Night buses from Manchester to Leigh to start this Sunday

Two services — including the V1 to Leigh and 36 to Bolton — will run seven days a week, with a bus in each direction for a year.

Starting from Sunday, September 1, it is the first time a publicly-operated night bus service will run in the city region since the mayor took control of buses last year.

READ > Plans to turn former bank offices into 'benchmark' food and drink venue

Sacha Lord, Night Time Economy Adviser for Greater Manchester; Vernon Everitt, Transport Commissioner for Greater Manchester; Mark Wantling, Chief Infrastructure Officer at the University of Salford; Nigel Featham, Managing Director at Go North West. (Image: LDRS)

The move means some 135,000 residents are now within a five-minute walk to a night bus stop, paving the way for people living in Bolton, Leigh, and Salford to get home after-hours. The services will follow the same route, be subject to the £2 single adult fare cap, and have ‘discreet’ QR codes so passengers can connect to GMP’s live-chat facility to report antisocial or criminal behaviour.

The move enables students to get home more safely and provides a cheaper alternative for the thousands of hospitality staff who work into the early hours, who previously relied on taxis.

Sacha Lord, night-time economy advisor to the mayor and founder of the Warehouse Project and Parklife Festival, said the move was ‘important’.

“We’ve always called ourselves 24-hour party people, and I always thought that was really odd when public transport finished just before midnight,” he said at the announcement at Salford University on Friday (August 30). “We are NOW 24-hour party people.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Service, he added: “When I was appointed [mayoral advisor] in 2018, one of the first things I did was hold a listening exercise with employees in the night-time economy.

“There was a woman who put her hand up. She worked in a city centre nightclub, and she finished work at 4am, and lived in north Cheetham Hill. 

“She had to walk home at four-in-the-morning, because it wasn’t viable to spend two hours of her earnings on a taxi. It’s now £2 for the bus — so it’s brilliant for workers.”

Andy Burnham in front one of the Bee Network night buses (Image: GMCA)

Although only two routes are in the Bee Network’s night bus trial, the ambition is to develop a ‘network’ of services across Greater Manchester, according to Transport Commissioner Vernon Everitt. And that network will grow quickly in the new year, he said.

“We do want to extend this, we see it as a first step in delivering 24/7 services,” he told the LDRS. “I hope as we do our network reviews, we can rapidly move on and start to introduce them to other parts of Greater Manchester.

“In south Manchester, which we haven’t franchised [into public control] yet but we will do on January 5, there are already some night-time services. So when you put the V1 and 36 with what’s already running in south Manchester, you start to form a network that begins to address those challenges across Greater Manchester.”

Mr Everitt confirmed that buses popular with students in Fallowfield will continue to run into the night once they come into the Bee Network, namely the 42 and 43 routes — plus the 142 and 143 ‘Magic Bus’ services. He added ‘in due course’ that officials ‘could start branding night buses in a different way to make it clear they are 24-hour services’ — in a similar fashion to London, where night-time routes have an ‘N’ prefix on the service number.

Night buses begin on September 1, and will run every weekday, weekends, and most Bank Holidays. They will not run on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and Christmas Eve Night. But they will run on New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day.