First Manchester have advised TfGM of a number of changes to their network which affect the Oldham area. All will be effective from Sunday 24 July brief details below:
| Service | Route | Notes |
| 24 | Rochdale/Thornham – Royton – Chadderton – Manchester | Daytime journeys operating between Thornham and Manchester withdrawn. Monday to Friday Peak journeys (4AM/5 PM) operating through to Rochdale maintained.
Rossendale have looked at diverting service 408 but there isn’t enough time in the current or revised schedule and they have expressed concern about running on Springfield Lane having witnessed two buses getting stuck. Patronage is low. |
| 59 | Rushcroft – Shaw – Oldham – Manchester | · Monday to Saturday daytime service between Oldham and Rushcroft reduced from 4 buses an hour to 2 buses an hour.
· Daily evening service revised – every 30 minutes between Manchester and Oldham, extending hourly to Rushcroft. During the daytime services 58 and 59 will combine to provide a 10 minute service between Middleton and Oldham and every 15 minutes between Oldham and Shaw, Wren Nest. |
| 83 | Sholver – Oldham – Manchester | Monday to Saturday evening service reduced to operate every 30 minutes between Sholver and Manchester. Short Oldham to Manchester journeys (every half hour) withdrawn.
Services 83/180/184 will combine to provide a bus every 15 minutes between Oldham and Manchester. |
| 149 | Oldham – Cheetham Hill – Manchester | Daytime service curtailed to operate between Oldham and Cheetham Hill (via North Manchester General Hospital).
This service is tendered between Oldham and Cheetham Hill – First extend to Manchester commercially. This action should improve service punctuality as delays in the city centre cause issues along the route. |
| 181 | Shaw – Chadderton – Manchester | Route revised to serve St Mary’s Road and Nuthurst Road (New Moston) instead of Broadway.
This leaves one pair of stops (near Park Avenue) that is not within 400m of existing stops on Nuthurst Road or Oldham Road. |
| 182 | Shaw – Chadderton – Manchester | Daily daytime journeys curtailed to operate between Shaw and Manchester. Some peak journeys extend to Milnrow and evening journeys continue to serve Rochdale.
Service 58 will maintain a 30 minute daytime service between Shaw, Milnrow and Rochdale. |
| 184 | Huddersfield/Uppermill/Grotton – Oldham – Manchester | Monday to Saturday journeys that terminate in Diggle revised to terminate at Grotton. Dobcross and the Diggle terminus (Sam Road) will lose their link with Oldham.
Services 353/354 will maintain an hourly daytime link with Uppermill where connections can be made to service 184. |
| 409 | Rochdale – Oldham – Ashton | Monday to Saturday evening service reduced from every 20 to every 30 minutes. |
| 415 | Oldham – Middleton | Sunday daytime service withdrawn.
We’ve tendered for replacement and will recommend award of the new contract, replacing all journeys. |
Officer response from TfGM after I raised concerns about some of these changes.
First of all please let me apologise for the delay in responding.
In terms of the changes, most of the 182 journeys will turn short at Shaw Wrens Nest as opposed to continuing to Rochdale. First will continue to provide a service between Shaw and Rochdale on service 58 every 30 minutes and service 181/182 will continue to run through to Rochdale at times when service 58 doesn’t. In addition, peak journeys on 182 will continue to Milnrow.
I appreciate that service 59 will operate to a reduced frequency in the evenings that I agree will have an impact on the local community.
All of the changes that have been registered for implementation are fully commercial changes which First have determined will maintain a commercially viable service; First will continue to provide services to all of the affected routes albeit to reduced frequencies.
It is fair to say that the medium term effects of the introduction of the tram between Oldham and Rochdale will now be fully felt and will no doubt have had a bearing on their decision.
We would not be in a position to tender for services to enhance this service as it would in effect be competing with, and undermining, a commercially provided service which would ultimately lead to a further reduction in frequency.
Notwithstanding this, we are fully committed on our budget; any commercial services that are withdrawn that TfGM needs to reinstate must be funded from the withdrawal of other services. It would therefore be extremely difficult to justify the withdrawal of an entire service to one community to enhance the service to another.
I would add that as part of the changes First have been able to co-ordinate all of the services through Shaw and as a consequence the combined 58/59 will offer an approximate 15 minute combined service to Oldham.
I hope that this provides some additional information.
Michael Moore, Service Planning Officer, Transport for Greater Manchester, 2 Piccadilly Place, Manchester M1 3BG.
So when there are problems with the trams, the people of shaw are left with reduced or no bus services to get work. Well done first group
Does this mean High Crompton passengers will only have 2 buses an hour on weekdays, when we use them most? This is unacceptable for passengers both young and old and those without own transport.
Can you as elected liberals help us with this situation? We are losing everything in Shaw and High Crompton. Now a bus service!
This will be a serious problem for Rushcroft terminus users.
Elaine Mounsey
You can see the response of TfGM at the end of the post, this is as a result of the concerns I have already raised. These are commercial services and First can alter them as they see fit providing they give notice.
‘The combined 58/59/181/182 will offer an approximate 7/8 minute combined service to Oldham.’
No it won’t, because 181/182 don’t go to Oldham!
Well spotted and I have now corrected.
I have to be brutally honest here – when ‘Gold Service’ was introduced way back when, it lead to not much choice in where people could go, people were expected to catch buses down corridors, and change dependant on the journey. Once upon a time there was a beautiful interwoven web of bus services which saw people get to each destination they so chose to go to, some of these bus services mirrored similar services for a period, but would finally end up taking another route at some point. People had the option of only having to catch one bus to whichever destination it was that they were heading to. Sometimes, you can end up catching up to 3 buses just to find yourself in the same place one bus would have taken you yesteryear and its increasingly worrying to see.
A county that is considered to be booming with industry and population – ever increasing at a rapid rate, and yet we watch has the transport that gets these people around is reduced to, (and I do not say this lightly) nothing.
The worst one I’ve seen by far is the destruction of the 415, a service that at one time ran rather frequently has been reduced to 2 buses an hour on a route half the size, and now has been completely cancelled on a Sunday – at a time where Sunday is increasingly becoming ‘another working day’ for many!
If this isn’t seen as frightening by politicians and the public alike, then I would be incredibly shocked. This needs a long, hard stare in the face, and something needs to be done. The envision of 2040 is not going in the direction one would expect.
This not all FIRST, I expect TFGM have a hand in this as they fund most routes and if they chop funding then FIRST lose money.
End of the day, FIRST is a business and I certainly wouldn’t lose money sending buses on extra routes and extended routes if I was losing out with each one.
TFGM aren’t innocent in all this!
As my post say these are 100 percent commercial routes by First. No money from TfGM goes towards these commercial services.
Is First still running the 415 service during the week?
Yes and as it say they are re tendering for the Sunday service.
Was thinking about buying a house in Shaw however this has made me re think.
Even with these changes, compared to other places Shaw and Crompton is better connected.
First not bothered about services to Rochdale I bet they are not cutting services to Bury ….. yet again Rochdale suffers … Rochdale people not yet learned to ‘ Beam me up Scotty ‘ as if they could they would !!!!!
I have only listed the changes that impact upon Shaw and Crompton and Oldham, there are other service changes in most of the other 9 districts of Greater Manchester.
We are already used to having only a bus an hour both to Rochdale 435 and the 408 to Stalybridge. I used to always try to get the 408 into Oldham after walking approximately 10 mins from where I live in Denbigh Drive, Crompton. There are a lot of elderly people who live on this estate(Netherhouse) Since moving here 18 years ago feel we in Crompton have never had a very frequent service to either Rochdale or Oldham, now I prefer to either walk down to Shaw, or get the little bus (this stops for us at 4pm) and then get the tram. Reading the above not quite sure which route the 408 will take. As for Rushcroft where my nearly 92 year old mother lives who like to go out each afternoon, using the 409 every 14 minutes, not sure what she will do now, as she does find it difficult to walk back up from shaw, from what I gather these buses are only now going to be every 30 minutes (2 per hour instead of 4)
Well aware of the difficulties this will cause those in this area of High Crompton. Will continue to make representations as I have said earlier. However these are FIRST commercial services and providing they give notice they can alter their routes and frequency. Now if we had bus regulation like they do in London it would be a different matter. This is something I am my colleagues continue to press and campaign for deregulation in 1986 (never applied to London).
For further info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_deregulation_in_Great_Britain
I live on Dunwood Park Courts and a lot of elderly people use the bus now we are only having two buses an hour which are unreliable now you go to the bus stop and the bus doesn’t turn up if just going into Shaw we can catch the next bus 182 but not going to have that to fall back on, the tram is no use to us here, the elderly have to catch the 58 to mumps or get a taxi down to Shaw tram station so inconvenient, if we have hospital appointments we have to get to Wrens Nest now to catch the 182 and because we haven’t got our brand new health centre in Shaw we have to go to Royton for certain things like diabetes eye tests or to see the district nurse. It is so inconvenient not to have that bus on our doorstep.
Could not agree more. As said earlier these earlier commercial services and down to First Bus when they run them. I will continue to do all I can to maintain such services that are key to those without cars.
I get the first 182 in the morning from new moston to rochdale, it means now I will have to get off in Royton and then wait for a 409 to rochdale and then have to walk further which means I’ll be late… Looks like I’ll have to start getting the tram to work!
This will have a major impact on children travelling to and from Hollingworth school in Milnrow. It is not always practical to walk to Shaw station, it would be simpler to walk to Milnrow.
If only our local high school Crompton House would allow local children to attend rather than bussing them in from miles away, just because their parents attended a CofE church for a few years.
The combined 58/59 service is not a 15 min service to oldham unless you live in Shaw. If you live on Shaw Rd Royton it’s a 30 minute service. Houses near the Angel don’t even have buses on that stretch of road and will have only 2 an hour from the bottom of Blackshaw Lane. Alternatively they have to walk to the top road and back on themselves for a 58.
Howard
I along with other residents of Failsworth rely on the 181 bus to take us to Royton & Shaw/Rochdale from our bus stop on Oldham Road Failsworth and also the return journey. We are now forced to either walk to Dean Lane Failsworth or catch 2 buses one into Oldham and 1 out to Royton/Shaw/Rochdale. I have been asked by elderly residents where I live if there us a petition going to get this bus route re-instated. Please can you advise. We had 3 buses from Manchester travelling along Oldham Road and Broadway 24/181/182 all have been re-routed along Dean Lane/Moston Lane which now leaves us with no buses at all picking up at Oldham Road Failsworth where elderly people rely on these buses plus what about Newman College pupils in September who also use this bus to get to school what are they going to do. One of our elderly 80 year old ladues had written toTFGM and also Coucillor Elaine Garry asking for their help in the matter.
I have also written to TfGM about this. If you email me your contact details I will forward them to the lady who contacted me who I think is helping organise a petition.
Thanks Howard my email address is jonesgraham6@sky.com i have another lady called Mrs Jean Stokes who is in her 80s and has also enailed TFGM and councillor Elaine Garry our local councillor. If you wish i can give you her email link to pass onto your lady dealing with this issue.
Graham
The lady who you need to contact is:
Ms Jackie Marsh
7 Oakwood Avenue
New Moston
Manchester
M40 3NG
Apols do not have a tel or email
Regarding Graham Jones comments, I am Jean Stokes and my email address is jealstokes@icloud.com. . There are at least 5 may be 6 bus stops in the M35 / M40 area that are not being serviced by the 181 bus service,
Between Dean Lane Newton Heath along Oldham Road and up Broadway to the Broadway Hotel, New Moston. I used this link in the past to access my GP on Eaves Lane. The AgeUK luncheon Club on Broadway, and Boots Chemist and Asda Chadderton . My question is why are both the 181 and 182 services being routed via Dean Lane, St. MArys Road and Nuthurst Road.?
Will ask the question.