Diamond Bus North West

[gilesbus1]

RE: Diamond Bus North West
One of the issues has been that bus lanes were installed throughout the 582 route in 1998, but then other road users protested about extra congestion so many of them were removed, all the others are part time.

Most journeys I see to be honest are not short hops, but several of them are journeys between 10 minutes and 35 minutes, Bendy Buses were tried by FirstGroup but failed because the road infrastructure and bus stops are not suitable for them. Yesterday I walked to Leigh in the evening peak and there was an Enviro Enviro400 allocated and it was totally full on the lower deck and two thirds full on the upper deck, so they can withstand usage at busy times and not be part full. Also look at the number of people waiting to board at Bolton Bus Station, quite often the Que is quite long, if not the longest in the entire bus station.

Suspect one of the issues why deckers are not allocated is down to user-ship in that about 50% are OAP's with free passes, and they are unlikely to want to go upstairs so by putting deckers on, your merely reducing the number of seats they can use,and therefore everyone else would have to be prepared to go upstairs onto the upper deck, but in practice they won't.

Even when GMPTE operate there were periods when saloons were allocated rather than deckers, usually Leyland Nationals, I never recall a Bristol or Seddon being allocated, but that's not to say they weren't, generally in the PTE period it was Atherton based Leyland Fleetline's and later Atlanteans then Olympian's that operated on it, often mixed up so you would get a large number of Fleetline's and an Atlantean then Olympian, later of course when Ribble and Merseybus competed on it you had Olympians that were branded as the main allocation. While the others generally used older deckers and Leyland National 2 series buses.

Another issue why the 582 can be quite busy is because of the withdrawal of other routes that served the same corridor e.g. between Bolton and Over Hulton (Four Lane Ends) you used to have the 12, the 580 and the 559 amongst others, plus a service to Chorley/Preston via Hulton Lane Ends and Westhoughton operated by Ribble, now there are none of these, at the other end between Leigh and Atherton, you had the 516, the 39 and later the 35, plus Shakerley circulars, now all you've got left on there is the 517 and half a Shakerley circular, both running at hourly frequencies, everything else has gone.