Jonathan Welch takes a scenic bus trip along the Clyde with McGill’s Clyde Flyer
Those of you with good memories will recall that CBW sponsored the Top Express Service category at November’s UK Bus Awards. The winner was Citylink AIR with a gold award, followed by McGill’s 901/906 Clyde Flyer routes with silver, and Arriva’s Leicester-Coventry X6 with bronze. The FlixBus route between Manchester and Newcastle was also highly commended.
Finding myself with a few hours to spare in Glasgow, I thought it might be a good idea to try the routes out for myself. So, in no particular order of preference, I decided to make a start with a short trip to Greenock and back on McGill’s Clyde Flyer.
Knowing that McGill’s is a company which is particularly active when it comes to marketing and public relations, and given that it has at its head strong engineering and operational knowledge in the shape of Ralph Roberts and Alex Hornby, I was particularly keen to see how well the route performed; maybe, just maybe, I might have been looking with an even more keen eye than I might normally do.
Before setting off, I decided to do what a new passenger might do. I typed ‘McGill’s 901 timetable’ into everyone’s favourite search engine. And lo and behold, it took me straight to the relevant page of the McGill’s website, which uses a common format similar to a number of other operators, and which works well. Finding times was no problem, the timetable is clearly laid out, and highlights the uneven 10/20 minute frequency at the Largs end of the route; the 906 makes a less direct journey around the coast whilst the 901 takes a shorter route. The section from Greenock to Glasgow then recombines the two services into a 15 minute even headway.
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