Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(09/07/2014 19:16)FC Pictures Wrote:  I did point out that there are no parallel trains with the 432/433 and 437 they take a totally different route to Liverpool, so you would have to add a bus fare on top to connect to any train from Wallasey, and Saveaway Tickets for cross river cost about the same anyway.

The point is that for a return journey of virtually identical length (Wallasey Village to Liverpool and Egremont to Liverpool) you have a disparity of £1.60. That is remarkable, especially as the buses serve the more deprived areas of Wallasey that the trains do not and are charging vastly greater fares. Put simply, a more reasonable return fare would allow some residents who have been priced out of using the bus to start using it again. £3.40 is reasonable for Wallasey - Liverpool, £5 certainly isn't.

Now, I have used the 10/10A route on a daily basis while I was at University for nearly three years, and not once - not a single occasion - did I ever witness any act of anti-social behaviour, and this includes travelling at school times several days a week. Sure, the odd rowdy school kid wasn't unheard of, but in terms of acts of vandalism and bad behaviour towards other passengers, not a single incident. Regardless of experience, the back of most of St Helens' Pulsars that I've seen are not particularly vandalised, some not at all. They're certainly in better nick internally than some examples at Green Lane, Birkenhead and Bootle.

As V671 rightly says, other cities have equally bad and worse areas than Liverpool (Manchester has a significantly higher rate of crime than Liverpool) yet their provision of double deckers is unaffected. Vandalism and anti-social behaviour is a frankly shameful excuse.

The 192 route in Manchester even had issues with gangs boarding buses, going upstairs and threatening passengers unless they handed over money. I remember it reported in the Manchester Evening News a couple of years ago. Never once have I heard anything like this reported in Liverpool, yet as it city and region it has a mere fraction of the number of high-capacity buses as Manchester.