The Bus Chronicles: An integrated transport system, with tap and go and... bikes

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...

The Bus Chronicles: High Frequency Buses

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.

As the Manchester Evening News report on the map reveals;

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?

The Bus Chronicles: Walking it

This is clearly not Marple Road...

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. 

Photo by Felix Ngo on Unsplash

Album review: Helen McCookerybook's Showtunes from the Shadows

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!

The Bus Chronicles: Should I just walk home instead?

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. 

Better weather might sway me. But we'll see. 

The Bus Chronicles: My complaint to the Bee Network, and their response

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. 

The Bus Chronicles: The Fight Goes National

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.