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?