GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

[knutstransport]

RE: GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

(12/10/2016 14:36)33109 Wrote:  Had to chuckle today, D&G have won back some of the contracts they originally lost to GHA!!! The 42/78 are both theirs again now.

I had an inkling high peak would've gone in for the 19 prestbury route as they like having most of the macc town local routes. The 130 will certainly be interesting, i've still not worked out yet which route it'll be taking from cheadle or why arriva have changed the route slightly. Probably best guess is to shorten journey times & improve the reliability which is apparently the reason for the mon - sats going hourly.

39 - Ain't got the foggiest idea yet who's won that.
82 - Probably be arriva chester IMHO, although whoever wins the contract seriously needs to sort of the timings as it constantly runs late. An arriva driver earlier this wk said that for some reason it's no longer going to run from the bus exchange, anybody an idea??????

I don't think it's surprising some routes have gone back to their old operators. I found it more amusing that the 300 Saturday service and the 37 evening service were awarded to GHA but they never started running those services due to a lack of resources!

The 82 is a Cheshire West service and I think their emergency contracts lasted for longer than the Cheshire East ones.

While there's been comparisons to how the new timetables compare to the old GHA timetables, how do the new timetables compare to the pre-GHA timetables? For instance, the 82 was hourly under Arriva pre-GHA and is currently hourly under Arriva so while there has been a cutback over how it was recently it appears to be the same level of service as it was historically. The D&G 88 service will be an overall improvement on the pre-GHA timetable but the 27 and 289 are both reduced services compared to both what GHA operated and what the level of service was pre-GHA. I've not heard many complaints about the recent 289 cutbacks and the ones I heard related as much to a lack of notice about the timetable being changed as the cutback. However, I have heard a lot of complaints about the recent 27 cutbacks and that some people travel indirectly via Stockport by train because the bus doesn't run at the times they need to travel, which costs them a fortune in relation to how far Macclesfield and Knutsford are apart.