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Warrington Worldwide is more than a magazine


Gary

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It is refreshing to see that Ben has struck up a relationship that gets him access to the people that drive the towns investments other than the council. That will help him to gauge what will and will not work with greater reality. Seeing that he combined authority may be back on the cards it is possible to see how greater levels of subsidy may be found by levying a prccept via an Integrated Transport Authority to boost the money available to fund buses. The Cheshire LEP is studying whether the bus services hereabouts have been too focused on the traditional core hours. If that is so there will be a case for that greater subsidy. The amount paid by WBC is now nothing like enough to meet the social needs as I feel sure that Ben is only too aware.

If the possible combined authority were to decide to use the powers in the Bus Act to contract services the Ben would be under considerable cost pressure from other operators and the ability to hand non-profitable routes to the combined authority would only be possible if the rest of the routes were competitive. It is a difficult balancing act.

There remains a need to listen to criticism however and I look forward to Ben and others asking for suggestions. They may not all be reduce the fares type of criticism. For example a major source of delays imported into some routes is caused by interworking with random services which cross all of the towns delay hotspots. This leads to events like the bridge problem this week causing delays to services that go nowhere neat the Ship Canal because of the way running boards are planned for buses to criss-cross the borough. Buses become late to arrive for meal-break/shift handovers and start so late that a journey is eventually cancelled on a completely unrelated route. It is that kind of problem that makes people see the service in a worse light than it needs to be. The problem is that a more resilient network would cost more but would it be better at keeping and attracting custom. Ben has yet to try that one out other than in the usual bus hotspots.

It is good that Ben is working with you Gary but we would like more dialogue.

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23 hours ago, Confused52 said:

It is refreshing to see that Ben has struck up a relationship that gets him access to the people that drive the towns investments other than the council. That will help him to gauge what will and will not work with greater reality. Seeing that he combined authority may be back on the cards it is possible to see how greater levels of subsidy may be found by levying a prccept via an Integrated Transport Authority to boost the money available to fund buses. The Cheshire LEP is studying whether the bus services hereabouts have been too focused on the traditional core hours. If that is so there will be a case for that greater subsidy. The amount paid by WBC is now nothing like enough to meet the social needs as I feel sure that Ben is only too aware.

If the possible combined authority were to decide to use the powers in the Bus Act to contract services the Ben would be under considerable cost pressure from other operators and the ability to hand non-profitable routes to the combined authority would only be possible if the rest of the routes were competitive. It is a difficult balancing act.

There remains a need to listen to criticism however and I look forward to Ben and others asking for suggestions. They may not all be reduce the fares type of criticism. For example a major source of delays imported into some routes is caused by interworking with random services which cross all of the towns delay hotspots. This leads to events like the bridge problem this week causing delays to services that go nowhere neat the Ship Canal because of the way running boards are planned for buses to criss-cross the borough. Buses become late to arrive for meal-break/shift handovers and start so late that a journey is eventually cancelled on a completely unrelated route. It is that kind of problem that makes people see the service in a worse light than it needs to be. The problem is that a more resilient network would cost more but would it be better at keeping and attracting custom. Ben has yet to try that one out other than in the usual bus hotspots.

It is good that Ben is working with you Gary but we would like more dialogue.

Rest assured dialogue is ongoing on a near weekly basis

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