Richard Baum

This morning I did my overall sex-appeal no harm at all by attending the Transport Network Committee of Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority.

A couple of items may be of particular note to Bury. First off there has been a decision to do away with the X35 bus service which operates more or less non-stop between Bury and Manchester. It isn’t well used, which is the reason for its withdrawal after a trial period, although I imagine that the people who do use it may be annoyed to find that their quick bus service has gone.

This annoyance will be compounded given that the “speedy” alternative to the X35 is to be herded onto a Metrolink tram. Metrolink was the other interesting item on the agenda today, in particular the problems with the ticket machines. No serious twenty-first century transport system has ticket machines which can’t take cards, and of which only about half purport to take notes. Even where machines are able to take notes in theory, I think if a single speck of dust or microscopic crease is found, the note is rejected.

Resultantly there are hundreds of complaints, and passengers forced to hobble around carrying enough change to weigh them down, and then insert it manically coin by coin as the tram nears.

The ticket machines are due to be replaced, but because of works I am struggling to fathom, this won’t be completed for another 18 months!

These ticketing problems, combined with the ongoing saga of getting real time information (technology available in London for many years now) makes me feel that once again the entire Metrolink experience makes us second class citizens to other cities who have managed to fund proper public transport without having to resort to government bribery and congestion taxing.

Rick