Lancashire Dis-United

X41 bus awaiting its next turn of duty

My name is Phil Graham and I am here to give my musings on things that happen to me.

The first is called Lancashire Dis-united.

This is a rant about my local bus company called Lancashire United or as I call them Lancashire Dis-United for reasons I will make clear in this blog.

Lancashire United are owned by Transdev which is a country wide company probably not as big as Stagecoach or the First Group the latter two also attempt very badly at running train operating companies or TOCS. Lancashire United have routes in East Lancashire from Preston to Burnley, the Accrington-Blackburn circular which is routed Via Rishton-Great Harwood-Clayton Le Moors-Accrington-Oswaldtwistle-Church-Intack-Blackburn.
They also claim to have an express services from Blackburn to Manchester but if you saw the state of the buses I would only call crates. Same on the 152 the Burnley to Preston service which is one service I use pretty regularly the buses are a right state I don’t think they have been replaced for about 10 years and the reliabilty is beginning to drop.
Transdev also runs Burnley & Pendle and Burnley’s Starship fleet which runs through the Burnley estates then into Todmorden.

Burnley and Pendle also run the Witch Way which is a very high standard express bus service from Nelson and Burnley via Rawtenstall into Manchester using very modern double deckers with very comfortable leather seats I love to travel on that route.

The buses on the 152 route are real old crates and could do with replacing. On the 225 route Lancashire United Transdev have just last weekend launched new buses complete with leather seats. The 225 route runs between Bolton & Clitheroe.

The timetables have just changed but to me nothing has changed, you can get the 152 into Blackburn Boulevard (strange name for a bus station, you would associate Boulevard with Hollywood) and it doesn’t connect with anything you miss buses by 5 minutes and it’s supposed to be an interchange.

I enjoy travelling by bus and travel quite often around Lancashire and to be honest I mostly have uneventful journeys.

Bus reliablity seems a to be a bit of a problem with Lancashire United Transdev, over the past week I’ve seen 3 buses break down. One of them affected me and I sent a twitter message to them, and guess what? They didn’t respond, I asked them why they didn’t replace the 152 that had broken down with one that was sitting spare at the bus station.

Another bus the 241 Clitheroe to Royal Blackburn Hospital is another asset and lifeline to many people it used to be run by Tyrer based in Nelson they actually run a hospital transfer bus from Royal Blackburn Hospital to Burnley General Hospital.

One thing I’ve noticed is you can’t get a seat after 9.30am because every pensioner in the town is on that bus using their over 60’s bus passes, they can use it and it they will, sometimes I get on a little red bus to Accrington because it doesn’t take as long as the Hyndburn circular and you see them same people all the time and all pensioners and they expect to be dropped outside their house, they think it’s a taxi service.