First Manchester

[Nicholas]

RE: First Manchester
This situation is already feeding down to the main customer base, and has caused disbelief with a lot of people... especially the thought of the X34 going through Boothstown.

The 26 has gone steadily downhill ever since the X34 was upgraded from the old 34. First made a number of big mistakes with that, the main one being making the X34 an all-stopper between Leigh and the East Lancs. The X34 should have remained a fast service with a small number of stops, (now its sometimes such a long slog to do this bit of route), with the 26 picking up traffic along the intermediate stops. The diversion up to Swinton Civic Centre is the other put-off, as people generally think it "goes round the houses" now, when it doesn't really make that many detours.

Despite this, the 26 is still quite a busy service (the journey arriving in Leigh at 7am carrying a very healthy load of around 25 people on Friday!). It is mainly the through traffic to/from Manchester that doesn't use it, with people either going 15 minutes later or 15 minutes earlier to catch the X34 instead.

The other thing First will need to do is either increase the afternoon peak service to run every 15-20 minutes, or ensure they run double deckers on ALL journeys. The 1642 is often run as single deck, and often ends up either leaving people behind or exceeding the legal capacity because of how busy it is. Add the Boothstown custom to it and it'll be knackered!