Burnham apologises after week of bus disruptions

Commuters were left stranded across Oldham this week after delays and cancellations blighted the borough’s brand new bus system. 

The town’s buses were taken over by the Bee Network on March 24, but the publicly controlled system has run into “teething troubles”.

Now, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham apologised to inconvenienced passengers. 

The mayor said “driver availability” issues were the reason for the disruption and promised the service “will settle” in the coming days.

Passengers had felt the sharp end of the problems, with Paul, a regular bus user from Oldham, saying ‘it’s been hit or miss all this week’.

“We just want the buses to run and to run on time,” he added.

Wendy, another passenger, claimed she’d seen a number of buses driving on the wrong roads.

She said: “The bus drivers don’t seem to know the routes yet. Last week I saw passengers having to guide the bus driver where to go. 

“It’s not their fault and it is quite intricate here in Oldham, but you’d expect them to learn before they started.” 

Other passengers took to the Bee Network’s X account to voice their complaints, with one claiming “It has been the worst week of commuting in 34 years working in Manchester”.

Complaints included reports of mismatches between the live boards and bus arrivals, last minute cancellations and bus drivers going “AWOL” - leaving a bus-load of passengers checking their watches.

Apologising for the problems, the mayor said: “This was the biggest change to buses since the mid-80s.

"It’s gone very smoothly at Queens Road, Middleton, Rochdale, and Eccles - which is an existing [Bee Network] depot but serves the tranche 2 area. 

“There has been disruption in Oldham and I am sorry to anyone who has experienced that.

"There’s been a number of reasons, linked to the complexity of operations in Oldham.

"There’s been a change at the depot - it was First operating it and now it’s Stagecoach, whereas that’s not the case with somewhere like Middleton - and there’s particular arrangements within the town, in the Mumps area.

“Truthfully, I think there was leave planned at the Easter weekend that the company hadn’t realised, so driver availability was definitely an issue over the weekend.

"There’s a lot of work going on and we’re confident there’s a plan in place to see that disruption reduce as we go forward.

“I’d just again apologise to anyone affected, but say again that this is such a huge change to public transport, and it will settle.

"Already, the data we have from the whole [tranche 2] area is that the Bee Network is out-performing services it replaced - not in Oldham yet, but that will come.”

Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Bury and north Manchester all joined the Bee Network last week, in an effort to bring Greater Manchester closer to the GMCA’s vision for an integrated, accessible and affordable ‘London-style’ transport system.

But while other boroughs experienced a relatively ‘smooth’ transition, Oldham has been hit by a series of no-shows, delays and route mishaps. 

Similar issues were reported in Wigan and Bolton when ‘tranche 1’ buses were taken over in September.

New data from Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) suggested that services there are now better than privately-run routes, with over 70 percent of services running on time compared to only half of other operators.

Issues in the first phase were largely blamed on the reliance of agency staff, but Burnham added that they were not being used in this case.

Instead, ‘relocated’ staff had been deployed to Oldham who ‘perhaps have not worked there before’ which ‘has been part of the challenge’, he added, also admitting that there ‘possibly not’ enough of a focus on addressing potential issues on the Easter weekend rather than the changeover date the weekend before.

Stephen Rhodes, TfGM’s Bus Director, reiterated the apology, saying the ‘change of this magnitude is a complex process, involving the transfer of numerous routes, vehicles and depots between operators’.

That being said, some passengers in Oldham said they were happy with the new service.

A member of the Wednesday Walker’s club, who said they use the bus service every week to reach their meeting spots, said: “It’s brilliant. I catch the 409 and I’ve never seen so many of them and they’re all on time.

"The service was going downhill for a really long time and now it’s much better.”

TfGM have said they are working to resolve the issues and for members of the public to get in touch with any questions or concerns in the meantime via the link here

The opening hours of the help centre in Spindles have also been temporarily extended until 10pm.

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