Arriva North West and Wales

M60lad said:

How will duties work with Arriva keeping 329/360 and running them from Runcorn Depot? Certainly be a long duty for drivers doing them, also is it even possible to do 110,329,360 and return before having a break or will the services be split in Warrington with a driver either doing a 329 or a 360 after coming in from Runcorn and not doing both?

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No idea really but it would have made a lot more sense for either Warrington's Own Buses or Bee Network to take on the 360 since Wigan is quite a distance away from Runcorn but then at the same time I sort of see the logic for Runcorn to take on the 329.

M60lad said:

How will duties work with Arriva keeping 329/360 and running them from Runcorn Depot? Certainly be a long duty for drivers doing them, also is it even possible to do 110,329,360 and return before having a break or will the services be split in Warrington with a driver either doing a 329 or a 360 after coming in from Runcorn and not doing both?

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The 329 interworking with the 110, with 360 interworking the X30.

The 360 interworking the X30 is doable without a timetable change too as both routes arrive & depart Warrington around the same time, & both routes are hourly.

Statto said:

The 329 interworking with the 110, with 360 interworking the X30.

The 360 interworking the X30 is doable without a timetable change too as both routes arrive & depart Warrington around the same time, & both routes are hourly.

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Runcorn running these brings up a problem if Halton ends up being part of franchising surely the 329/360 won’t be included.

Statto said:

The 329 interworking with the 110, with 360 interworking the X30.

The 360 interworking the X30 is doable without a timetable change too as both routes arrive & depart Warrington around the same time, & both routes are hourly.

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That's logical - except that the X30 isn't hourly, it is about every hour and five minutes, each bus getting a round trip in about 3 and a quarter hours. This is due to running times being extended over the years. If the X30 and 360 were interworked then this issue would migrate to the 360 as well, there is not enough slack in the 360 round trip time to absorb this. Then you would end up with both routes at a frequency of just over an hour which would be unattractive to users.

What they could do is interwork them all. Around the hour mark you would interwork the X30 with the 329 and also the 110 with the 360, and on the half hour interwork the 329 and 110. This would give you a 13 hour cycle with enough time to deal with the X30 round trip time being slightly less than optimal. The X30 could leave and arrive at Warrington at say 55 minutes past each hour giving 7-10 minutes turn round in Chester. In the peaks no doubt extended running time would impact on timings but this is normal - peak time commuters know the bus times whereas shoppers generally prefer clock face times. This would work Chester > Warrington > St Helens > Warrington > Runcorn > Warrington > Wigan > Warrington > Runcorn > Warrington > St Helens > Warrington > Chester. Apart from fixing the X30 to depart and leave at xx.55 nothing would need to change. Visits to Runcorn at about the right intervals for driver changes.

Of course Arriva could do this now by interworking the 110 and X30 at Warrington to keep a decent hourly frequency on the X30 and have chosen not to - so I don't hold out much hope. I expect the 360 will run at the same horrid frequencies as the X30!

The other problem with interworking X30 with 360 is what do you do with the trips in the weekday peaks that run via Daresbury Business Park as this adds running time.

I will say, the 487 could do with rerouting in Neston so deckers can run on it, as i was on the 12pm Liverpool to Neston last week, & the bus was standing room only from Birkenhead Town Centre, & i believe this is quite common, one of the issues is the low bridge (13ft 9in) on Liverpool Road in Neston.

Back in MTL era there used to be 2 separate routes in Neston with the 488 viaLiverpool Road, & the 10B via Hinderton Road that deckers were allocated to the 10B, & going further back Crosville had low height VRTs/& Olympians on the 87/88.

Statto said:

I will say, the 487 could do with rerouting in Neston so deckers can run on it, as i was on the 12pm Liverpool to Neston last week, & the bus was standing room only from Birkenhead Town Centre, & i believe this is quite common, one of the issues is the low bridge (13ft 9in) on Liverpool Road in Neston.

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I think a better way of fixing it would be to swap the 464 and 487 routes between Birkenhead Bus Station and Higher Bebbington. The 487 along that section is pretty much the only bus for many people, and certainly the only bus to Liverpool, and so not only is the 487 carrying passengers for the longer distances to Neston, it's also got passengers who need to use it for the other parts of the route such as Church Road/Mount Road.

By swapping the 464 and 487 you kind of focus the 487 for longer distance passengers because along Borough Road, there are already many alternative buses to help people plod into Birkenhead, and there is also the 471/472 to Liverpool which is more frequent and already uses deckers. There would only be 3-4 bus stops which people would then NEED to use the 487 for on this section as all other stops have alternative buses, or are a few seconds walk from the 464

The only difficulty that you risk coming up against is when Tranmere are playing at home, you may need a dupe or something on the 487 to shuttle to the bus station and back.

Before Arriva bought MTL there used to be

64A New Ferry - Woodside that covered most of the current 487

The routes to Neston were

10B New Brighton - Parkgate.
488 Liverpool - Ness Gardens.

The 10B went down Hinderton Road in Neston so standard deckers could be used, were as the 488 followed most of the current 487, but the 488 was more direct & went down Mount Road to Church Road from Clatterbridge to Birkenhead.

Back in the day Crosville used to operate 87/88 Woodside - Parkgate & had low height deckers allocated to them.

Statto said:

Before Arriva bought MTL there used to be

64A New Ferry - Woodside that covered most of the current 487

The routes to Neston were

10B New Brighton - Parkgate.
488 Liverpool - Ness Gardens.

The 10B went down Hinderton Road in Neston so standard deckers could be used, were as the 488 followed most of the current 487, but the 488 was more direct & went down Mount Road to Church Road from Clatterbridge to Birkenhead.

Back in the day Crosville used to operate 87/88 Woodside - Parkgate & had low height deckers allocated to them.

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If I remember the 64A became the 465 and did the 488 route to the Church Road then the usual 464 route to New Ferry

At one time there was a 486/7/8/9 all going Neston/parkgate/neston different ways from memory

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CN12 AWU said:

If I remember the 64A became the 465 and did the 488 route to the Church Road then the usual 464 route to New Ferry

At one time there was a 486/7/8/9 all going Neston/parkgate/neston different ways from memory

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More intresting I found some old timetables

187/188, 88, 488 timetable from 2000

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KfPm1-qbJdqsHKq5d6OyJp7DomvSedc4/view

486/7/8/9 timetable from 2003



64A/464, 164/5 timetable from 20000


464/5, 164/5 from 2004


Comparing these to current day it's poor really the service

All the links are credit to http://railwaymedia.co.uk/timetables

Although the 5, 5D, & 5C Llandudno-Bangor-Caernarfon are separate registrations but buses operate through & change numbers in Bangor, i still say the whole route needs to be split at Bangor & operate as 2 separate sections (with no buses operating through) as the service can be very unreliable, particularly if there is a hold up on the A55, also around the Britania Bridge can be a bottleneck with jams very common making reliability on these routes an issue.

Statto said:

Although the 5, 5D, & 5C Llandudno-Bangor-Caernarfon are separate registrations but buses operate through & change numbers in Bangor, i still say the whole route needs to be split at Bangor & operate as 2 separate sections (with no buses operating through) as the service can be very unreliable, particularly if there is a hold up on the A55, also around the Britania Bridge can be a bottleneck with jams very common making reliability on these routes an issue.

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Whilst your point about delays is undoubtedly true - as experienced yesterday when - partly due to the breakdown of Pulsar 2930 at the roundabout in Llanfairfechan (details from Bus Times here), two following journeys were delayed by roughly 70 and 30 minutes respectively (links to schedules from Bus Times embedded in the 'delay' numbers) - leading to a massive gap in Bangor bound services out of Llandudno and Conwy around the evening peak.

You have to take into consideration the fact that there are significant numbers of 'through' passengers across Bangor, who would be much inconvenienced by such a change. And what about through fares? It's a delicate balancing act.

TheSel said:

Whilst your point about delays is undoubtedly true - as experienced yesterday when - partly due to the breakdown of Pulsar 2930 at the roundabout in Llanfairfechan (details from Bus Times here), two following journeys were delayed by roughly 70 and 30 minutes respectively (links to schedules from Bus Times embedded in the 'delay' numbers) - leading to a massive gap in Bangor bound services out of Llandudno and Conwy around the evening peak.

You have to take into consideration the fact that there are significant numbers of 'through' passengers across Bangor, who would be much inconvenienced by such a change. And what about through fares? It's a delicate balancing act.

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I was on the S2 going from Llanberis to Bangor but heavy traffic is an issue, particularly the approach roads around the Britania Bridge which was jammed solid yesterday, but observing bustimes.org from Tuesday, buses were running up to 30 minutes late & later that there was long gaps for those waiting at the Caernarfon end, & because they were so late buses were running dead from Caernarfon.

Not been mentioned yet but 3193, 3197 and 3199 all seem to have had standard mirrors fitted thr CCTV mirrors are still in situ outside but screens been removed in cab

Presume failed CCTV screens or they decided to start retrofitting normal mirrors also 3197 has orange front dests

Not sure if any welsh ones have recieved mirrors aswell

Also welsh e400 4422 is at bootle

4725 as returned to Green Lane after its loan spell at Rhyl.

The first two new 6 pot E200 MMC's for Wrexham have arrived today.
They are:

2810 YY26 NTN
2811 YY26 NTO

The others should be arriving in the coming days.

Courtesy of the Merseyside Bus Club review Arriva Buses Wales have started to dispose of 4402-10/21/22. 4410 J100ABW has transferred to Speke and re-registered to CX58EZY, its registration when new. 4422 is reported to be at Bootle. 4421 is withdrawn.

Following on from the recent Pulsar transfers from MK, there's been another transfer to Wrexham today. Solo SR 712 MX12 KVH is here from St. Helens.

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Arriva Wales to get 59 new vehicles in £15M investment.

4422 is in service at Boole still with its J200ABW registration plates.
It will probably be withdrawn from service after 6 September when St Helens depot is franchised and its Enviro 400s move to other depots.