We’ve listened!

In response to feedback from our customers and in an effort to restore service reliability, we are making major changes to our service 358, introducing new service 362 and retiming service 375.

More direct service 358 – the 358 will revert to the route we used prior to September, running directly between Marple and Stockport via Marple Road and Hempshaw Lane. The section of route covering Bosden Farm, the Valley area of Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill Hospital will now be provided by service 362 – please see below. At Stockport Bus Station the 358 will leave from Stand R with the other Marple buses.

Evening 358 journeys to run full route – the arrangement for connections at Marple is clearly unpopular. With this in mind we have decided to run the evening journeys over the full route with no need to change buses. Evening buses will leave Stockport at a quarter past the hour (on Sundays they will leave on the half-hour).

Newtown Station – to cater for rail commuters the first four Monday to Friday buses from Hayfield (leaving at 0557, 0622, 0705 and 0745) will call at Newtown Rail Station.

Bosden Farm, Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill Hospital route – we have good news for users of this section of the route too. In order to give your service the best possible chance of running reliably, you will have your own dedicated bus 362. This will run from Stockport Bus Station (Stand W) via the A6, Stepping Hill Hospital Grounds, Hazel Grove and Bosden Farm to Marple replacing the 358. Buses will run generally hourly during the day. The later evening journeys and the Sunday daytime service that we introduced in September will be retained although buses will run to a new timetable.

Connections at Marple – although the overwhelming majority of customers told us that they wanted the 358 to run to its original route, there are some customers that use stops on the route via Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill Hospital. In order to try to accommodate these customers too, we have arranged the timetables so that connections are available from the 358 to the 362 and vice versa so that journeys from the Hayfield and New Mills area to/from Stepping Hill Hospital are still possible by changing buses. Through fares will be available so that customers will not have to pay any more for changing buses.

Bus 375 – again in response to customer comments, all journeys on this service are retimed 5 minutes earlier. This will allow a connection to be made in Marple on to bus 362 for Stepping Hill Hospital.

The single journey on bus 360 will be changed back to start from Stockport Bus Station at 0520.

From the same date, the Sunday timetable on bus 317 will be revised to improve reliability.