First Manchester 'Vantage' 39257 will be parked in the South East corner of St Peters Square until Wednesday. It carries an allover yellow 'wrap' promoting the forthcoming franchising scheme, which on this seems to get the name 'Manchester Bee Network'. Whether it actually enters service like this I don't know.
I thought it'd be a good idea to have a thread to keep track of the new stock and any resulting cascades. If anyone has any further information it'd be much appreciated
Alexander Dennis Enviro400City (TBC)
TBC-TBC (TBC) - St Helens
Wright StreetLite (10)
TBC-TBC (10) - Southport
Wright StreetDeck Ultroliner (24)
4xxx-4xxx (24) - Green Lane
Cascades
2159/65 - Southport to Arriva Yorkshire (via Team Pennine)
2160/1/4 - Southport to Unallocated
2162/3 - Southport to Birkenhead
2166 - Southport to St Helens
2587 - Southport to Withdrawn
2622/24 - Southport to Birkenhead
It is being reported this morning in various media outlets that National Express is in takeover talks with Stagecoach. Given that there is no overlap in local bus services then i doubt that it is unlikely to meet any opposition from competition authorities although there may be an issue with Megabus and CityLink. They could maybe be taken over by Comfort Delgro. Shouldn’t have much impact in North West England. A few years ago Stagecoach looked at taking over National Express, how times have changed!
Recommendations include:
- Two operators using the same service number in the same town should only occur when the route is the same and in that case tickets should be interchangeable between operators.
- Network maps should be available and shouldn't be operator specific.
- Uniform timetable change dates for all operators.
- Consistency between services running weekday daytime and weekday evenings and weekends.
- Better through ticketing.
- Contactless payment on all buses.
- Local bus services to be advertised at railway stations.
- Bikes spaces on rural buses.
It seems to be hinting at bus franchising in areas with a metro mayor.
This is more a speculation post more than anything, but if anyone could bring any fact to this post would be great also. Much of the Welsh fleet, are starting to age I'm sure this could be said about other parts of the country where Arriva operate. A while ago Arriva where looking at Streetlite option for its Bangor and Llandudno outstation operation, this was before the pandemic through a reasonable senior source. Since then the bus industry has changed. So revenue from a commercial perspective has hit the travel industry as to other businesses. Now that much of the fleet especially the cadets are showing there age with many been off the road. Is there a plan to replace in the next few months, year or so.
The way I interpret this is bus tendering will be done by Cheshire East Council directly, while services like Flexirider will be provided by ANSA (who provide other services like Waste Management) instead of TSS. Both ANSA and TSS are currently based in Middlewich.
I have seen First Group and Go Ahead areas getting the system installed. I wonder if any of the big groups have any plans for this to go Live in North West. and am sure TFGM will be looking at this system.
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