First Manchester

[gilesbus1]

RE: First Manchester
The story I heard was that everything was going including the depot and that the depot would close outright, and its just the local roputes being sold off, otherwise it would be too difficult to reorganise eg routes that are co-worked such as 33's and routes that would completely split towns such as Leigh, without Bolton Depot being sold on as well what is left is worthless. The 600's will transfer so I was told to Bolton and be interworkjed with 582's and a new allocation to BN for the 600 eg another 12 or so new Volvo B7RLE's. The 600 is the only profiotable route Wigan actually operates along with the 540, everything else more or less either breaks even or loses money like a sive, the 658 might be worth keeping but little else.

If the depot was sold as a whole then if it was included in a apackage with Chester and Rock Ferry then Stagecoach could be interested as it fills the gap in between Chorley and Liverpool. Arriva cannot buy it without an CC and MMC investigation as it already operates around 35% of the Wigan market, Plus it is worse if you include Julian Peddles interests as he is a major director at Arriva but also has around a 30 % share in D & G which in turn own South Lancs Travel which in turn operate about 30% of the Wigan market in addition to Arriva's share.

It really I think is an invititation to negociate with First for these fleets, First will just want to sell assets it Wigan which are the complete block of twon services but it may negociate other things depending on whats offered. If it was just the town services then they would likely go to SLT if its anything more then its probably a three way tie between Rotala, Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire and RATP, unless Arriva is prepared for a large OFT/MMC investigation in which the divestment of something might be ordered.

The situation at Wigan has been nosediving for some time. First of all the profits have been effected by heavy not competition but other operators running over large sections of route in, indirect competition, at the same time the fleet has depreciated so most of it is now 14 or 15 years old and in desp[etrate need of replacement but the returns are not good enough to replace it, All the Dart SLF's, Excels the Arrows are not DDA compliant. Only the smal;l quantity of Volvo B9TL's and Volvo B7RLE's are and First may of course mover these out very quickly and transfer them to other depots or fleets if it was to sell. All the Volvo B9TL coach seated examples for example night movce to Eastern Counties to replace bus seated examples there at Kings Lynn for the Cambridge-Lowestoft route.

Wigan depot was returned to making a small profit by a graduate about 3 years ago, hence the injection of B9TL's but he was moved to First CentreWest and since then fuel costs have risen, Government Fuel Duty rebate has been cut and also staff wages have rissen so the profit has been eroded, plus bidding too cheap for TfGM/Wigan MBC School Contracts hasn't helped either.

Really the best option for Wigan would be unfortuanly to cut staff wages to a lower rate on town services and replace most of the fleet that operates town based services with Minibuses and recast the entire network to better meet customer demand and also to cut fairs by about 35%,l that would need to be the basis for any turn around, anthing less will maybe result in a situation similar to Dalkeith unfortunatly. I also mention that Wigan has the highest car use in the whole of Greater Manchester, perhaps this is because passengers in Wigan are not well served by the existing network and maybe that whole network needs a lot of customer resaech and recasting as a whole with most exiting routes being completely scrapped and recast.

Gilesbus1