GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

[knutstransport]

RE: GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

(27/09/2016 13:32)quahogbuscompany Wrote:  I'm sure the guys at Howards are open to suggestions from all sides. Unfortunately in order to make something grow, there must be reasons or scope for it to grow. I'm sure the duties are running pretty close to maximum driving times at the moment, so in order to increase journey length or to increase frequency will involve finding more drivers, paying more labour costs, more vehicle payments, more insurance, more road tax, more fuel and requires more operators licences which to pay for requires a lot more revenue. Howards have already ordered a brand new vehicle for the 289 service which is due late November, but I'm led to believe the 200 and 27 contracts have been won at a minimum cost tender with a vehicle age restriction of 15 years, so I'm sure there will be no new buses forthcoming for those services. I hope things do develop with these services and would really like to see Howards prosper and grow with these services, but Rome wasn't built in a day so let's give them a chance and see what they can do. If you want to email them their email is info@springfieldbus.co.uk

That's really why I think it's harder for Howards to do something innovative. For instance, from the end of October alternate 130 Macclesfield-Wilmslow Arriva services will terminate at Wilmslow meaning if Arriva had been awarded the 200 contract they could have run a Macclesfield-Manchester Airport service without requiring additional buses/drivers over running two separate services and maybe that would have improved reliability as well?

At the moment there's only 1 bus service serving Knutsford which hasn't seen cutbacks in the last couple of months and that's the 300 town circular which apparently D&G are adding a couple of extra weekday commercial journeys to at the end of October. The 289 has seen some cutbacks to allow it to be run using the same vehicle as school contracts, the 88 has seen some early/late journeys removed (as a result of positional moves GHA ran not being required), while the 27 has seen a frequency reduction. It really doesn't feel like a case of Rome not being built in a day - more like people from the Vatican coming along and part destroying the Colosseum so they can use the building materials elsewhere!