Greater Manchester could get new bus routes after TfGM review

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Salford could get new bus routes around the city following a review of its services, a councillor has said. Routes in Salford, Wigan, Leigh and Bolton are currently being looked at by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) bosses who are gathering information and feedback on local services to make improvements in future.

For the first time in 40 years, all buses in the region have been brought back under local control through the Bee Network, with the final phase of this work finishing on January 5.

But Salford councillor Robin Garrido said at a recent council meeting that the network is still too unreliable for residents in the west of the city. “If you come to Worsley or Boothstown or Roe Green you can’t get a bus to the hospital,” he added. “It’s alright having good buses, and cleaner buses and electric buses, but if older people in our areas can’t get a bus to where they need to get to, it’s no good.” Coun Mike McCusker, Salford council’s transport lead, said the privatisation of buses led to the “decimation” of former routes - but things could change with services now under local control.

He added: "I agree that we do need to look at the west of the city and how it's served by the bus network, we're currently going through a review in Salford of the routes. “Because of the total failure of privatisation, deregulation of the buses by Margaret Thatcher, we’ve seen a decimation of routes. “There’s no longer a bus service basically, it was attempting to be a profit-making service which therefore meant that those in greatest need of buses very often lost the routes. “With the increase in people using buses and the cash that’s being generated, that does give us a real opportunity to improve the buses themselves with a