Greater Manchester Tenders

[knutstransport]

RE: Greater Manchester Tenders

(15/01/2022 07:08)Manc93 Wrote:  I always thought the reason the Warrington 5 was diverted away from Dunham Massey was due to parked cars around the village however I am not familiar with the area. They did upgrade vehicles to new Enviro200MMCs a while back so that is probably when the route was changed.

When they launched the Cheshire Cat brand they printed a booklet about the CAT routes which included a little piece about how historically the 37 route needed special buses to pass under the canal bridge but due to a modification it means the CAT5 runs under it without the need for special buses.

Quote:Why dont tfgm just contract the whole day and evening service instead of splitting it up? Maybe due to costs but it just makes a lot of sense, and espically to passengers too for consistancy. Obviously on commercial daytime services this can't happen but if the whole service is tendered.

Altrincham always seems like a harder area to get tenders for. Maybe as there are not many depots nearby.

Sometimes a separate evening/Sunday service relates to a Mon-Sat daytime service previously being commercial and then being withdrawn when the evening/Sunday contract isn't up for renewal, resulting in two contracts for the same route.

Other times it can be done purposely. There are operators with minibuses who have school/college work. For a daytime contract their vehicles are too small and they wouldn't be able to run the service work as well as the school/college work. But for an evening service they are a low cost alternative to some of the big operators who would bid on the basis of using a 30 seater solo on a route that would never carry more than 10 passengers.

I don't think Altrincham's ever really been short of operators interested in work, even though it's generally been seen as an area where a new operator can win work. There aren't many smallish towns where you have Stagecoach, Arriva and a number of independent operators all running services.