'It's quicker going to Blackpool on the National Express than going from Bolton to Salford by bus'
Within 48 hours of mayor Andy Burnham announcing which companies would run the first publicly-controlled bus services in Greater Manchester since 1986, Diamond decided to pull around a fifth of its fleet from the Bolton depot. The loss of 30 buses means that fewer services will be running in Bolton, Bury and Rochdale, as well as parts of Salford, Trafford and Wigan, from mid-April.
He says he often waits nearly 40 minutes for a bus. He does not believe reducing the frequency of buses on the timetable will make any difference, but is hopeful that the service will get better when Go North West takes over later this year. But, according to him, the Diamond ones 'don't turn up', so he won't notice a difference when the company cuts almost all of its journeys on this route and the Arriva service continues unchanged. However, on other routes which are being partially withdrawn, passengers have no alternative.
But, despite his desperation to save the 'busy' service, the Rochdale councillor repeatedly requested that operators which withdraw services - as Diamond is doing - are not given public money to continue running the routes in the short-term. TfGM already subsidises services on routes which are being withdrawn.
Stockport councillor David Mellor said that some of the bus services which were saved last summer thanks to public subsidies are not being run to a 'satisfactory standard' by operators and echoed Coun Burke in asking for this to be taken into account when awarding franchising contracts in the future. "This does reek of sour grapes if I'm honest," he said of Diamond's decision.
"People will read into it what they want to," he said. "I've got to recognise that the decisions we're making have significant implications and this is going to be a slightly disruptive period as we move from the old world into the new world." Salford councillor Roger Jones, who chairs the sub-committee, said that the affected local authorities were 'shocked' by the speed of Diamond's decision. "We were expecting, if there was any fallout from franchising, changes would happen in the summer," he told Rotala's representative at the meeting. "What we weren't expecting were these huge changes immediately from April.
"We've tried as best we can to mitigate the impact on people," he added. "I appreciate that certain people will disagree with that – the people of Lostock and Chew Moor will certainly disagree.
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