Cheshire East proposed funding cuts

[Barney]

RE: Cheshire East proposed funding cuts

(20/10/2017 16:10)knutstransport Wrote:  At the time of bus deregulation contracted services in Cheshire all started with a letter and commercial services all had 3 digit numbers. So having all contracted services starting with a letter in some ways is going back to the old system. It should also avoid instances where an operator takes over a service and changes the route number because they already operate a service elsewhere with that number e.g. when GHA changed the number of the Macclesfield to Congleton service. However, given the routes will be different it's not possible to resurrect the old numbers from the 1990s.

In a way the numbering system will help passengers with routes which Cheshire East have over complicated e.g. at the Coach & Four in Wilmslow passengers wanting Knutsford just need to look for E at the start of the route number - it doesn't matter if it's E1 Knutsford, E1 Macclesfield or E2 Northwich shown on the display they can remember all E buses from that stop go to Knutsford.

Incidentally the thing that most annoys me about the E route (which Cheshire East have ignored from the feedback given) is taking a bus off the regular services to run a school service which then partially duplicates a regular service. Just re-route the regular service and use a bigger bus - no need to leave a huge gap in the Macclesfield to Knutsford service and run two buses between Knutsford and Mobberley at the same time!

I may well be wrong but I always thought that prefix letters in large swathes of the north west and Wales stemmed from the practice Crosville adopted in its vast empire decades before deregulation.