I have resisted blogging about the bus strikes by Stagecoach, First and Metroline that we are currently suffering because it feels so... obvious to write about them. And while it feels obvious, it also feels too complicated an issue to cover adequately.
Firstly, it needs to be stated that the drivers at Stagecoach, First and Metroline have a perfect right to strike, as do the workers at TfGM who are also being balloted at the moment over similar concerns around pay and conditions.
There is, however, a major elephant in the room/bus station and that is that the strikes reveal the extent to which both First and Stagecoach still dominate the bus sector in Greater Manchester, despite the buses being taken back under public control.
Surely one of the major reasons for taking the buses back under public control was to avoid the kind of natural monopolies enjoyed by First and Stagecoach, who, under de-regulation, effectively carved up the whole Greater Manchester area into two fiefdoms? First having North Manchester, Stagecoach having South Manchester.
Need I also remind readers that when the Bee Network was first mooted, First threatened to flounce off and leave Greater Manchester altogether if it went ahead, and Stagecoach took the GMCA to judicial review (and ran a disinformation campaign) to try and stop it happening at all.
Not that this is why the drivers are on strike; just that the current strike is probably giving the owners of First and Stagecoach a certain amount of Greater Manchester related shadenfreude at the moment, given they never wanted the Bee Network to be a success in the first place.
Locally, two of my three buses are not available and I am finding myself entirely at the mercy of the 385. Six months ago this would have been a terrible state of affairs given the horrific unreliability of the service but now, things have ever so slightly improved. I gave them a chance throughout the summer holidays and September, and I'm currently finding the service... marginally better than it was earlier in the year. By which I mean there are fewer occasions of it simply not turning up all and that it generally arrives within 20 minutes of when it should do. Not great, but liveable with if you significantly lower your expectations of what a good bus service should look like.
So, commuting to work on strike days should be fine, but only on days when life doesn't get in the way.
As such, I survived the Friday obstacle course of dropping the cat off at the vet in the morning*, going to work, coming home from work, and then collecting the cat from the vets after work by asking a friend if she would mind giving me lifts.
Similarly, I yesterday commuted to work on my bike, it being the one weekend of the year where I have to work a Saturday. Having picked what was surely the wettest day of the year to do this, I really wouldn't recommend this as a strike busting form of transport long term. Visibility was awful, I am chronically unfit, and probably spent about 75% of the time walking, not riding. Not to mention getting so soaked I thought I would never be dry again.
The 385 does run on Saturdays by the way; it just doesn't start running until 8:27am, which is no good if you're expected at work for 8:30am.
Further strikes have been announced for the 30th September plus the 1st and 2nd of October. Managers at all three companies remain intractable on the pay and conditions front and, given that the contracts Stagecoach and First were given by the Bee Network were for five years and that they are amongst the top five largest bus companies in the UK, it seems unlikely that we can expect to see any change in service provision locally anytime soon either. A winter of discontent beckons I fear.
*We changed vets because we needed to be with a vet we could get to by bus. Until the strikes happened, this was working well.
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