Aintree's ambitious bus-rail link
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• "The most ambitious bus-rail feeder service yet tried" is how the November issue of "APPTO", the journal of the Association of Public Passenger Transport Operators, describes an interchange experiment coming into operation at Aintree and Netherton, Lancs.
A bus route, called Al, operates between Aintree station and Northern Perimeter Road, Netherton, with a diversion to serve the Gin-, ocntre with its 3,000 workers.
According to "APPTO", the Al service will have five double-deck buses on routes operating a 10-min service which is carefully timed to meet all trains at Aintree station during morning and evening peak periods.
A flat through fare has been worked out and the Netherton-Liverpool return fare will be only 23p instead of 35p for a conventional bus-rail journey at present. The comparable stage carriage fare is 26p. It is also estimated that the new service will be quicker than any present method.
The experiment is being carried out for Merseyside PTE and the DoE by transportation consultants Peat Marwick Kates whose spokesman pointed out that the Aintree demonstration will be different from previous experiments because it caters for commuters making any of four journeys.
"Normally in the morning peak," he said, "we have buses taking people to a station to link with a train to the city centre and the reverse in the evening.
"This project will cover much more. In the mornings, for instance, the service will be attractive to travellers from Netherton to Liverpool; from Netherton to Maghull and Ormskirk; from Liverpool to the Netherton Giro and local factories; from Omiskirk and Maghull districts to Giro and Netherton.
Similar permutations operate in the evenings in the opposite direction.
The Al route, measuring about three miles, covers the same ground as the present 30A bus service which was introduced last year to cater for people in Netherton travelling to Walton Hospital or Liverpool City centre.