Diamond Bus invests in routes

Rotala-owned Diamond Bus North West will be investing an additional four vehicles into local routes serving Bolton, Eccles, Swinton, Farnworth and intu Trafford Centre from 25 October 2020.

Following the award of Better Deal for Bus Users funding from the Government, via Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), current service 68 will be extended from Little Hulton to Bolton, via the fast-expanding Logistics North employment area, which is already home to thousands of jobs. This service partially replaces the Local Link service, which has operated in the area since the construction of the site. Considerable work has taken place with local employers, Bolton Council and TfGM to ensure the timetable is suitable for shift workers in the area. As such, journeys start as early as 4am and the service continues until around midnight. As part of the overall package of changes, the service is renumbered service 20, and buses will generally operate every 30 minutes during the daytime.

Alongside this improvement, on a commercial basis the company has doubled the frequency of the popular 2 service on the busier southern section of the route between Pendlebury and intu Trafford Centre. Buses will now operate up to every 15 minutes on this section of route, which also provides local links between the Salford towns of Swinton and Eccles.

Furthermore, the new short journeys will be extended to serve Clifton and Agecroft, areas which have in recent years only been served by indirect and infrequent tendered services. The new routes are expected to improve the overall attractiveness of services in the area. The 2 will be renumbered 22, and the short journeys numbered 21, thus combining to form six buses an hour between intu Trafford Centre, Eccles and Monton across services 20, 21 and 22.

Bob Dunn, Managing Director of Diamond Bus North West, said: “Following our significant expansion and our enormous investment in vehicles in the area in August 2019, due to the purchase of the Bolton depot from First, we have been looking at ways of further growing the business and making our services more attractive to customers. Significant work has gone in to identifying, and then acting on these opportunities and I am pleased to see this now come to fruition. We are responding to changes in demand and changes in the market, Logistics North and intu Trafford Centre are constantly growing, so we need to be there to meet that demand.”

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