First Manchester night ticket

[James268]

I need to buy a first night ticket tonight, the website says it is valid 6pm-4am. I will be buying the ticket at bang on 6pm. The bus leaves the previous timing point (which happens to be the start of the route) at 17:57. If it is on time it will be at my stop at, or a minute before, 6pm. Will this be a problem?

The route is the 163.

 

[gazthomas]

Walk on stop on

 

[Polo Mint]

It is tough to answer this question. Often First buses are late as opposed to being earlier, but things have improved by quite a bit.

You could walk down to the next stop further down to increase the likelihood that you can buy the ticket. Or wait for the next bus, as I believe the service is every 10 mins. I am not sure if you can use the night ticket on the 17/18 (between Middleton and Manchester, so not applicable in Heywood or Bury) so you could always catch a later 17/18 bus if it applies to you.

 

[James268]

It's at the bury end, rather than Manchester. The next one is 15 mins later, but I ideally need that one to catch my connection, the 59 at middleton.

 

[Shrimper]

When I was at Stagecoach Manchester the ticket machines had about 2 minutes grace before the official time so you could issue time limited tickets (and accept ENCTS cards) without having to delay the service or inconvenience passengers.

 

[freetoview33]

All I can say is in Bristol when it starts at 7PM and I got on the bus 1 second after 7 and it worked so.

 

[34D]

I would plan for the worst, and assume that the driver will refuse to sell it at 17:59.

 

[James268]

Turns out it didn't matter, the bus was 7 mins late anyway. Thanks all for the responses