VOSA Bus Registration Search

[knutstransport]

RE: VOSA Bus Registration Search

(06/01/2016 13:45)Nwales Bus Wrote:  Is the 300 during the week a commercial service. If so GHA who have been awarded the Saturday Contract could have lower fares on the service to attract passengers, As 2 operators are not allowed the same fares as it can be seen as companies unfairly keeping fares up

Short answer - yes weekday D&G services are commercial.

And a more detailed answer giving a brief history of the 300 service:

Starline Travel used to operate all 300 services Monday-Saturday daytime and evening (daytime commercial, evening contracted). British Bus t/a North Western took over Starline Travel and obviously later became Arriva. When the contract for the evening services came up for renewal Arriva decided not to renew and it was awarded to a little Northwich based company called Birtles and more recently a little Winsford based company called Tomlinson Travel, who operate the evening services now.

Around the time the 27 (Macclesfield to Knutsford) contract was up for renewal Arriva decided the daytime services weren't viable so the council put daytime services out for tender. Bowers Coaches who had just won the contract for the 27 service off Bakerbus, won the 300 contract.

At the end of the 5 year contract Bowers had become High Peak and there was less money for bus subsides, Cheshire East asked them to consider running the service commercially which they did (and also did with the 27 route.) They withdrew the first bus every day (which had poor usage partly due to it frequently being late or cancelled), some afternoon services and ceased to run any services via Queensway.

High Peak's attempt of running the 27 service commercially was disastrous - they increased the fares by £1.30 overnight at the same time as running a reduced service using 1 bus which rarely ran to time. They withdrew that service and Cheshire East put it out to tender but the tender was never awarded as Vale Travel registered it commercially to a revised timetable. As a result of withdrawing the 27 service, the 300 daytime service didn't fit in to High Peak's operating area so they withdrew it. D&G then registered the service commercially, initially to exactly the same timetable as High Peak had been operating, so it never went out to tender.

However, a couple of years ago D&G decided the Saturday daytime service wasn't making enough money (a few months after they put up the fares) and told Cheshire East of their intention to withdraw it so it finished up being a subsided service operated by D&G and come March it will be GHA.