On Friday, I had the pleasure(?) of catching the 192 to Hazel Grove in order to collect the remainder of the cat's prescription from the vets after work.As such, I was party to the usual puzzling conundrum: Why is it, when you actually want to go to Hazel Grove, there is never a 192 coming down the road that is actually doing the full route?
In fairness, I think I'd just missed one, but when you're standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus for a good fifteen minutes or so and three 192's to Stepping Hill Hospital go past, it does get annoying. Especially as it reminded me of all of those times last November when I was waiting at the same bus stop, trying to get to the hospital at night. When all of the 192's that came along were going to Hazel Grove, not the hospital.
Eventually, the welcome sight of a big yellow double decker bearing the legend 'Hazel Grove P&R' homed into view. Followed by another one. And another one... and another one.
As the gentleman who had just arrived at the bus stop put it: "Four of the fuckers at once."
I don't feel he meant it as a compliment.
The actual journey was quick and uneventful, which is so remarkable on both counts that it really does deserve to be set down on record.
And then there was the 45 minute walk home, in blazing heat, from the vets.
Both Hazel Grove and Offerton are ludicrously badly linked when it comes to buses. They are literally next to each other but there's no connecting bus. Similarly, there is no connecting bus between Hazel Grove and Bramhall to the other side of HG. On paper, HG seems well connected because the 192 (the Bee Network's busiest and most frequent bus route) runs through it. But it only runs through the centre, not the outskirts of what is not so much a village as a small town.
To provide a bit of local history here: Back in the 1800's, Hazel Grove was three separate villages: Bullock Smithy, which is now the centre of Hazel Grove, Norbury, which is now the bit of Hazel Grove that sits next to Bramhall, and Torkington, the bit that sits next to Offerton. You can see echoes of the three old names throughout the area. At some point, they were brought together as one large village under the name Hazel Grove, a name I've never discovered a satisfying or plausible origin story for. The name Hazel Grove is, alas, almost certainly the justification for the metal sculpture outside Sainsbury's at the border of Great Moor and Hazel Grove.
Because it was such a long walk, and I have a new mp3 player to break in, I had my headphones in for the duration. This served to remind me of how certain songs just really work when it comes to walking. In this case, weirdly, Nitan Sawhney's 'Days of Fire'. I found myself thinking about songs that really work in odd situations: Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab', for example, used to get played a lot in my old launderette in Heaton Moor, and is weirdly brilliant for shunting piles of washing around to. Similarly, on a very full on shift on a Saturday at the University Library, I discovered that Rachel Stevens' 'Some Girls' is fantastic for emptying a book sorter to. And then there is the oddly effective way that Carly Simons' 'Why?' works when you're pushing a supermarket trolley around the store.
I don't think anyone can actually write, or playlist, a song deliberately according to whether you are walking, washing, book sorting, or supermarket shopping. But I know when I've come up against bad choices: Both The Ting Tings 'That's Not My Name' and Kate Nash's 'Foundations' really, really don't work in supermarkets, for example. That said, the time the Co-Op in Heaton Moor played the Wednesday version of 'Paint It Black' followed by the old Addams Family TV theme tune around Halloween a few years ago probably remains unbeaten.
I arrived home sweaty and blistered, but with a strong sense of completion.
In the light of this weeks announcement that Stockport was FINALLY going to get it's own Metrolink line, I wanted to look back on a piece I wrote for CityMetric in February 2020, when Covid was only just coming on the radar, and when Andy Burnham had proposed a slightly different way of getting trams to Stockport...
Interestedly, or slightly ironically, tram-trains are now being floated as a possible solution in terms of bringing Bolton into the tram network.
This piece was originally published on the 11th February, 2020 in City Metric. City Metric shuttered at some point during the pandemic, and this piece can no longer be found online. It is being re-published thanks to Authory, who back up my articles for me, ensuring that I never lose my work.
Could tram-trains finally connect Stockport to Manchester’s Metrolink network?
It’s probably worth noting at this point that Stockport has two Tory MPs and that the Johnson government currently has a strong desire to please voters in the north.
While the prospect of Metrolink coming to Stockport is good news for the town, residents can be forgiven for shrugging and saying, “Believe it when I see it mate”.
Aside from being glass half empty people a lot of the time, we have been here before.
Stockport should have had the Metrolink 15 years ago: It was promised to the town under the ‘Big Bang’ plan of the early 2000’s, which included a new line to Manchester Airport which would have continued on to Stockport. That line was scrapped, along with new lines to Oldham and Rochdale, by then transport minister Alistair Darling in 2004. Having been burnt once, Stopfordians won’t believe we’re getting Metrolink until we see the first tram pull into the town centre.
Why should we be more hopeful this time? For one thing, Metrolink and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) seem to have learned a series of very hard lessons since 2004. Chief among these is that, rather than going for large, expensive projects, any extensions to the Metrolink would have to be achieved by smaller projects, such as the lines to Manchester Airport (but not to Stockport), Rochdale and Oldham (which were all eventually built as separate projects) in a slower, more piecemeal fashion.
A map of possible new routes and stations. Image: TfGM.
It’s this compromise of tram-trains rather than “proper” trams that makes me feel like a poor country cousin though. Not only have I spent the past 15 years feeling like an urchin peering in through the windows of the big house at the rich children with their luxurious toys, but I’m now not even going to get the same toys as those children. Personally, I’d take second hand toys, but there is still a suggestion of the Stockport Metrolink being an afterthought.
Still, better second hand toys than no toys at all. The population of Bolton aren’t even mentioned in TfGM’s future plans for the Metrolink, despite having a better designed transport interchange than Stockport currently has. God only knows when Bolton will be getting any trams.
The 3rd of June marks the sixth month anniversary of the Bee Network. Or, to put it another way, it will have been six months since franchising was rolled out across all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester.
With this in mind, now seems like a good opportunity to look back and reflect on what have been the good bits and the bad bits of this form of franchising so far. Unfortunately, as a regular bus user, it's actually easier to spot the things that haven't gone so well than the things that have gone well.
One area that has seen an improvement is contracts for drivers, with the 'Licence for Greater Manchester' now meaning that drivers can leave one of the bus companies operating on the Bee Network in order to work for another one also operating on the Bee Network, without having to start at the new company on a basic salary. Ie, they can keep their previous grade and salary when they move companies and will no longer have to take a pay cut every time they change operators. This is really good news because it removes barriers to moving jobs, which is always a good thing, and in practical terms would mean that if you're working for a shit bus operator you can now move to a slightly better one without having to take a pay cut for the privilege of doing so.
An area where the Bee Network sought to make positive change was in the design and accessibility of the new yellow buses, which were meant to be more accessible for those with disabilities and with visual and hearing impairments. On paper at least, this has been achieved in that the new buses do have floors that can be lowered, there is greater space for wheelchairs, and there are stop display screens and recorded audio stop announcements in place. In reality though, it just isn't working as it should be.
Let's take the changes one at a time.
In terms of having a bus that can lower the floor to the same height as the kerb, this is something that was in place on most of the old buses anyway (certainly on Stagecoach buses) and, as previously, while it's good to have it and it should be standard, the implementation of it's use depends very much on the individual driver as well as on the individual driver's access to the bus stop. For example, the 385 is cursed by having a large number of bus stops without road markings where local residents are forever parking their cars with impunity. This makes it hard for intrepid 385 drivers to pull into the stop and get close enough to the pavement to ensure a smooth exit from the bus. A drop down floor doesn't solve this particular problem. Proper road markings for bus stops and enforcement action against motorists parking at bus stops would.
The greater space for wheelchairs is really good and does ensure that there is more room on the buses for those using a wheelchair. I'm really glad that it was built into the design, but... It does mean that there are now less seats on the buses. Especially the single decker buses and the smaller single decker buses that basically resemble a minibus. This unfortunately leads to more people standing in the aisles, hindering access for everyone, including those using a wheelchair.
The visual display screens and audio announcements were being trialled on Stagecoach pre Bee Network and, as with the ones on the Stagecoach buses, the problems have remained the same: They are rarely switched on and, when the drivers do remember to switch them on, they often have the wrong end of the route displayed. There is literally no point in looking at a list of real time stop information for the Hawk Green and Mellor end of the 385 route if you're actually travelling in the opposite direction towards Stockport. It tends to be even rarer for the audio stop announcements to be switched on and, again, they sometimes are wrong as well. I'm assuming that the three main reasons why the visual and audio stop info isn't switched on are as follows:
1) Lack of training on how to switch them on and ensure they are working properly.
2) Tech failures
3) Drivers find the audio announcements annoying and know that some passengers do as well.
This all leads me onto a number of other areas in which the first six months of the Bee Network can be seen to have not been that great.
Firstly, there have been problems with vehicles. Not just the new vehicles - which have definitely had problems, both as described above, but also with payment scanners not working properly for days or weeks at a time - but also with old vehicles. Specifically, there have been a number of occasions when I've flagged down a bus that I know is my bus (because no other buses stop at that stop) but it has either not had a destination or number displayed on the front of the vehicle or, on one memorable occasion, has had the 'Sorry, not in service' display up while still carrying passengers.
There's also driving styles, which leads onto a personal bugbear of mine, ie drivers who don't know how to drive over speed bumps without treating passengers like a sack of spuds in a delivery van.
The big problem is, of course, reliability. According to the data that the Bee Network has collected over the past six months, reliability on bus routes in Tranches 1, 2 and 3 of the Bee Network is constantly improving. But it doesn't feel like that to passengers. As regular readers will know, the reliability of the 385 has - in my experience of using it - decreased since the contract was taken away from D&G and given to Diamond in January. Similarly, while it felt as though reliability on the 383 had improved since January, it now seems to be sliding backwards again (more on this in my previous post). With reliability in particular, perception of passengers is as important as cold hard statistics. If people don't feel that they are getting an improved service, they won't feel good about using the Bee Network. And they may even stop using it.
This dates back to the decades before re-regulation when I still lived in Hazel Grove and was working evening shifts in Manchester. In theory, I should have been able to catch a 192 from Manchester Piccadilly that would take me all the way to what is now the Park and Ride in Hazel Grove, but what was then just known as Carpet World. In reality, it wasn't uncommon - particularly on Friday's when I finished at 7pm, not 9:30pm - to be stood at the bus stop, watching a long run of part route 192's appear and drive off. If I'd been waiting a while, I would give up and get on a part route one, then get off and Stockport town centre and hope to catch any of the following:
1) A 192 that was doing the full route
2) A 199 going to Buxton via Hazel Grove
3) A 392 or 393 going to Macclesfield via Hazel Grove
4) A 391 going to Middlewood via Hazel Grove
The 392 and 393 seem to have fallen by the wayside since January, meaning that there is no longer a bus that can take you to Macclesfield from Stockport, and commuters are now entirely at the mercy of Northern trains, which is not a happy state of affairs. I'm guessing that the reason it's gone is because for it to continue TfGM, Stockport Council and Cheshire East Council would have had to have cooperated with each other and subsidised it together, and presumably no one could be bothered. Cheshire East Council has no money so that probably didn't help.
The now extinct 392
Anyway, the 199, which travels between Buxton and Manchester Airport (via Hazel Grove and Stockport town centre) is a cross boundary route which was always going to survive. It's really popular, runs regularly (every 30 minutes most of the time), is covering areas other routes don't cover, and it's being run in conjunction with Derbyshire County Council, not Cheshire East.
Because there is no bus service linking our end of Offerton to Hazel Grove anymore (the one that did previously was the 375, which was so infrequent as to be practically non existent anyway) it was a 30 minute walk to the A6 to pick up the 199 from Bird In Hand Yard. This turned out not to be the best choice of stop in the world because, as with most stops on the A6, it's pretty much impossible to have a clear vantage point on whether the bus is coming without standing in the way of the constant flow of human traffic heading along the pavement. At least there's a nice wall to sit on though.
We were going for the 12:21 bus only it never arrived and we instead ended up on the 12:51, which arrived around 1pm ish. Apparently there had been an accident somewhere along the route, possibly at the Airport end, and there was definitely a serious crash in Buxton so that probably had an impact as well. I'm not sure if Skyline simply pulled the 12:21 bus and didn't tell anyone (a'la Stagecoach) or if their timetable had just got so badly out of sync thanks to at least one serious RTA that the one that turned up at 1pm was the one that should have turned up at 12:21. We will never know.
I've never gone beyond the TfGM/Derbyshire border* on the bus before, so I've always been able to use my TfGM pass previously. Because we were going to Chapel-en-le-frith, which is across the Derbyshire border, I had to pay £6 for a Peak Network 1 Day pass, which I think is the one that covers you for all buses run by Skyline. They sell a number of different day passes by zone and, while I was expecting Chapel to be covered by the Buxton zone ticket, I was willing to be guided by the driver on this. Again, because it's Derbyshire, not Greater Manchester, the single fare cap is £3, not £2 anyway, and £3 each way would have been value for money for a 35-45 minute bus journey.
One of the reasons why I've always enjoyed using the 199 is that the buses are always clean and comfortable, the drivers are friendly, and it just feels pleasant travelling on them. Friday was no exception to this and I was very pleased to notice, after a while, that Skyline have visual and audio stop announcements (which were turned on and displaying/broadcasting the correct information on both buses) which came in very useful when it came to getting off at the right stop in Chapel.
On the way back, I discovered that I could still use the Bee Network app (even in Derbyshire) to see when the next 199 was due. I think it was late but, given that we only had to wait for 10 minutes for it, I was happy with that. It did take several attempts to figure out how to scan in with the QR code on my paper ticket but, once I'd mastered it, it was fine and a smooth return journey unfolded, followed by a long walk home.
*Lyme Park, which technically comes under Cheshire East, but which is right on the Cheshire East/Derbyshire border and, anyway, marks one of the geographical points where you have to start buying a separate ticket and can't use your TfGM/Bee Network tickets.
Before the Bee Network came to Stockport, most of the buses (with the honourable exception of the 385 and 199) that I used were run by Stagecoach.
This hasn't actually changed that much since January (except on the 385 route where the service has declined since being taken off D&G and given to Diamond) because the 199 is a cross boundary route (ie it goes to Buxton, which is in Derbyshire, not Greater Manchester) and all of the other routes I use have remained with Stagecoach.
Stagecoach were one of the companies who took the GMCA to judicial review in order to try and stop the Bee Network from happening. Admittedly they only did this once (as opposed to Diamond, who did it twice) but, with this in mind, I am forced to conclude that, after all the legal challenges were defeated, Stagecoach must have put in some seriously hard graft when it came to charming the pants off the people awarding the bus contracts as they have basically been allowed to keep what seems like almost all of the bus routes they had previously. Aside from ones like the 375 where they were clearly taking the piss.
Given that Stagecoach, pre Bee Network, had the monopoly on all routes between Stockport and Manchester, not an awful lot has changed. We are still dominated by the buggers.
Given that reliability on the 385 (Diamond) has gone south since January (particularly on the 4:30pm bus) I have been increasingly reliant on the 383 (Stagecoach) to get home from work. Aside from the long established problems with overcrowding on the 4:25pm service, this was largely working OK... Right up until a couple of weeks ago when, across several days, the 4:25pm service failed to turn up.
While this is annoying - especially given how hot the weather was at the time, and that the stop doesn't have any shade - at least you only have to wait another 20 minutes for one to turn up, as opposed to an hour for another 385 to arrive.
On each occasion the 4:43pm 383 did turn up, but it was of course massively overcrowded and stopped at every stop, what with the previous one not having turned up and everything. This doesn't put anyone in the best of tempers, especially when it's ridiculously hot.
This series of events reminded me of the bad old days of using Stagecoach to get around, specifically the number of times when the 383 has done this before, as well as the number of times it's happened to me on both the 191 and the 42A. What I think happens is this:
Phase 1: Buses get delayed and drift increasingly away from their scheduled arrival times because of heavy traffic, or accidents, or similar.
Phase 2: When they get really late, it is informally decided by Stagecoach to pull one or more of the ones running particularly late in order to ensure that the bus timetabled after it (in this case, the 4:43pm 383 service) arrives either on time or, within 5-10 minutes of when it should have arrived.
This means that they get back on track more quickly in terms of buses turning up on time but, in the short term, no one bothers to tell the passengers waiting for the earlier service that it isn't coming.
Inevitably, it also leads to more overcrowded buses. Especially at peak times.
I had thought that the 383 had improved in terms of reliability since last year, but I realise now that it might have been a temporary blip. Reliability definitely hasn't been as good as it was over the past three weeks and, while road conditions definitely have had a part to play in that, unofficially cancelling buses in order to try and get ahead of roadworks and gridlock doesn't encourage trust in passengers. It just builds resentment, and an increased feeling that the bad old days of bus travel are not as behind us as we would like.
In an interesting development following last weeks introduction of tap and go on Bee Network buses, rentable E-bikes (known as Bee Bikes) are apparently going to be the next bit of transport to be made tap and go ready. As news goes, this is a bit of a mixed one because - even though TfGM are purchasing more rental e-bikes for the network - there are still large chunks of Greater Manchester that do not have access to hubs where you can rent them. This includes Stockport.
I remember looking into the possibility of using an earlier version of a Greater Manchester rentable bike scheme a few years ago. At the time, the buses were due to go on strike again and I was looking into alternative ways to get to work during the strikes. As far as I could work out, the nearest rental hub was in Levenshulme, ie on the Stockport/Manchester border. Given that I was living in Heaton Chapel at the time (ie the other side of the Stockport/Manchester border), walking to Levenshulme to pick up a bike might not have been that bad. What put me off in the end though was the fact that there were no bike rental hubs for the Greater Manchester scheme in Stockport at all, meaning that if I could get one out of Levenshulme and it's wheels didn't lock like a supermarket trolley going beyond it's geographical jurisdiction once I got it past McVities, then I would have to take it back to Levenshulme to drop it off again. At which point I sacked it off and started googling bike shops in Stockport that rented out bikes for the week.
From the look of it, there are no e-bike rental hubs in Stockport for Bee Bikes either so, at this point, there's limited practical use for me to use one anyway.
But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be useful to have access to easy to rent bikes in easily accessible locations. It would be especially useful to be within walking distance of a bike rental hub on those occasions when the bus didn't turn up, for example, but only if there was a drop off point suitably near my final destination. Neither of which I can see happening anytime soon.
At the same time as Greater Manchester is planning to increase it's e-bike offering, TFL in That There London is banning travellers from taking non-foldable e-bikes on it's transport network. The ban comes into effect from tomorrow and is on safety grounds following consultation with the London fire brigade after a small number of incidents of non foldable e-bikes catching fire on London Underground.
I'm not sure how many people would rent an e-bike and then take it on a tram, or indeed if you can take one on a tram (Stockport, along with Bolton, is one of the remaining two bits of Greater Manchester not to have trams) but scooters and bikes are already banned from buses in Greater Manchester so, unless you can take one on a tram, it seems unlikely to be an issue here in the same way as it perhaps is in London.
So, ultimately, I cautiously welcome the announcement about the Bee Bikes and tap and go, while also realising that it's likely to have no impact on my travel habits whatsoever at this stage...
This week, TfGM revealed a map of 'high frequency' transport links around the ten local authority areas. While it undoubtably looks very impressive, when you come to examine it you realise that - aside from it looking very pretty - it's not actually that helpful when it comes to getting from A-B.
In the Bee Network's quest to develop a London style integrated transport system, introducing tap and go (coming into effect tomorrow) is a realistic, and helpful, step because it gives people the option of paying by debit card on all their journeys but rather than paying individually for each journey and seeing the costs spiral, tap and go will cap your days travel at a reasonable price: Something that would have been unthinkable here even two years ago.
But when it comes to 'high frequency' buses the reality is, well, bollocks frankly.
There are 41 high frequency bus routes across Greater Manchester, and despite accounting for just 7% of all Bee Network services, they carry the majority of bus passengers. Of the 13.8 million journeys made by bus in February, 7.4 million (54%) were on these routes.
Out of around 577 Bee Network services in operation, the 192, 143 and 43 high frequency services account for 10% of all bus journeys taken in Greater Manchester, with a quarter of all bus trips being taken on the top 10 high frequency services.
You can read a lot into those two paragraphs.
Firstly, part of the reason why the 192, 143 and 43 are so popular is historical: These are routes where Stagecoach either fought lengthy bus wars to keep the route (very much the case with the 192), or which run along student routes involving the Oxford Road corridor (143) or go to Manchester Airport (43). That is, they have been cash cows for decades for Stagecoach (all of them were run by Stagecoach pre Bee Network) who put more buses on those routes because they could generate huge wads of cash from them all. That is the real reason why you can catch one of them every 12 minutes or less.
Similarly, if your immediate bus service runs less than every 12 minutes and you want to get somewhere faster than your local service allows, you will - if you are physically able to - walk a longer distance to catch a bus that is more frequent. As someone who grew up on the Offerton/Hazel Grove border, and whose local service was the notoriously unreliable, hourly, 375 I can vouch for the fact that the 20 minute walk into Hazel Grove to catch the 192 was usually a better option.
To celebrate such a small number of already established, greed fuelled, bus allocation seems really weird to me. Especially given the problems I'm having commuting from one end of Offerton to the other five times a week. And, no, none of those bus services are 'high frequency' buses.
By all means celebrate innovation and success but, really, can't we have something better to celebrate than the legacy of de-regulation and disproportionate bus allocation?
Having last week pondered whether it was really worth trying to get a bus home from work, I can confirm that I did indeed walk home from work on Thursday.
Here's how it happened...
I have, this past week, returned to the superstop in order to catch a bus home rather than continue to try my luck waiting at the 385 only bus stop for a bus that only appears to have a three in ten chance of turning up on time, or indeed at all.
It was as I was walking down Hillcrest Road that I saw what should have been the 16:02 383 drive past me. This was at 16:13. "Well" I thought "This doesn't bode well..."
I arrived at the superstop at 16:25, which is around the time that the next 383 is due to arrive. Regular readers might remember that this is the one that is usually at least five minutes late, and always (always) so full that the only option is to stand next to the drivers cab. Usually I reach the superstop either just as it's arriving, or about five or ten minutes before it's arrival. This was not to be the case on Thursday however.
As a veteran of both the 383 and Stagecoach services more generally, I did wonder quite early on if Stagecoach might do what they often do when the timetable is out of sync and just quietly bin off the next bus on the timetable. I could have checked the Bee Network app on my phone to see if this was the case but, to be honest, I didn't feel like I needed to: Years of experience tends to mean my instinct for when this will happen tends to be pretty good.
When it got to 16:40 and the 383 still hadn't arrived, I figured that I was probably right on this. I mean, the next one was due at 16:48 anyway. And that one might be running late as well.
By this time, I was starting to pay more attention than usual to the build up of traffic on Marple Road, which had been increasingly grinding to a halt. Careful inspection of the stationary traffic, belching out petrol fumes, revealed that not only was there a lack of movement heading towards the stop, but that movement away from the stop had ground to a halt as well.
I looked at it for a few minutes, noted the lack of either the 383 or the 385 (which should have arrived around the 16:34 mark, but which never does...) and concluded two things:
1) If a bus did arrive, it would be both overcrowded and stuck in slow moving gridlock for ages.
2) It would, in these circumstances, almost definitely be quicker and less unpleasant to walk the rest of the way home.
I have to confess that it was the overcrowding and the particularly strong smell of petrol fumes that swayed me in the end.
I'd been at the bus stop for about 15 minutes by this time, which isn't that long really.
And so, off I went.
When I last walked home in January 2024 I was fairly new to the area and hadn't found all the various shortcuts.
Now, a year on and with more information, I was able to utilise one of the shortcuts home to reduce the amount of time spent on Marple Road and, consequently, the amount of time spent yo-yoing across Marple Road whenever the pavement ran out. As it was, I only had to cross over once because of this.
It was not a fun walk by any means: It still mainly involved trudging along a polluted rat run in heavy traffic after all, and I was reminded of the unpleasant tendency of random men in cars and vans to shout abuse at women for no other reason than they take exception to them walking along the pavement, but at least it wasn't raining. On the random abuse point, I have noticed over the past year a similar tendency for car drivers and van drivers to turn up and block bus stops just before the bus is due to arrive, and also to slow down and shout abuse at people waiting at bus stops. I can only conclude that there are men out there (it does always seem to be men in both cases...) who feel equal rage and hostility to both women and bus passengers. They must lead very angry lives.
I was just coming up to the point where I could turn off Marple Road to take my short cut when the 383 hoved into view, overtaking me briefly before getting stuck in gridlock again. As I carried on walking I idly wondered if I'd be able to lap it before I reached the turning, but the traffic moved off just before I drew level with it.
Aside from it not being a particularly fun walk, there are other practical reasons why I would hesitate before walking home again: Chiefly, there is the the overheating issue.
The weather this week has been freezing cold in the morning, warm and sunny in the afternoon. And it's practically impossible to dress for both. Add a 45 minute walk home to the mix and you tend to arrive home boiling hot and drenched in sweat. Which is not a state of affairs I tend to look forward to.
I considered walking home a second time on Friday as the 383 I don't get (ie the 16:25 one) was so late that I wondered if the next one would actually turn up at all (I had discounted the 385 by this point: It clearly wasn't coming), but it did, and so I was spared the middle bit of my walk at least. Timewise though, it is definitely quicker to walk that to try and get a bus home before 5pm.
Showtunes from the Shadows shows the extent to which Helen McCookerybook continues to develop as a songwriter with each album she creates. This is perhaps best demonstrated by songs such as the optimistic 'Reaching For Hope', devastating 'Spy' and 'Puppet', gleefully satirical 'Three Cheers For Toytown' and whimsically cheerful 'The Ginger Line'. Her observation skills are as sharp as ever, but this is not an overly dark album: There is hope here, as revealed by 'Almost There', 'Reaching For Hope' and 'Send in the Detectives'. Humour is being tempered with darkness, meaning that the album never dips into despair, even in its darkest moments.
As is fitting for our times, there are a number of explicitly political songs on here, ranging from the sly character study of 'Sixties Guy' through to the full on satire of 'Three Cheers For Toytown' via the more unsettling 'Puppet,' whose pretty tune belies a much darker subject matter. Who is really calling the shots in the music industry? McCookerybook seems to be asking. Who is really the voice of the puppets song? Who has stolen her original voice and condemned her to a professional life trapped like a fly in a spiders web? It's a sometimes uncomfortable, and sad, listen and The 'Margaux Interlude' that follows provides space to think about the questions the song has asked, and answered. Regular readers of McCookerybook's blog will also know that Margaux is the name of one of the puppets featured on the album sleeve.
There are songs about relationships here, both good and bad, including the irresistible and subtly clever take on gaslighting that is 'It Wasn't Me'. The soaring backing vocals assist the slow build of a song whose hypnotic rhythms match the liars persuasive claims that the narrator must be mistaken and the result is a powerful indictment of the characters crimes and one of the finest songs on what is a strong album. The subversive 'Metaforte' meanwhile takes on a lying lover and delivers its devastating takedown over gently pared down chords that make it feel like a lullaby, albeit one with distinctly un-lullaby esque lyrics.
The long take on friendship that is 'Reaching For Hope' has a 1950s, almost Doris Day feel to it and it's gentle optimism revolves around seeking refuge in friends and friendship while also acknowledging how the changing times can also change a friendship and yet the friendship will endure. It's a thoughtful piece that reflects a maturity of songwriting that is both powerful and subtle, ending as it does with the line "As I reach for the phone to make that call, I'm reaching for hope as the numbers dial."
Both 'Spy' and 'The Porter Rose At Dawn' feel more like intricately crafted short stories than songs. You feel as though whole worlds are being created, fully stocked with characters and settings and atmospheres. In the case of 'The Porter Rose At Dawn' this might have something to do with the song being part of Gina Arnold's* Raymond Chandler project. It is certainly a sublimely complex and well crafted piece, one that sits somewhere between folk and country musically speaking, with its steel guitar and old time glamour. That glamour has curdled somewhat by the end though, reflecting the Chandler connection. 'Spy' meanwhile, as well as being perhaps the finest song on the album, is a well observed tale of an inexperienced female spy at the airport. Tension is built from the opening scene through to the shift in point of view through to the poignant denouement. It is packed with more action than the average thriller, and is a more thoughtful take on the world of spies than you would expect to find in such books. It is a finely judged song that haunts.
There is gentle introspection on the joyfully quirky people watching song that is 'The Ginger Line', another personal favourite of mine, and a similar travelling theme pervades 'Almost There', a wistful song that is also an album highlight. McCookerybook's voice is particularly good on album closer 'Send in the Detectives', a song with slightly angular chords and an irreverent but strong chorus. It provides an uplifting finish in a confusing world.
Showtunes from the Shadows provides a mixture of thoughtful whimsy, observational satire, character studies, and poignancy. It marries drama with comedy, vaudeville with modern. And it never fails to surprise and delight.
* I previously wrote that it was Gina Birch's Raymond Chandler project, but it's not: It is Gina Arnold's!
Simon Lightfoot, Chris Boardman, Richard Nickson in Stockport last week. Image The Bee Network.
I have thought, and briefly written about, whether it would be quicker and better all round to just walk home from work rather than wait for a bus that in all probability only has about a three in ten chance of turning up on time.
Because there is the 4pm to 4:30pm deadzone, when there are no buses coming anyway, I could actually be two thirds of the way home before the first viable bus was due to turn up near work.
What puts me off is the route.
I was reminded of all of this on Friday while reading a Bee Network press release about potential new funding for walking, wheeling and cycling routes. I found myself musing as to whether walking a route that has pavements on both sides of the road for the entire route would swing it in terms of walking down Marple Road. Then I remembered that it's probably a combination of the Highways Agency and Stockport Council who would be responsible for sorting that one out.
Cycling to and from work is also another option I've considered but discounted when it comes to travelling to work. For much the same reason as I'd rather not walk home: The route is the problem.
In addition to Marple Road's flexible approach to providing pavements on both sides of the road, there's also the fact that it's a rat run so the traffic is awful, meaning the pollution is similarly so. And there's quite a few hills as well.
None of which makes it a joyous experience to walk. Given that when I search Unsplash for stock imagery of people walking, all it brings up is people walking in rural, or un-busy, locations I would say that walking down rat runs in rush hour traffic is not anyone's idea of a good time. Nor is it photogenic.
I also, needless to say, have my £800 annual bus pass to consider.
A week ago I wrote a formal complaint to The Bee Network about the service provided by the 385 since the 5th January.
While acknowledging that we are only six weeks into being part of The Bee Network, and that Diamond have only had the contract for those six weeks, the concerns I laid out were as follows:
The service is now less reliable than it was prior to joining the Bee Network
While the service at 7:25am on weekdays is as reliable as it was when D&G were running it, the service at 4:30pm is woefully bad, characterised by buses that are regularly more than 10 minutes late or which do not turn up at all. In the period between the 3rd February and 14th February, the 4:30pm bus was on time three times. It was twenty minutes late on two occasions, over ten minutes late on three occasions and on one occasion did not arrive at all.
Drivers don't always know the route and have to be directed by passengers. (This happened on the 7th February and was such an experience that I considered writing about it here, before concluding that it would be punching down of the worst kind.)
I could have said more, specifically about some of the more minor annoyances that have happened over the past six weeks such as buses that aren't displaying the number or location on the front of the bus, internal digital route displays that show the wrong route or the bus going in the opposite direction to where it's actually going, or the card scanners that didn't work properly for most of the first two or three weeks. Not to mention the drivers who have a distinctly robust approach to the many speed bumps that litter the route. But I decided to keep it simple in the end because I can tell, even at this early stage of proceedings, that this probably won't be the last time that I feel driven to complain about the 385. Plus there's a character limit of 1800 on the online form, so I couldn't get carried away even if I wanted to.
The response I received back a few days ago was.... Not bad, just... Disappointing.
The main problem was that it didn't engage at all with the fact that I was complaining specifically about a named bus route, ie the 385. Instead it talked only about the bus services that had joined the Bee Network on the 5th January as a whole.
It was nicely apologetic in tone and there was a load of nicely worded stuff about how the Bee Network is a really big thing and that nothing like this has really been attempted for 40 years. Which is fair enough, and is a part of the response that I had anticipated. It's not their fault that they're sending it to someone who's been writing about, and campaigning for, bus re-regulation for years and who, as such, isn't that dazzled by that kind of rhetoric anymore.
The overall tone is apologetic and they do acknowledge that they are aware of "some disruption to services that joined the network in January", which does at least suggest someone is reading all of those Rate Your Journey surveys that I and other people have been sending in.
They also acknowledge the important role that customer feedback has in improving services, which is good, as it suggests that they are at least in listening mode. Working "with operators to improve services" also sounds good, but when you think about it, it just means that this is how it works with franchising: They can talk to the operators and ask them to improve, whereas before franchising, they couldn't.
The most interesting aspect of the response was the section that talked of their "Performance Managers" who monitor services. Which makes me wonder if they are connected to pre-Bee Network Bus Inspectors, who used to be the only people you could appeal to when your bus service was being crap. For example, during 2020 when buses were supposed to be running at 50% capacity under Covid regulations, I wrote to Stagecoach and asked them to put a Bus Inspector at the main 192 stop in Stockport because the drivers were taking the piss and filling the bus to over 100% capacity and having a bus inspector at Manchester Piccadilly had helped at that end with this problem. They did stick a Bus Inspector on in Stockport, but it only knocked the capacity back to about 75% instead, so not much changed. Anyway, it is to be hoped that the Performance Managers will prove useful and that at least one of them will be having a little chat with Diamond about how they can improve things.
They did point out that punctuality has improved as the new service has settled in, which I guess it has: The 4:30pm 385 was twenty minutes late or didn't turn up at all most of the time for the first few weeks in January, now it only does that a couple of times a week. I guess that's progress. Sort of.
Because I mentioned several occasions of waiting over 20 minutes for the 385 before giving up and moving to the 383 bus stop to get the 5:03pm service, they have also pointed me to the Bee Network app. Which I haven't used since the 5th January when it either couldn't or wouldn't tell me where the 4:30pm 385 had got to. I suppose I should give it another try, but I suspect returning to using the superstops will be a more reliable way of getting home in a timely fashion. Or walking home instead.
Non-franchised Derbyshire buses, including the excellent 199
As you will have seen from my previous journalism on bus re-regulation, one of the predictions I made (as early as 2019) was that the Better Buses for Greater Manchester campaign was a fight that had national repercussions. Crap bus services weren't only pissing people off in Greater Manchester after all; the whole of the UK was feeling knobbed off about it, and had been doing so for years, decades even.
It wasn't a surprise then to see campaigns for re-regulation starting in (to name a few off the top of my head...) West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, and Peterborough. Not to mention the already pre-Manchester campaigning that had been taking place in Glasgow.
At the very end of 2023, I also became aware of the existence of the newly founded national Better Buses campaign. A coalition of campaigns and campaigners that seeks to keep everyone up to date on what's going on where, and how they can get involved. You can find out more here. You can also read and download their campaign statement here. Meetings are held on Zoom and are open to anyone interested in attending. Just email them for the link.
What's particularly gratifying about the national campaign is that, like all the local campaigns I've come across, they don't view franchising as the end of the re-regulation process. They welcome the recent change in the law that now allows local authorities to set up their own bus companies, but what they ultimately want is a return to the status quo, pre 1986, but with better services. A laudable ambition that would be better than franchising.
I do urge anyone who is concerned about the state of their local bus network to get involved with the national Better Buses campaign. There is bound to be a local campaign going that would fit your concerns and, if there isn't, you would be able to meet people with similar concerns who would be able to help you to launch your own local campaign. They are a formidably organised bunch and they are getting shit done.
This piece was originally published by Act Build Change on the 27th May, 2021. It is no longer available online and is being re-published here with the aid of Authory, who back up my articles for me to ensure I never lose my work.
The UK bus revolution begins, not ends, in Manchester
Image: Athena Mellor
A lot of people in the UK don’t know who runs their bus network.
This was an issue that came up regularly when Pascale Robinson, activist and central organiser of the Better Buses For Greater Manchester(BB4GM) campaign, began talking to local people about their buses in 2018. “People felt that buses were particularly unreliable in Greater Manchester, and they felt they were really expensive.” She says.
This overall feeling fed into the campaign; videos reiterated the fact that an hours travel in London is capped at £1.50 thanks to the ‘hopper’ fare but that there is no hourly fare in Greater Manchester, meaning an hours travel on any bus in the region can be anything from the £2.50 it would cost me for a single fare for the 15 minute bus journey into my local town centre to the £5 upwards it would cost for a day ticket (single operator tickets are cheaper, tickets you can use across more than one operator cost more and are not widely promoted). It’s an eye watering comparison, one that summed up the central argument of the BB4GM campaign: Why can’t Greater Manchester have what London has?
How did our bus networks end up this way?
UK buses (outside London) were de-regulated in 1986. The Secretary of State for Transport at the time, Nicholas Ridley, believed that the existing publicly run system had led to a twenty year decline in services and to the creation of monopolies that were restrictive. He believed that opening up the bus network to the private sector would increase competition and improve services. His speech to parliament on the occasion of the second reading of the Transport Bill in February 1985, in which he makes these points, can be found here. Since the passing of the Transport Bill in 1986, buses have been run by private sector bus companies, leading to new monopolies rather than competition and a race to the bottom in terms of quality.
The We Own It sponsored BB4GM campaign was inspired by legislative changes put forward by the Bus Services Act 2017. While it doesn’t make possible a full reversal of de-regulation (it doesn’t allow local authorities to create their own bus companies as they had been able to pre 1986) it does open the door for public control in the form of a franchising system, putting local authorities in control of routes, fares, payment systems and information.
Organising in Greater Manchester
BB4GM began with a public meeting in early 2019. Robinson estimates the attendance as “Over 150 people.” The meeting (filmed and later featured in a documentary), brought activists, academics and bus users together using “the barnstorm model”; a large scale in person or online event that creates sufficient energy and inspiration to get people to commit, at the event, “to a really clear but big action.” Specifically, to meet their council leaders on a bus, or at a bus stop for a conversation about buses.
Robinson and the campaigners were creative in their thinking when it came to devising eye catching activities. As well as helping to ensure that the campaign remained inclusive, “It makes it really fun to do something really silly.” The fight for better buses went on for a long time “so we had to think of interesting ways to keep the momentum up.”
One of these actions was a long queue for better buses, complete with authentic looking bus stop, which was held outside Andy Burnham’s office. Similarly, a central motif of BB4GM’s videos, marches and demonstrations was a feline figure in business dress: The Fat Cat, a visual reminder of the bus barons and their shareholders, the identified villains of the campaign.
And then there was Bus Regulation: The Musical!, a theatre performance created by the artist and activist Ellie Harrison, which told the story of Greater Manchester’s bus network from the 1960s to 2019 through the lens of musical theatre, taking the campaign story to new audiences.
Harrison, founder of Bring Back British Rail and Get Glasgow Moving, says the idea for the musical came from a childhood obsession with Starlight Express as well as a desire to create something “very upbeat and family friendly” about BB4GM. She had been commissioned by Manchester Art Gallery to create a piece that would tie in with their summer 2019 season; loosely based around crowds and protest in a nod to the double centenary of the Peterloo Massacre. Her secondary concern was to “Communicate this really complex history of public transport policy that so many people don’t understand”. Performances of Bus Regulation: The Musical! were filmed and used as part of the Manchester campaign.
Bus Regulation: The Musical by Ellie Harrison at Manchester Art Gallery in September 2019 (Image: Andrew Brooks)
Robinson met Harrison in Glasgow during her first few weeks leading the Manchester campaign. “I went with them [Get Glasgow Moving] to visit [the Scottish] Parliament, and they had this brilliant group of passengers, they had a really good media coverage from that visit. And they won their campaign to make public ownership legal in the legislation” she says, referring to The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. “We’ve learned loads from Get Glasgow Moving in terms of their consistency of messaging, their ability to keep a group going over lots of years, it’s brilliant campaigning.”
On the 25th March 2021, after two public consultations (the second was deemed necessary because of the devastating impact of COVID-19 on public transport and the economy), the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, announced his intention to use the powers of the Bus Services Act 2017 to take control of Greater Manchester’s buses under a franchise system. While buses would still continue to be run by private companies, the GMCA (Greater Manchester Combined Authority) would have control of it’s fares, timetables and routes for the first time since 1986. Burnham also announced plans to introduce integrated ticketing across buses, trains and trams; something the ten Greater Manchester authorities have never been able to do previously.
When he made his announcement on the 25th March, he originally planned to introduce franchising in three phases across three years but, buoyed by a successful re-election campaign, the Mayor took to Twitteron the 10th May to announce that he was bringing his plans for the buses forward by a year. This is unlikely to have impressed bus operators Stagecoach, who – along with First – dominate the bus network in Greater Manchester, and who are currently pursuing a judicial review of the Mayor’s original decision in March.
Given that an earlier, pre-2017 legislation, attempt by campaigners in Tyne & Wear to re-regulate their bus network back in 2015 was scuppered by legal action from bus companies, it’s surprising that BB4GM aren’t more worried about the threat of a judicial review. While they are watching carefully, they are confident that the two public consultations were done properly and, as such, they have faith in the ability of GMCA to win through.
Bus Regulation: The Musical by Ellie Harrison at Manchester Art Gallery in September 2019 (Image: Andrew Brooks)
Visions for the future beyond Greater Manchester
What’s really interesting is the way that, even before Burnham’s announcement in March, other towns and cities were looking to the Manchester campaign and were being inspired to start their own local campaigns for better buses.
The TUC, along with We Own It, have been running Better Buses For Yorkshire since 2019. Unlike Better Buses For Greater Manchester, which was led by passengers, Better Buses For Yorkshire is “Really trade union led” according to Gareth Forest of West Yorkshire TUC. “They’re led by people involved in the bus industry – bus drivers, cleaners, people who build the buses in our region, as well as bus users.” They began from a position of advocacy rather than active campaigning and the shift to campaigning has been a relatively slow, considered one.
The pandemic has created several challenges, given that face to face campaigning is a strong trade union tactic. When lockdown hit in March 2020, they had “a fallow period” but continued to hold regular meetings while focusing on building a community.
In October 2020, they ran a “Reverse town hall” event on Zoom, taking in West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. “We had bus users basically at the top of the meeting, talking about why the service was so bad, why it was failing them and why they needed a change” says Forest.
700 people sent emails to their council leaders ahead of the meeting, meaning “We got a very quick response from the council leaders”. The leaders were also discombobulated by the format of the reverse town hall: “Not speaking first, hearing from the constituents: We set the agenda – This is what we want to talk about, and we want very specifically to hear from you about if you will do this thing we’re asking you to do.” Forest says.
The leaders committed to public control of buses at the meeting, which Forest said “Energised and mobilised and brought people into the campaign. It was much more effective than just me having a bunch of private meetings with council leaders.”
The Yorkshire campaign was given support early on from BB4GM’s Pascale Robinson, who was able to advise those across the Pennines as to what had and hadn’t worked when campaigning in Greater Manchester. With the Yorkshire campaign taking off in 2020, Matthew Topham was hired by We Own It in February 2021 because it was felt that there needed to be a designated person within the organisation to work solely on the Yorkshire campaign with Gareth Forest and the TUC. Topham has been inspired by the success of BB4GM “To see it happen, to be able to say to our political leaders ‘Look! Others have gone before us, let’s just get on and follow them’” is, he feels, “So powerful, so inspirational, and it’s so pleasing to see that result coming out.”
Tracy Brabin, the newly elected Mayor of West Yorkshire, has strongly suggested that she is in favour of public control, so the signs for the Yorkshire campaign are good.
What we can learn from these campaigns
What all of these campaigns have in common is a focus on a very specific geographical area, strong coalitions of campaigners from different backgrounds, often with different interests and skills sets, and an immense sense of creativity and ingenuity when it comes to devising campaigns that can attract and maintain the attention of both the public and the media over a long period of time. They have been inclusive, rather than exclusive, campaigns not only in terms of the campaign language used (the Bus Services Act 2017 isn’t an easy read after all) which have attracted both the the young and the old, the urban and the rural, seasoned campaigners and newbies and have received support from groups as varied as the Women’s Institute and Friends of the Earth, the latter of whom brought the Fridays For Future climate kids to the BB4GM petition hand in in January 2020. Not only does this reveal how central the issue of good, accessible public transport is to many very different lives, but also that, in an age of division, it is possible to bring different groups of people together to build coalitions to fight for a cause that is widely shared and affects many people.
About the author
Cazz Blase (She/Her) is a writer/blogger from Stockport. She mainly writes about public transport and women and music. You can follow her on Twitter.
