Diamond Bus North West

[South Lancs Travel]

RE: South Lancs Travel

(24/06/2012 16:28)Nicholas Wrote:  Bear in mind D&G has a tendency to buy fairly young second hand buses instead of brand new vehicles so there may be no new buses planned for SLT in the near future. However, the Leigh to Bolton QBP may mean some new buses do come into the fleet as I believe the Tempos were originally the first for use on the service, but there were not enough to cover the whole service.

The 132 is a difficult service because of the two congestion hotspots at either end of the route (Ince/Hindley and the M60). It doesn't matter what day it is or what time it is, you'll always find an issue with traffic along the A577. The timings aren't so much an issue (although extending the running time to 55 minutes will help a little), it is the unpredictable nature of the traffic that is the problem.

As Chris has said, roadworks don't help especially at the moment because there is a massive gas main renewal project going on that will take five years to complete. It doesn't help that you'll have works in one place for a few weeks then they'll go away and do the next bit a couple of months later rather than just getting the whole lot done as a job lot in one big go. This is definitely the case with Atherton Road as there are still pockets of work planned, well over 12 months after the first set began!

There's no plans for any new buses as far as I know. The Leigh-Bolton QBP is aimed more at First service 582. The Tempo's are tied up on services 514, 574 and EL1 and are staying there for the forseeable future.

Newer second-hand buses are usually the order of the day - these usually tend to appear as and when available.

As for the 132, I think I'll have a day out on it in the next couple of weeks, but it does seem to be the case that the roadworks are a bit of an unpredictable difficulty.

Chris.