TfGM propose Quality Partnership Scheme to ensure bus standards

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has begun a consultation process on the proposed Quality Partnership Scheme aimed at maintaining a minimum level of bus service and quality.

An eight-week consultation process on the proposed the Quality Partnership Scheme begins today (14^th May 2015) providing bus operators and other stakeholders, including passengers, the opportunity to comment on plans which aim to maintain quality of service once the bus priority package is delivered.

Transport for Greater Manchester’s £122 million bus priority package is the most significant investment in the bus network in decades. The package will improve bus service quality on key corridors linking Leigh, Atherton, Salford, Middleton and East Didsbury with Manchester and is due for completion in 2016.

To protect the value of the investment for passengers, a special partnership is proposed, committing bus operators to a minimum level of service standard and quality, and TfGM and local authority partners to maintaining the quality of the infrastructure on which those services will run.

The Quality Partnership Scheme will span four local authorities and cover approximately 50 bus routes operating along the three principal corridors to Manchester city centre. The scheme will be one of the largest undertaken in the UK.

If successful the Quality Partnership Scheme will be introduced once the majority of the bus priority infrastructure has been delivered.

Councillor Andrew Fender, Chair of the TfGM Committee said: “The Quality Partnership Scheme complements the bus priority package and in doing so guarantees a high quality of service for passengers.

“The partnership will lock in quality standards on the main routes operating along the QPS corridors. It will mean high standards of service delivery and commits bus operators to high quality vehicle standards.

“We have committed to passengers by investing public money in the infrastructure and we are pledging to maintain the quality of that in future in return for a similar promise from operators about the quality and standard of service they will provide.”