The future of bus franchising

The Local Government Chronicle have published an informative and detailed article about the future of bus franchising across the UK. At the time of writing, Greater Manchester's Bee Network is the only franchised bus service outside of London but - as the article reveals - it won't be for long as Liverpool, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, the West Midlands and the North East all plan to follow suit in the coming years. 

The article also gives a good overview of recent changes to the law since the Bus Services Act 2017, which is the legislation the GMCA had to use in order to get the Bee Network up and running. 

Much has changed since then, as the article reveals. 

One year of the Bee Network

The 5th of January 2026 marks one year since all ten Greater Manchester local authorities joined the Bee Network. While there have been a number of interesting ideas, innovations and improvements, there is still a lot of work to be done if TfGM and GMCA genuinely want to encourage people to use the buses, and to give bus users a decent experience.

Here are some thoughts on how it's been going over the past 12 months. Firstly, the bad news...

There is a sense of complacency at big companies who have kept most of the routes they were running, pre Bee Network:

Many routes are still being run by companies who were running them pre-Bee Network, and they often weren't running them that well. This has continued into the Bee Network era with companies such as Stagecoach returning to bad habits like pulling buses that are running late and stranding passengers at bus stops. Passengers only find out this has happened when the bus they are waiting for never turns up and disappears off the app without any explanation. 

The binning buses phenomenon is often tied to traffic congestion (which I'll talk about in a bit) but it really doesn't help to encourage bus use because, if it happens on a regular basis on the same route (the 383 for example) then it just puts you off using that route. 

Capacity and overcrowding

Capacity has been reduced across the smallest sized buses (ie the yellow Tiny Buses) as they are smaller than their pre-Bee Network alternatives. This is having an impact on overcrowding at peak times (during the morning and afternoon school runs and rush hours) which, even without the impact of smaller buses, is no better than previously, in fact it's sometimes worse. 

More judicious use of the tiny buses (ie not using them at times when routes are guaranteed to be at their busiest) and expanded timetables to include extra buses at peak times on busy routes, would help to alleviate both problems. I type this as someone who has had the 385 drive past them during the evening rush hour because the bus was too small to accommodate the number of of passengers needing to get on, meaning it was full before it had completed even a third of its route. 

Reliability

Some buses are less reliable than previously, for example the 385, which changed provider from D&G to Diamond under the Bee Network. This went from a pretty solid, friendly, reliable service under D&G to a thoroughly unreliable one under Diamond. I suspect that there will be other examples of this. 

Scrapped routes

As I wrote at the time, I thoroughly understand and support TfGM's decision to bin off the 375 given that it was basically a ghost bus that the operator was milking for the subsidy, but... That doesn't mean that Marple and Bosden Farm don't need transport links to Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill Hospital. At the moment both communities are almost entirely cut off from their neighbouring borough and local hospital. Which is insane. 

A solution would be to design a new route that takes in Marple, Bosden Farm, Hazel Grove, Stepping Hill and possibly Bramhall (which is not well served for buses). It would also need to be a more frequent service than the 375, which wouldn't be hard as the 375 was only every 2 hours most of the time and, sometimes, it was only every 4 hours. Similarly, it would need to be reliable and actually turn up which was also a problem with the 375. It would also be useful if the timetable fitted in with visiting times at Stepping Hill Hospital. 

High Frequency Buses

High frequency buses are a joke and don't exist for the majority of travellers in Greater Manchester. In fact, there is a direct correlation between those routes which are high frequency buses and those which were the biggest cash cows for bus companies, pre Bee Network. A classic example of this would be the 192, which had at least three bus wars fought over it during the 1990s and 2000's, a series of wars that only ended when Stagecoach's rivals, UK North, were stripped of a licence to operate. High frequency buses need to be designed and determined based on need, not on what happened after deregulation in 1986.

The Bee Network app

While the Bee Network app is useful and includes real time travel information, it's best used in situations where you're travelling home using a route you aren't familiar with and where you just want to quickly see when the next bus is due.

It isn't reliable enough to be used to make complex decisions about which bus to get.

If it's a choice between deciding which bus to catch at which stop based on the app, or walking a longer distance to get to a stop that all the local buses stop at, you're much better off taking the longer walk to the stop all the local buses stop at. 

Road congestion

There are some problems that TfGM, GMCA and the Bee Network cannot change. Needless to say, at peak times, it can often be quicker and easier to walk long distances than to wait for buses that clearly are not coming. 

There might be things that can be done to alleviate this in the grander sense. For example, Stockport Council have an ongoing consultation about one of the more epic pinch points on Marple Road and how they might make things a bit better, but without good leadership and genuinely helpful and workable policy at a national government and local government level then it's unlikely that our roads will get any better any time soon. 

Bus stops are frequently inaccessible thanks to car drivers

While the implementation of accessible buses with drop floors (except on the Tiny Buses alas, where the driver still has to get out of their seat and flip the ramp down), greater space for wheelchairs (again, except on the Tiny Buses) and visual and audio stop display information mark a distinct improvement for those with disabilities, there have been problems.

Specifically, a lack of road markings at bus stops and a tendency for local residents to use these stops as car parks coupled with the sense that any bus stop next to a shop is also fair game for drivers, often leads to buses being unable to stop at the bus stop and instead having to stop just down from it or, worse case scenario (and this does happen), simply open their doors in the middle of the road. To say this undermines accessible access would be an understatement. 

The bus stops on Nangreave Road on the 385 route, the bus stop next to Lentils & Lather on Marple Road in Marple, and the bus stop next to Premier on Dialstone Lane in Offerton are all notoriously bad for being clogged up and inaccessible thanks to cars. 

Bus shelters, where they exist, are often in a poor state of repair

I am thinking of the one at the junction of Lisburne Lane and Marple Road, heading towards Marple, which had a massive hole in the roof just before Christmas. Using that bus stop in torrential rain was not fun. In a related note, there are a number of bus stops I've used that have lights fitted which aren't working. Which is similarly fun when it's dark. 

Cross boundary travel related issues

Cross boundary routes appear to be equally if not more vulnerable under the Bee Network:  For example, there is now no bus at all between Stockport and Macclesfield and commuters between the two towns are left entirely at the mercy of Northern Trains: Not a happy prospect. The only other way to get to Macclesfield from Stockport would be to get in a car and join the daily gridlock along the A6 and Silk Road, then the bun fight for a parking space in Macclesfield itself. Good luck with that. 

Concessionary travel issues

While it's great to see the Bee Network and TfGM scrapping the 9:30am start for the retired persons bus pass, there remain issues around other types of concessionary travel. 

Some of these issues are national issues, but some have a local aspect to them, and as we have seen with the scrapping of the 9:30am rule, just because it's a local issue doesn't mean something can't be done locally.

There has been a number of local campaigns throughout the UK for children under 16 to receive free bus travel, which they currently don't get. Many are not even guaranteed free bus travel to school. There's a much undersigned petition demanding free bus travel for under 16's, which you might want to consider signing. 

More recently, there has also been a campaign to provide free travel to school for those whose families have been made homeless and who are living in temporary accommodation, far away from their previous schools. 

Less known about are issues faced by those aged 16-19 who are travelling to sixth form college within Greater Manchester but from outside of the Greater Manchester area.  This will be a trickier issue to resolve than the other two issues, but it is one that is worth looking at if only because the current system has, accidentally, led to some howling inequalities for a small number of college students. 

I suspect that money will be the main barrier to change in each of these areas, but I remain hopeful nonetheless.

Good stuff

As well as the incoming scrapping of the 9:30am start for retired persons bus pass, meaning that pensioners (from March 2026) will no longer have to pay to travel before 9:30am and will be able to attend medical and hospital appointments without having to worry about being able to afford the travel costs, we have also seen the very welcome return of the annual any bus pass. This is a really good thing because it means that you can save money on your cost of travel across the year by buying your ticket at the start of the year. By buying your ticket at the start of the year you also have the satisfaction of knowing you're covered for 12 months and don't have to buy a new ticket every month. There's also the new option of buying the (admittedly very expensive) annual ticket in instalments via a credit union. A nice innovation and a good idea.  

In other good news, new contracts for drivers now mean that a driver from one company can move to a different company operating within the Bee Network without having to start again at the new company on the basic salary. 

I am also, personally, very pleased about the wider introduction of audio and visual stop announcements which, while provided for accessibility reasons, are essential when travelling in the dark.

While the introduction of the Bee Network across Greater Manchester is rightly being hailed as a triumph, there are still improvements to be made.

At a basic level, there should be a baseline standard of training for drivers that all operators operating under the Bee Network sign up to and stick to. This would hopefully avoid drivers being sent out on buses who are woefully ill equipped in terms of knowing the route and how to operate equipment. It would also hopefully reduce the risk of drivers getting lost or having to ask for directions from passengers when driving their routes. 

There should also be a baseline standard of service that all operators operating under the Bee Network sign up to and stick to in terms of providing a credible, reliable and prompt service using vehicles that are fit for purpose. This would hopefully reduce the risk of services running more than 10 minutes late on a regular basis (I am looking at you 385...) and drivers turning up in vehicles that look like converted ambulances (admittedly, this has only happened once...).

I had thought that both of these things would be happening anyway but bitter experience over the past 12 months suggests it's not always the case.

An interesting take on this years bus strikes and a Kafka esque nightmare for one Metrolink passenger

The Mancunian, the University of Manchester student newspaper, has published an extensive and thoughtful piece about this years bus driver strikes. It handily situates the issues raised by drivers in a pre-Bee Network and post-Bee Network context, while also providing a student focused insight as to how the bus strikes impacted them. It is well worth a read. 

In other news, a disabled Metrolink passenger has been experiencing a Kafka esque nightmare with his ticket and travel arrangements, as documented in excruciating detail in both the MEN and Manchester World. 

Return of the Super Stop

After experiencing the commute from hell on Tuesday night, I decided that things have got so bad with all the Marple buses that the only thing for it was to return to using the Super Stop.

Regular readers might recall me writing about Super Stops earlier in the year. For those of you who didn't read that post, a Super Stop is a bus stop that all of the buses I can use to get home stops at. 

To give you a flavour of why this seemed a good idea, let me give you an overview as to how it's gone with yo-yoing between bus stops and using the app over the past week or so versus the Super Stop app free experience.

Firstly, a typical experience with the app:

1) Leave work at 4pm

2) 10-15 minute walk to bus stop. Decision needs to be made at this point as to whether to put my money on the 385 or the 383, which go from different bus stops located 5 minutes apart.

3) Commit to 385 bus stop on the basis that the app says it's due at 4:35pm and the 383 at 4:25pm is often late anyway, and always packed.

4) Get to 4:30pm and check the app again. It now says that the 385 isn't coming until 4:45pm, but that's OK because the next 383 isn't until 4:43 anyway. 

5) Get to 4:40pm and check the app again. It now says that the 385 isn't coming until 4:50pm. Start to get worried.

6) Get to 4:45pm and check app again. 385 has now disappeared off app entirely and the only information available is for the 383, 384 or the 385 that's due at 5:37pm.

7) Decide to wait at stop anyway: The 385 has turned up after it's disappeared off the app previously.

8) 5pm. 385 turns up, nearly drives past me. Consider jumping in road to make it stop but instead wave arms frantically until it stops.

There is an alternate version where I opt for the 383 with similar results, but we'll skip that one.

The day the Bee Network can to Weatherfield

Instead, here is the Super Stop version of my commute:

1) Leave work at 4pm.

2) Walk 30 minutes to Super Stop.

3) 383 turns up at 3:35pm. Absolutely rammed. Opt not to get on as the 385 is timetabled to arrive anytime now and there's another (usually less busy) 383 at 4:50pm.

4) Wait. Check watch periodically.

5) It gets to 4:55pm: No other bus has arrived. Woman and child sharing bus stop with look worried.

6) 5pm. Clearly Stagecoach cannot be arsed running the 383 at 4:50pm tonight.

7) 5:09pm: The 385 arrives. Over 30 minutes late.

OK, the outcome is much the same in both cases, but... The Super Stop provides the security of giving me the option to get on the first bus that arrives (even though I didn't in this case) and saves me having to switch stops every time I think a bus isn't coming. It also stops me getting rain on my phone, leading to condensation in the morning when I head out again. 

So, things being as they are at the moment, it's a resounding win for the Super Stop over the app. 

The unexpected case for audio visual stop announcements

When audio visual stop announcements began to be introduced on Stagecoach buses ahead of Stockport joining the Bee Network, not everyone was impressed. Passengers could often be heard grumbling and taking the piss out of them and drivers would often not switch them on.

While the intention was always to make buses more accessible to those with visual and hearing impairments and other disabilities, I have stumbled across another reason for having them in recent weeks.

In short, they mean that I can figure out where the hell on Marple Road I am when travelling at night. 

Services such as the 358, 383 and 385 travel through some pretty remote, sparsely populated and landmark free areas that also tend to be very badly lit. When you're travelling in what looks out of the window to be complete darkness then one tree can look very like another and it can be nye on impossible to know which stop you've just gone past if there are no obvious landmarks visible to anchor it. Things like signs for the local cattery or the house with the dog statues outside tend to be meaningless after dark and you become increasingly thankful for things like petrol stations and curry houses with neon signage. 

How much of a relief is it then when you find yourself on a bus that actually tells you in real time where you are and which stop is coming up next.  

Sadly many of the buses are old and do not come with stop announcements. And sometimes, on the ones that do have it built in, the driver doesn't switch them on. 

Meaning that I am always, and increasingly, grateful whenever I encounter a bus that has them.

Everything Awful All At Once: When everything goes to shit, including the bloody app

Following on from my last post, I can see now that I was being overly optimistic about the powers of the Bee Network app.

The problem, as with all technology, is that it's only as good as the information you feed it. And, lately, it seems to be being fed the data equivalent of a highly processed burger and skinny fries with negligible percentage of potatoes.

The evening commute will start well enough: The app will say that one bus is running 10 minutes late, another is on time and will arrive 5 minutes after the late one. "Right" you think, "I'll wait for the one that is running 10 minutes late." 

You wait.

And wait.

And wait.

You check the app: The bus you are waiting at the stop for is now running 20 minutes late, but the other one is now running 15 minutes late so they'll probably arrive around the same time still. No need to change bus stops then.

Then, one or both of the buses disappears off the app entirely. And neither of them appear to have arrived.

I've been experiencing a lot of evening commutes like this over the past week or so. 

To provide some context, the 385 has been consistently running at least 20 minutes late pretty much every weekday evening for at least a fortnight now. Sometimes it's been over 30 minutes late. By which time it's disappeared off the app and you don't have a clue whether it's still coming or not.

It failed to arrive this morning as well, meaning that I was late for work because I had to get the 358 and double back on myself. 

To top it all, the 383 has also been running at least 10 minutes late most nights for at least a fortnight as well. And there's been similar problems tracking that on the app.

Other problems with the app include the following:

• It gets confused as to which side of the road you're on.
• If you're in a busy area with several bus stops (such as Stockport College) it gets confused about which stop you're at and floods you with too many stops and buses, making for a lot of scrolling before you can find the right info.
• If the bus you're waiting for is late, it doesn't show the late bus at the top of the page but the next one that's due on the timetable instead, meaning you have to scroll down to find it.

The fact that it removes late buses that are actually still coming from the app is the worst though.

Over the past week there has been flooding and horrendous gridlock so it's not surprising that services have been running late. I also think that timetables need adjusting to account for the reality of gridlock on Marple Road, but I daresay that will never happen.

Friends travelling around other bits of Stockport have been experiencing similar issues with their own buses and also with the app, suggesting wider issues with the Bee Network itself. 

As for myself, I feel it is time for the return of the Super Stop.

Bus stop yo-yoing, or: How I learnt to love the Bee Network app

I wasn't a fan of the Bee Network app when I first encountered it back in January. To be fair, it had a mighty task ahead of it: I needed it to tell me where the hell the 385 had got to at half 4 on day one of tranche three being rolled out. A task it singularly failed at.

Fast forward ten months and I am getting used to the app. Enable your real time location and it can tell you your nearest bus stop and when the next bus is coming. The main glitch being when your bus is so late that it starts to slip down the list of expected buses, meaning the one at the top of the list is the next timetabled one, not the one that is disgustingly late but still might turn up. This has led to several heart stopping moments ("NOOOO! They've cancelled it!") followed by frantic scrolling to find that it's merely running twenty minutes late. Again. 

As regular readers may have worked out... I mainly use it on weekday late afternoons/evenings to find out how late the 385 is going to be.

I currently catch the 385 from a stop that is a five minute walk away from the 383 stop. The idea being that if I get stiffed by the 385, I haven't got far to go to catch a different bus.

A case in point of this would be yesterday when I checked the app at 16:29pm to see how late the 385 (due at 16:30pm) was going to be. The app told me that the 385 to Mellor would not now be coming until 16:58. Something of a record for the app that one. Clearly something had gone more wrong than usual then. 

As there was a 383 due at 16:43, I walked over to the 383 stop instead. 

Now, one of the reasons I resisted using the app for so long was that I just think you end up looking like a massive dick if you're standing at a bus stop looking at your phone the whole time. Then I realised how necessary it was to do this if you ever wanted to be in the position to be able to make an informed decision about which bus to catch.

Why? 

Because buses rarely run to timetable. Yesterday just happened to be an extreme example of this.

I could tell it was going to be a bad commute even before I got to the 385 stop. Sometimes you just have a feeling things aren't going to go well for you. In this case, the feeling of doom was generated by an incident at the pedestrian crossing when two cars went through the lights despite the pedestrian crossing being on green. After about a minute of gaping in disbelief alongside the crowd of other people trying to get across the road, I was filled with a sense of massive injustice and pure rage. This led me to walk out into the the road, determined that I was going to get across while the green man was still showing, and no other piss taking drivers were going to stop me. Which, fortunately, they didn't. Why did I do this? Because that crossing takes about ten minutes to cycle through all the different traffic combinations and I was fucked if I was going to stand there for another ten minutes, waiting to cross the road. 

When I reached the 383 stop I could see that it was about as busy as it would have been ahead of the 16:25 bus arriving, which strongly suggested that it, erm, hadn't. All of the people waiting were sixth form students from the college. All of them were staring at their phones. Some were clearly on the app.

I got my own phone out again.

The 383 was running late as well apparently. 

One of the more dispiriting aspects of using the app is when you think you've got a handle on how late a bus is going to be only for the time of expected arrival to start counting back up rather than down. This is what both the 383 and 385 expected arrival times were now doing: It didn't look as though the 385 would be arriving until at least 17:10 whereas, in the end, the 383 was a mere eight minutes late. 

As we filed onto a very full double decker, the sense of resigned weariness was palpable. Seats may have become available reasonably quickly, but it was still a trudge: The usual backlog of traffic on Marple Road being the main culprit. 

As the nights get darker earlier, the roadworks seem to become more numerous, as do the accidents. The buses get slower and slower, later and later to arrive to pick you up and to get to their destinations. And the weather gets worse of course as well. I did see a few ambulances yesterday (not unusual) and there is what feels like a constant delay for the 385 around Marple Train Station, so it's easy to speculate as to it's shocking lateness. 

As the girl getting off at the same stop of me said to her friend: "That was the worst bus ride ever!"