GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

[trawscymru27]

RE: GHA Group (GHA Coaches, Bryn Melyn and Vale Travel)
As noted in the VOSA bus registrations thread, GHA will take over the Cheshire East contract for service 130 (Macclesfield - Wilmslow - Manchester) from this coming Sunday (13th Jan). It will be interesting to see what vehicles are used on this, as there are (to my knowledge) only two low floor vehicles based at Macclesfield depot (assuming the service will be run from there). One of these is recently-acquired Solo YJ60KBN, in Vale Travel livery. This is used on service 200 (Wilmslow - Manchester Airport), which runs daily. Hence only one vehicle (that used weekdays on the 19 Macclesfield - Prestbury) will be available on a Sunday. I believe the PVR for the 130 is 3, so vehicles will have to be brought in, presumably from Tarvin, which will incur a great deal of empty mileage. It would make sense to me to transfer the 88 service (Knutsford - Wilmslow - Altrincham) to Macclesfield depot. I think the distance from Macclesfield to Knutsford/Wilmslow is slightly less than that from Tarvin, and the three vehicles needed for this service (Versas MX58KZE/F and Dart SN03DZZ) would be available at Macclesfield on Sundays for the 130. SN03DZZ is used in Macclesfield once a week anyway, on the RR3 from Disley. It will be interesting to note whether this will be the case.