Since 19th April, Diamond Bus North West have been operating services on an emergency tender to Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) following the closure of Manchester Community Transport (MCT) and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Diamond Bus North West have operated six buses, seven days per week across 10 routes based around Stockport. This changed on the 14th June where those services became more frequent meaning now there are 10 buses that are currently employed on the Stockport services until 25th July when TfGM will be introducing service revisions on a permanent basis. The 19th April also saw, Diamond Bus North West inherited the tender for service 217 Manchester Piccadilly to Ashton-under-Lyne from MCT as part of a pre-planned change. These services brought the Diamond brand into the Tameside and Stockport boroughs for the first time, meaning Diamond now has a presence in all but one (Oldham) of the Manchester boroughs at this moment in time.
The work, which was awarded at very short noticed, placed considerable pressure on both the company’s back office and depot staff. In a period of little over two weeks, the service was mobilised including service registrations, ticket machine and destination blind programming, scheduling of buses and drivers, route learning, route risk assessments and more. To assist in this Diamond Bus North West employed a number of drivers with route knowledge from MCT following their closure, this was a bold move during the pandemic, however it has worked and this has meant that a number of people have been employed during the pandemic.
Since the services commenced, the company has received nothing but praise from the local communities who could otherwise have been left without any buses.
Bob Dunn, Managing Director of Diamond Bus North West commented: “it’s fantastic to see our team pick up the task of delivering these services at short notice. I offer a sincere thank you to our Operational, Driving and Maintenance team for the great work. We have had few issues and the services are now being operated to a high standard.”