Leyland Bus
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Bee Network Service/Route Discussion
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toms
Member
Yes
TT-ONR-NRN
Veteran Member
As it stands, Uni of Salford students are currently allowed to ride the 50 Salford Quays service between Salford Crescent and MediaCityUK for free. Will this continue from the weekend after the takeover?
Stotts put a few tweets on their Twitter account yesterday.
In the morning
They had an evening post of the buses back in the depot.
Stagecoach Manchester also marked the change with a slightly simpler message about their final buses having left, including photos of certain Magic Bus and GMS liveried vehicles at Piccadilly.
In the morning
And so, I write this with a heavy heart but as of today, Stotts Tours Oldham Ltd will no longer operate for TFGM. 50 plus years as a family run business the buses have gone out for the last time this morning.
Stotts would like to thank all their staff- past and present for their amazing commitment to their roles be that a driver, cleaner, office staff, garage staff and all the team that helped us run each and every day that we could.
We have a great team at Stotts, and we will miss you all lots. It's been an adventure that I am great full to have been on with you all. So heads held high for the final run of it and be proud of all you have achieved - making Stotts the name that people will rememberx
They had an evening post of the buses back in the depot.
Stagecoach Manchester also marked the change with a slightly simpler message about their final buses having left, including photos of certain Magic Bus and GMS liveried vehicles at Piccadilly.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Are Bee retaining the numbers 142 and 143 despite them being the same as 42/43 short workings now?
You'd think they would be renumbered 42 and 43. However TfGM seems to be going the other way, with short workings on 98 numbered 99.
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Same situation in my former home area, Littleborough. The eastern end is served only by the 587 or 590 from Halifax. Between Littleboro and Rochdale there are plenty of Bee Network buses but if you have a Hopper ticket you'll have to let the First and Transdev buses go past. But it was the same when you had First and Rosso operating and you had the "wrong" ticket.
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It is a very small area that isn’t covered however as you have the 457 which doesn’t turn off until Calderbrook & there isn’t a significant amount of housing after that really until you hit Walsden.
True but you also have housing along the A58 towards the White House pub.
mayneway
Member
Funnily enough the same thing happens at Queens RoadCorrect, they most definitely have the former Arriva/RIBBLE garage on Goodwin St in Bolton, to the degree that when they order things, they occasionally have a habit of being delivered to Weston St as some folk forget they've moved to another part of Bolton
Infact we were still getting milk delivered three times a week until fairly recently - presumably GNW footing the bill as the delivery notes stated it was for them.
Statto
Established Member
You have similar situation at the other end of GM in Orrell, with routes 352, 375, 385, however they're not part of the Bee Network as they're operated by Arriva from St Helens & Southport depots, so not covered by the hopper fare
py_megapixel
Established Member
Bee Network on Twitter seem to be attributing a lot of delays to "operational issues" - does anyone know what this actually means and/or how long it should take to improve?
daodao
Established Member
The Bee network couldn't have got off to a worse start weather-wise, and it seems worse today, with more snow having fallen overnight in Cheshire and Greater Manchester; it is snowing again as I write.
py_megapixel
Established Member
That's reassuring to hear, thanks for the info.
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HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
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- 20,269
Well, I can hope that the 142+143 are being retained as a stop gap until a proper reorganisation of the Oxford Road bus routes can be undertaken.
But I expect I will be disappointed.
johncrossley
Established Member
The volume of complaints seems a lot lower compared to the Tranche 1 and 2 starts, so considering the bad weather they seem to do be doing quite well.
I assume they've learned some lessons from the tranche 1 and tranche 2 starts. One thing I did note was there weren't that many timetable or frequency changes at launch, which clearly caused issues with tranche 1. I confess I was hoping that they'd take the chance to restore my own local bus service to a 15 minute frequency after Stagecoach reduced it to 20 minutes after Covid. But equally the staffing issues they had early on suggests better to make improvements more slowly.
mayneway
Member
Weather, vehicle issues and shortage of drivers.
I believe Tyrers and Swans coaches are both temporarily supplying drivers to Metroline.
Friend of mine at Ashton reckons they had massive issues with the camera mirrors yesterday.
Not just Tranche 3 having problems it seems over the past couple of days Oldham Depot have been having problems again for some reason as for past 2 days 12:16 181 Royton-Manchester has been running at least 20mins late and yesterday (Guessing it could have been a new driver) despite 181 starting and finishing in Royton 12:14 actually started in Shaw as can be seen on Bus Times:
bustimes.org
Then on their return journey from Manchester again on 181 the driver ran the service back to Shaw:
And yet again ran service from Shaw-Manchester meaning by the time they got to Royton they were 30mins late:
I did approach TfGM (Bee Network) with this info but they replied that they were having problems with 181s tracking yesterday (they were tracking on Bus Times) and blamed operational difficulties for the late running.
Now I know that Bee Network Stagecoach have driver boards whereby the board stays with the driver all day and this states where the bus should terminate so why the driver kept terminating at Shaw during their duty I'm not to sure.
Vehicles – 181 – bustimes.org
Then on their return journey from Manchester again on 181 the driver ran the service back to Shaw:
And yet again ran service from Shaw-Manchester meaning by the time they got to Royton they were 30mins late:
I did approach TfGM (Bee Network) with this info but they replied that they were having problems with 181s tracking yesterday (they were tracking on Bus Times) and blamed operational difficulties for the late running.
Now I know that Bee Network Stagecoach have driver boards whereby the board stays with the driver all day and this states where the bus should terminate so why the driver kept terminating at Shaw during their duty I'm not to sure.
I believe quite a few use it to get round to the Amazon warehouse from the airport bus station.
If these passengers are mostly changing to other buses at the bus station it'd be more useful to run a shuttle than the 313 in it's current state.
If the 313 must reach the Airport they should probably just run it via the 368 route between Cheadle Hulme and Heald Green. Yes it'd miss out quite a few stops but if the tracking data on bustimes.org is correct this morning no 313 arrived at Stockport between 07:24 and 10:37, and this evening none left Stockport between 15:55 and 18:01, so as it stands the service is pretty useless for anyone.
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markymark2000
On Moderation
I find it a bit daft that TFGM hasn't yet put a bus over to Amazon/Hut Group yet and worked with those respective companies to part fund it? Instead both of them are funding buses to shuttle to the Airport and for most people, you are going to be faffing around going to the Airport to change buses and come back out. Anyone living in Altrincham/Hale areas wanting to go to these sites will surely not make such a journey and sadly nothing for these sites from Wilmslow and Cheshire East.
(Replying here to avoid going off topic on the £3 fare cap thread)
These are the cuts which took place to the Trafford network on Sunday as the network moved over to Bee Network.
Route 280 cut from an hourly Altrincham - Partington via Dunham Massey service, to 2 hourly Altrincham - Dunham Woodhouses. Dunham Woodhouses to Partington as well as some roads in Partington now left without a bus service at all.
282 rerouted to not serve Walton Road in Oldfield Brow 'to enable longer buses to operate the route'
283/284 rerouted to avoid Stamford Brook Road 'to enable longer buses to operate the route'
Warrington to Manchester Airport X5 cut due to TFGM not agreeing funding. X5 ran early until late Monday-Sunday but thanks to the wonderful TFGM, that is now cut back massively to be 7.52-19.12, operating 2 hourly Monday-Saturday. That is a huge cut and massively affects cross border links. The fact that the bus remains operating from Lymm
For the areas, these are quite large cuts. It's not 1 trip being removed or something like that, some roads are losing their service and other areas having their service cut in half. Plenty of lost links. All thanks to Bee Network.
johncrossley
Established Member
Apart from the route changes due to vehicle type changes, all the cuts you mention seem to have been on cross-boundary services. These presumably would have been tendered routes in the first place so maybe these changes would have happened even if there wasn't franchising?
Djb1
Member
And regarding the 279 /280 there’s been no stability since the Dunham canal bridge forced the reroute of the cat5 (both in terms of routes and reliability of the replacement services). As much as the cut on the 279 isn’t good, it’s only a few years since the road south of the canal had no service between Lymm and Altrincham.
But granted at least one of the cross border services should have remained into the evening - either the 279 or the cat 5 at least as far as sale.
daodao
Established Member
I referred to these significant cuts in post 525 of this thread.
These cuts are a direct result of the franchising process and the apparent unwillingness of TfGM to co-operate with bus companies in neighbouring areas to achieve the best possible network with the limited funds available. In addition to the cuts that @markymark2000 has referred to, there is no longer any bus service going south along Cavendish Road and The Firs to Bowdon village centre, as routes 279/280 now run via Langham Road. This part of these routes is entirely within Greater Manchester and not a cross-boundary issue.
markymark2000
On Moderation
Incorrect. 280 isn't cross border at all and the X5 was cross border but the funding for it was TFGM funding. Had the X5 been cut at Altrincham and the 288 returned, I think almost all of us would have gone 'that is a fair change' but to ruin Lymm to Altrincham links because of Bee Networks unwillingness to work with a municipal bus operator (from a Labour council nonetheless!), to create a half decent bus network for everyone, is just down right shocking.
Apologies. I only replied here as I didn't want to go too off topic on the £3 fare thread. I didn't check back too far to see what was mentioned. You made some great points though in that post.
People just want to make it seem like it's someone elses issue because it doesn't fit the ideology that Bee Network is the best and that Bee Network couldn't possibly have ruined the bus network for some people!
johncrossley
Established Member
How can you be so sure about that? Of course, the timing of the cuts coincides with the Bee Network rollout, but how do you know that in a parallel universe where there is no franchising, TfGM might have implemented these cuts to the equivalent tendered services?
Whilst these cuts are of course unwelcome, they are not representative of the overall Bee Network rollout. Nearly all routes have stayed virtually the same. A minority of routes have seen modest improvement. Hardly anywhere outside these parts of Trafford have seen a service reduction. The affected routes probably comprise much less than 1% of Bee Network mileage.
TfGM will surely make significant modifications to the inherited deregulated network in due course. That will be the time to really judge the Bee Network.
daodao
Established Member
You are nearly 200 miles away whereas I live in Bowdon/Dunham and am reporting on the direct retrograde effect of the introduction of franchising by TfGM in my local area. There is no evidence to support the dogmatic belief that reversion to autocratic local state control in the form of the Bee Network, rather than a regulated market economy for local bus services with its inherent greater responsiveness to local and commercial factors, will reverse the steady decline in bus patronage since the 1950s.
johncrossley
Established Member
What does location have to do with anything? It is 2025 and we all have access to the same information on the internet. I bet most of the people commenting on this thread don't visit your little corner of the region often, if ever, even if they live somewhere else in Greater Manchester.
The routes in question were *already* run under tender to TfGM and/or neighbouring authorities, so all that has happened is the replacement of one tendering system with another. In both systems, private operators are providing the services.
If you don't want any state control then we could just simply only have commercial bus services. In that event, this area would have no service at all.