Forgotten Chester

In all the furore about the on-off war between regional giant Arriva and the for-sale & perpetually struggling Chesterbus, the focus has been taken off the other large operator in the city. That’s First, of course, whose modest network in Chester places it in third position.

There have been troubled times for First in Cheshire. As a remote part of its Stoke-on-Trent subsidiary, it used to operate from depots in Rock Ferry, Ellesmere Port and Chester but, after a retrenchment earlier this year, concentrated what it could of the Ellesmere Port operation at its Chester premises.

The announcement to close Ellesmere Port angered local people, led to questions in the House, and fuelled the local and added to the national deregulation debate.

It inevitably led to Arriva seeing an opportunity to register as commercial First’s unwanted routes, thereby enlarging Arriva’s grip on the sub-region. Just how often does an opportunity like that come along?

Certain ex-First routes are reported to be run by Arriva’s garage at Mancot, which is actually in Wales, and what was to be the very home of the seemingly now partly evaporated Chester putsch.

Aside from inter-urban work, First operates Mercedes minibuses on the 51 and 53 to Chester’s northern suburbs. It also inherited a route of its own, in 1997. At the time of combatant South Lancs Travel’s withdrew from its battle against Chester City Transport (now Chesterbus), First’s predecessor itself saw an opportunity. It registered the former SLT route to Lache (a large council estate) and Saltney and it continues today as service 16, operated by SLF Scanias. Chester City withdrew.

First's Service 16 is perhaps the best example in Britain of how *not* to operate a bus service! At a daytime frequency of every *11* minutes, we wonder how the public is supposed to calculate the next arrival. With a relatively frequent service and notorious Chester traffic, perhaps the oddball frequency doesn’t actually matter.

i Additional information by Omnibuses’ Northern Correspondent