How we lived ……………. catching a bus ...... just a quarter of a century ago

Once again, I am looking at a bit of history which for many of us won’t seem like history ………. just a little before now.

And I make no excuses that this appears to be nothing more than a story about a bus timetable, because lurking behind “Your Handy Guide” there is much more, all of which is revealed in the introduction which welcomed travelers “to the first edition of this new handy timetable booklet covering all GM Buses services in the Chorlton area.

Since deregulation of the bus services in October 1986 there have been numerous changes to bus services with the tendering process leading to some routes changing between operators or possibly being run by more than one operator depending on the time of day or day of the week”.

And that gets to the heart of this little bit of history, because before bus deregulation we were served by one operator covering the whole of Greater Manchester and before that by city and district services administered by local authorities.

The creation of an elected authority for Greater Manchester was matched by an amalgamation of all the existing bus providers into SELNEC, or South East Lancashire North East Cheshire, which morphed into Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive.

Its demise at the hands of a Conservative Government lead to a plethora of independent bus companies which ran for profit and focused on the routes which offered the most in passengers.

So, the student route along Oxford Road past the university and on through Rusholme, Fallowfield, Withington and Didsbury was awash with buses.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; “Your Handy Guide”, GM buses, 1992