Arriva North West - Winsford Depot

[mr t]

RE: Arriva North West - Winsford Depot

(15/12/2017 21:17)dca529x Wrote:  The days of 'chaos' are long gone. Things have moved on since 1986. Whether 'slot' times have any value nowadays is debatable. Instead of creating restrictions authorities need to work on more efficient traffic management to mitigate delays, then there wouldn't be the need for layover times to be more than necessary. Unfortunately, with the obsession for poor traffic light phases and under utilised bike lanes taking up road space, bus use decline and poor service reliabiity will continue and that brings to topic back very neatly to the decline of the 130.

Spot on, absolutely every journey is different every day and every week, this is what passengers and PTEs do not understand, It is impossible to predict 100% accurate. Yes there is the "average journey" during lunchtimes, evenings and early mornings, but each week could be affected by bank holiday, football match, bingo nights on, school parents evenings, school shows/meetings, sponataneous roadworks that always spring up unannounced, something in town on, something at the arena, something on in the park, which then obviously affects journeys either through extra passengers or extra other traffic which all affects journey times, then we have emergency incidents breakdowns, mr white van man who will stop in a lane meaning a bus has to wait 30secs-60secs to get past, or taxi driver, or parkings at schools. It is unfair of TGM to expect an operator to have accuracy so well for every single journey and then give them 5 minute layover, then moan when they are late! Especially on long journeys like 130 which is 2 hours long nearly. The only way around it would be to vastly over estimate journeys and give each one 2.5 hours instead which then results in stopping at timing points...but then what if something happens in the city centre and its been on time all the way there, then gets held up for 5 minutes but has no recovery time then. Absolute joke that TFGM