THE new guided busway continues to divide opinion.

Here are five letters sent in about the new public transport system, which opens for business on Sunday...

THE new guided busway officially opens on Sunday.

However those who expected a significantly improved bus service from Leigh are to be disappointed.

The new V1 and V2 bus services using the busway both end at Ellenbrook.

They then go along the normal bus route to get to Manchester, which is in fact the congested part of the journey.

So time savings to Manchester from Leigh using this busway are small, or non-existent if the existing 26 and 34 services run nearer to your home.

Meanwhile unlucky travellers expecting to get back to Leigh after a night out in Manchester by bus will have a lot of walking home to do.

GMPTE has taken the opportunity of the opening of this busway to cut or remove bus services, including the number 39 Manchester to Leigh service that used to operate at night at weekends, which neither the V1 or V2 does.

So you will have to pay a taxi fare in future if you want to return to Leigh.

What a complete waste of time and money this busway is turning out to be for the ordinary commuter, offering few benefits and hoping to hide important bus service cuts.

David Critchley

Leigh Journal:

HOPEFULLY the upcoming opening of the guided busway will bring an end to the constant steam of negative comments from whinging Luddites in your letters column.

Mr Bradley recently claimed that ‘90 per cent of the public were against the project’.

Where does he get that information from and exactly how does he come to the conclusion that it will ‘be impossible to get from Tyldesley to the East Lancs Road due to buses crossing’?

As a resident of Hough Lane who lives only 50 yards from the busway, I have been very inconvenienced by the past two years of construction work.

However I for one cannot wait for it to open. The prospect of being able to get into work in Manchester in under 45 minutes and having a choice of eight buses an hour (currently it’s one at best) is actually very popular with 90 per cent of the people I speak to.

No doubt the moaners will find something else to complain about after April 3.

Tony Harrison, Hough Lane, Tyldesley

Leigh Journal:

AS time fast approaches for the grand opening of the priority guided busway, residents of Tyldesley need to be aware of the impending traffic congestion it will cause, and allow extra time for their journeys.

Traffic lights positioned halfway up Astley Street to accommodate the new buses will stop traffic every four minutes most of the day. That’s before you reach the top of Astley Street and encounter further delays, with buses coming from Atherton, which will get priority as they go against the one-way system and turn down the hill.

What’s more before you reach Tyldesley there will also be lights at Mosley Common Road and Hough Lane, where the buses will cross the roads.

Already many motorists are cutting through Upper George Street to join Astley Street to avoid travelling round the town centre one-way.

This will only increase, causing chaos when the interchange opens.

Coming up Astley Street motorists are already diverting through Chapel Street at the side of the vets to avoid the lights, which is dangerous, especially for pedestrians.

At an earlier meeting as the work got under way on the busway, residents who met with representatives were promised a review of potential traffic and parking problems in this area to include the centre Elliot Street, but nothing has been forthcoming.

Furthermore pedestrians walking along Astley Street will have noticed how vulnerable you feel with the narrow roadway and unprotected footpath, and many schoolchildren use this route.

A friend recently used an existing bus service and said how quick the journey now was into Manchester since the new bus lanes had opened on the East Lancs Road. Surely that’s all that was needed as the guided track is only a fraction of the full journey, and most of the millions of pounds could have been used on some needier causes.

As regards its usefulness, who is going to walk from Higher Fold to the Cooling Lane Station when a bus will probably stop near their house, or who is going to use public transport if they work in Trafford Park, or the many other industrial hubs in Manchester?

A meeting held in November 2014 at Fred Longworth High School, attended by 400 concerned locals, was concluded by a question put to the delegation of TfGM and Wigan Council officials, asking who had made the journey to the meeting on public transport.

Unsurprisingly not a single hand was raised.

Mr C Blain, Tyldesley

Leigh Journal:

WHEN Manchester’s Metrolink opened in 1992 it started a success story that has resulted in the city now having a network that extends to all parts of the authority, except that is for west Manchester and Leigh.

The success of the tram was due to a system that interacted as little as possible with existing traffic and was fast, frequent and reliable.

Like all commuter systems it has its problems – overcrowding, technical breakdowns etc – however the provision of good park and ride systems, and it not interfering with alternative services such as the trains and buses, have all helped to make the service very popular with its users.

I accept the ridiculous third rate alternative which is about to be opened and the Vantage busway will be used, but this is because of the way TfGM and Wigan Council have cancelled and reduced all the alternative bus services around the busway, leaving commuters and shoppers with no alternative service other than the concrete railway.

This is rather like announcing the M6 and M1 will close to all traffic, and if you must go to London you will have to use the train, and by the way we are not going to help you get to Piccadilly Station.

I was assured on numerous occasions that as soon as this white elephant was finished the traffic on the A580 and the road to Worsley via Boothstown would ease considerably.

As a result I can’t wait to get extra time at home, because I will no longer have the 50-minute queue I have to endure currently to join the M62 as I head to my work in Yorkshire.

Of course I do not believe this will be the case, but by the same rule I cannot see why anybody would join the same queue, and then park at the new car park, under the motorway system, before catching a bus.

Sadly so much money has been spent, probably far more than has so far been admitted, on this stupid, irresponsible scheme that we have to hope works.

The knock-on costs will affect everybody in the people’s republic of Wigan for decades to come.

What we really need are councillors who really want to seek a solution for our congested roads.

We need people with a vision that know our citizens do not just need access to Manchester but to Bolton, Media City, south Manchester, Cheshire and all the other destinations that are not accessible from this area, by public transport.

Councillors are needed who do not think that by directing all transport to Wigan, or forcing people to hang around in Leigh or Tyldesley, it will make people do business there.

We have already seen the ruling Labour councillors’ current attitude, when they directed the borough’s profits from Manchester Airport PLC into renovating Wigan Town Hall, money that could have been used to regenerate other areas, such as Tyldesley, as the small opposition on the council wanted.

Wigan may have tried to engineer a success for the busway, but will it really be the start of a network of concrete railways? I very much doubt it.

The elections are on May 5. We have a chance to return councillors who really want to transform the area, make living and commuting a more pleasant and easier experience than it is at present and not want grandiose schemes that are expensive, not good for the environment and are inconvenient to those of us who have no choice in the way we commute to our work.

John Stirzaker, Astley

Leigh Journal:

I NOTE that for the second consecutive week you have granted column space to the same correspondent making inaccurate and misleading comments on the guided busway.

First it was on the subject of the ’90 per cent unpopularity’ of the scheme and totally unsubstantiated claims of delays it will cause to traffic trying to reach the East Lancs Road.

Then it was scaremongering about the safety of the route for disabled and wheelchair users.

For the sake of clarity, the route is opening having successfully passed all the health and safety tests and with the support of the vast number of people that I talk to, who will be actually, like myself, using it on a daily basis.

Tony Harrison, Hough Lane, Tyldesley