Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

[Liamkennedy2231]

RE: Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

(31/12/2020 17:07)MTL0201 Wrote:  I often caught the X1 before covid, loadings could be heaving towards Liverpool well into the morning/lunchtime off peak, then flips in the afternoon, even then quite a few passengers on the X1 going the reverse of the traffic flow, main issue is reliability, even early afternoon buses could often be 15-20 minutes late & later, didn't help there was so little layover time, about 5 minutes either end.

The odd cancellation did annoy me, as did happen from time to time. Not exactly a short wait either at every 40 mins, sometimes waiting an hour due to the inconsistency of the timetable in the evening.

The issue I have with the new tender is pre-paid ticketing. If the new tender is not Arriva (highly likely it won't be), Daily and Weekly tickets can't be used, unless Merseytravel offer a grace period where they accept Arriva tickets on a temporary basis. After this though, if the successful bidder does not offer their own range of tickets or won't accept them due to it being a contracted service, there is an issue.

At the moment, Merseytravel's tickets do not cover the Halton area, apart from the young person's MyTicket. Therefore, if the above conditions are true, there will be no provision for Daily/Weekly ticketing provision for those travelling to/from Halton.

I'm hoping that some change will be brought in in time, such as an extension into the Halton area for Merseytravel passes, even just for the X1. Though really, if a young person can use a Merseytravel ticket in Halton, why can't everyone else? It has been said a few years back that they're looking into extending Solo tickets and the like into Halton, but as of yet nothing has come to fruition.