Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

[Barney]

RE: Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

(25/07/2023 12:00)iMarkeh Wrote:  The X1 was fast until MCSL management decided that they wanted to kill off demand on the 1/X1 corridor.
The 500 is limited stop and is 10 minutes quicker from the Airport to Liverpool One. The issue is that it needs to serve more of the city to make it attractive to people but the down side of that is that the 500 takes 40 minutes to get back from L1 to LJLA but that makes the 500 and 82A take the same journey time.

West Wirral to Liverpool express routes have potential using the M53 and anything from Rock Ferry to Liverpool not serving Birkenhead would save a good amount of time.

Halton to Liverpool was doing alright on express routes but Arriva actively killed the X1 and put so many costs onto it needlessly (then wondered why it didn't make money despite bus and driver sitting around in Runcorn forever.

Other than these, what is the potential for an express bus? The roads which express buses would use (your Edge Lane, East Lancs etc) have so many traffic lights which massively delays buses and the traffic is so variable and with bus operators aiming for 100% reliability so padding up the timetables, any express bus would not really be any quicker than the main bus services.

Strangely, I agree with most of of your post as the original Crosville 471/2 routes were peak hour express services and accept that traffic congestion on many roads is a huge problem.

However, I do still see an argument for limited stop services along major corridors calling at key stops which was what the 5** services did. I am sure that people living along Liverpool routes such as the 10, 14, 20, 79, 82, and 86 would value a reduced journey time into and out of the city centre but that can only come about if bus lanes and priority schemes were devised and previous LCC administrations have a very poor record in this regard.