Moving to a new area is always hard but sometimes it’s the little things that catch you out. When I moved back in with my dad in January, I had thought that I’d be OK with the buses. But I was wrong.
My first two days back at work went like this:
Day One:
- Snow
- The 384 didn’t turn up
- I got on the 358 and realised too late it didn’t do the same route as the 384
- I was late for work
Day Two:
- I had a long, boring, dangerous walk to the A6 down a road where pavements are semi optional
- I realised that there are less 192’s serving the Hazel Grove end of the route than the Stockport-Manchester end of the route, entailing longer waits for a bus
- There was a bad accident on the A6
- All the Offerton/Marple buses were stuck on the wrong side of the police cordon
- I had to walk home
“I think I might get a bike” I concluded to my dad as I eventually walked through the door at the end of day two.
And then, the 385 entered my life.
I had originally discounted this bus on the basis that it was the direct descendant of the notoriously unreliable 375, and I just assumed that it would be equally as bad. But I was wrong.
A brief history of the 375
The 375 has been a part of my life forever. I used to catch it with my sister and my mum between Hazel Grove and Stockport when it was a circular bus route travelling between Ashton and Stockport, taking in both Hazel Grove and Bosden Farm estate. And it was always epically, operatically late.
This was in the years immediately after bus deregulation (1986 onwards). As time passed the 375 became less frequent (once an hour) and no more reliable. It was also, inevitably, taken over by Stagecoach who colonised the whole of South Manchester, leaving North Manchester to their rivals, First.
In these years the 375 essentially saw itself split in two, with one route covering Ashton to Stockport, the other covering Stockport to Bosden Farm estate, via Hazel Grove. You’d have thought that this would have made it more reliable, but it didn’t: It was still always late. To add insult to injury, it wouldn’t always stop for you even if you were at the bus stop: If you didn’t hail it in a suitably enthusiastic fashion (waving of arms, jumping out into the road) it would often simply drive past you, and there were other instances of maverick driver behaviour.
Sometimes you’d get the driver who would pull up on the A6 and jump out, closing the door behind him. Novice 375 riders would look anxious and whisper to each other “What’s going on?” Regulars would sigh wearily and reply “He’s gone to place a bet at William Hill.” The same driver turned up a number of years later on the 192 route, still doing the same routine.
Because the 375 was so unreliable, the younger and fitter residents of Hazel Grove would often just walk into the centre and pick up the 192 on the A6 if they wanted to go anywhere: It was faster, there were more of them (thanks to a series of bus wars over the route between Stagecoach and UK North which were an on/off occurrence for the best part of 2 decades…) and it was generally less hassle all round.
The 375 was haemorrhaging passengers by the late 1990s, and it had become the preserve of the elderly and infirm: those who didn’t have the option of abandoning it for the 192. The route was changed in the early 2000’s with the bus travelling beyond Bosden Farm estate to Marple, Hawk Green, Marple Bridge and Mellor. It was this last destination that would be the key to its survival as COVID-19 hit in 2020.
Save The 375
In 2020, as the UK floundered under the first wave of Covid and the first lockdown, the 375 was at risk of extinction. Not because of the pandemic, but because (as had happened at least once before) Stagecoach were complaining to Stockport Council that it was unprofitable and that they therefore couldn’t see the point of running it.
The residents of Mellor, who had no other bus route serving them, felt rather differently about the matter and it was as a direct consequence of their campaign, of coverage of their concerns by the Manchester Evening News, and of campaigning by Better Buses For Greater Manchester around the Hazel Grove/Offerton border and Bosden Farm estate area that the 375 was saved. The route was put out to tender and a different bus company (Little Gem; a name that was a blast from the past, having previously run buses in Greater Manchester in the post 1986 period) took it on, with subsidy from Stockport council.
The Bee Network
After years of campaigning, two public consultations and two judicial reviews, The Bee Network revolution finally began in 2023, with the first tranches of Greater Manchester’s bus network being taken back under public control for the first time since 1986. The new interchange and updated bus stops aside, the impact on Stockport is negligible at this point. This is because Stockport is in the final tranche to be “done”, and as such we won’t see our buses taken back into public control until January 2025.
Save the 375 (again…)
It was certainly business as usual for the 375 in 2023, as, following the collapse of Little Gem in April, and attempts by TfGM and Stockport Council to find an alternative provider to cover the route, Stagecoach somehow managed to regain control of the new version of the route when the service was divided up again. The new version covers Stockport, Heaviley, Offerton, Hazel Grove and Hawk Green while the newly created 385, run by D&G, covers Stockport, Offerton, Marple, Marple Bridge, and Mellor. Not only was it the end of an era, there was also a sense that the victory gained by campaigners in 2020 had been overshadowed by the collapse of Little Gem and the latest coup by Stagecoach. We had thought that the route was safe until it could be taken back into public control. We were wrong.
The phoenix like rise of the 385
This should have been the end of the story but there’s an unexpected twist which is that people genuinely love, and trust, the 385.
The residents of Mellor, Marple, and Bosden Farm in particular really love that little red bus that comes once an hour. There’s even a video on YouTube of someone travelling on an empty 385 between Marple and Hawk Green (it is busy at certain times of the day, at other times... less so), and everyone seems to have downloaded the D&G bus tracker to their phones. This is particularly touching because the 385 is literally the only bus in Stockport (or indeed Greater Manchester) that is run by D&G.
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| Rude |
Why do people like it? Because it turns up, usually on time (and if not on time, within 10 minutes) and when it arrives you have friendly drivers who say hello to you and you see the same people on the bus a lot. People talk to each other at the bus stops and it’s like a community, an old fashioned outlier in a fragmented bus network, one which is slowly being brought back into public control.
Save the 385
The question now is whether this bus route, which has only existed since July 2023, will be saved when Stockport joins the Bee Network in January 2025. The press statement issued by Stockport Council when the 385 launched suggests that the route is only guaranteed to exist until January 2025. After that date, all bets are effectively off, the residents of Mellor may well find themselves without a bus route, and the residents of Bosden Farm estate may well lose one of its two bus routes. It is to be hoped that Andy Burnham, TfGM and the GMCA will realise the impact that this small once an hour bus service has on communities at the southern end of the TfGM zone.
To be continued…
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