New Cheshire East bus review

[knutstransport]

RE: New Cheshire East bus review

(06/07/2020 21:21)iMarkeh Wrote:  For Holmes Chapel, I think any route would be more used by Holmes Chapel residents going to Knutsford so the figures I think will be lower. I don't dispute demand may be low but I think for the route, it has been consulted at the 'wrong end'.

While the survey was conducted by Knutsford Town Council there was the option of filling it in online and it was promoted by the Knutsford Guardian, which is read by people in Holmes Chapel - as well as some of the other villages which may have demand for a bus service to Knutsford.

Holmes Chapel does have bus services to other towns in Cheshire so I don't think a Knutsford bus is essential for shoppers, I think perhaps the more relevant question is would a bus to Knutsford make it easier for those who are unemployed and looking for new jobs.

Quote:For the Airport, I would be interested to hear the reasoning for an Airport bus. I say this because if it's for leisure travel, you might as give up since leisure travel won't be used much. If for commuters (Airport City, Cargo Centre or MIA employees), there is a lot more chance of it happening. I would question the potential routings though as you need to maximise local travel as well as end to end travel. Perhaps Knutsford - Mobberley - Morley Green - Airport?

I think The Hut Group moving from Northwich to Airport City might have affected demand to Airport City. For new vacancies I think The Hut Group are going to have more vacancies which are attractive to people in one of the more affluent parts of Cheshire, than Amazon.

One issue for any airport public transport is that the airport is open most of the day so running a bus from say 7am to 7pm won't cover all demand

Quote:Macclesfield I think has potential for more services, just the services need to better suit the many shift times. Could AstraZeneca be added back in or was that useless on the 27?

AstraZeneca have scaled back the size of their operations at Nether Alderley but that has allowed other businesses to open on that site.

At one time the buses on the 27 were rammed at peak times, which is why the larger Cadets got introduced. However, it's worth remembering at that time morning peak services ran Congleton-Macclesfield-AstraZeneca-Knutsford and the reverse in the evening peak, eliminating the need for those travelling between Congleton and AstraZeneca to change buses in Macclesfield and meaning passengers making that journey were likely to be on the 27 opposed to the 130.

I think, other than the frequency, the main problem with the Knutsford-Macclesfield bus is it's trying to serve too many little villages and hamlets, where it's rare for anyone to board or alight and serving all those villages and hamlets means that the end to end journey time is slow which then makes it unattractive for leisure travel.

Quote:I do agree with the town circular returning. The 300 was quite a good little bus. If it was reduced to hourly around Longridge then in the other 30-35 minutes run round trips to Beggemans Lane or High Legh to help the route serve more areas to benefit more people.

An alternative option could be for the 88 to be split at Knutsford and for buses from Wilmslow to go via Mobberley Rd instead of Longridge, with the Macclesfield bus extending to Mobberley via Longridge and running on an hourly basis. That would retain direct connections between Mobberley and Macclesfield and mean that there's buses along both Longridge and Mobberley Rd. There could then perhaps be short extensions to the routes ending in Knutsford to cover other parts of Knutsford like the Bexton area.

I seem to recall it being said the short lived commercial 88A was hovering around the break-even mark opposed to D&G losing money from running it and the main reason for it being withdrawn was D&G needed to improve their balance sheet after losing a lot of money on their attempt running a Macclesfield-Manchester Airport commercial service.