403 circular bus is it North Bound or South Bound on Market Street, Shaw? 

Crompton Liberal Democrat Councillor Louie Hamblett has recently written to Transport for Greater Manchester’s Bee network after receiving a number of complaints regarding the 403 circular serving Shaw, Crompton and High Crompton.

In particular, the Market St. stop in Shaw where the bus uses the same stop for both directions, passengers are finding that the service is not adequately displaying whether the bus is going towards High Crompton or Oldham, causing confusion when passengers are boarding the vehicle. This has happened multiple times.

Cllr Hamblett said “It is very confusing, especially for elderly and disabled residents. I have used this service many times and witnessed passengers asking the bus driver which direction they were heading, either towards High Crompton or Oldham. This was really poor especially for a now wholly publicly owned service.”

Bee Network wrote back to Cllr Hamblett and said: “As the service from Oldham reaches Shaw, it operates in a loop through Shaw, Rushcroft, High Crompton, and returns via Shaw before continuing to Oldham. Consequently, the service vehicle generally displays “Oldham Circular” as its destination, irrespective of where the bus is in terms of the circular loop.  

I can appreciate that the display, and the fact that the service serves Market Street and High Street using stops in the northbound direction for journeys traveling into as well as out of Oldham, would lead to confusion for passengers.

I’m sorry for the experience that they’ve been having on the network as a result.  

My team has been reviewing service 403 in light of this feedback and are currently looking into improvements they can make to the journey. The goal is to ensure that the Market Street stop is served on opposite sides of the road depending on the direction of the journey, as this is where much of the confusion comes from. We’re also looking into the possibility of changing the destination display at a halfway point on the route to potentially clear up this confusion too.”

Cllr Hamblett came back and welcomed this and was happy with this response. He said hopefully this change will happen, the Bee Network will stick to their word to make this change for passengers so it makes sense for all.”