off commercial buses. Team are too incompetent to cross check. Demanding a 5mph speed limit in bus stations and even going as draconian as imposing penalties on bus drivers for stopping on the wrong stand (no reasonable excuse is valid), driving into the bus station by the wrong entrance (for bus stations like Middleton with 2 entrances, drivers and operators can be punished for using the wrong entrance). Actively fining bus drivers and getting them put through warnings and disciplinaries for going over the speed limit in bus stations. 20mph you may be thinking. Nope. 11mph gets you warnings and disciplinaries. Ever tried driving at 5mph and keeping a bus that slow? It's difficult. Huge lack of bus priority infrastructure in Manchester because they don't believe in that sort of thing. Car is king and the city council will do all they can to make it difficult to use buses. I mean, the Deansgate incident says it all as Transdev put up a huge fight to get that reopened as passengers weren't happy that they couldn't get off at the shops where they wanted to go. Who's fault? The councils fault. Not bus operators fault. Lack of contactless payments on some operators, that's another common complaint for Little Gem and Nexus Move. Who's fault? TFGM. The operators lease the machines from TFGM and TFGM refuse to pay for the updated machines with contactless capabilities.
95% of Manchester's bus problems are a result of TFGM or local councils. Around 5% is bus operators doing down right stupid things and milking tenders because they are a guaranteed win, that sort of thing. Private bus operators aren't amazing and some of what they do is inexcusable. If you take a look at things though, many issues stem back to TFGM but no one knows that because it's not talked about and is in many ways hidden until someone speaks up the truth (like Little Gem do with contactless, they happily pass the blame onto TFGM). Start watching some of the bus meetings. Interact with some of the councillors. You see that the problem isn't the bus companies, it's Labour councillors, Labour Councils and Labour ran TFGM. None of them will speak ill of the other and so who gets the blame for it all, private bus operators.
Bit long I know but I believe it's all on topic explaining why people think the bus network is so bad and explaining some of the issues which the current network faces.
