Are you prepared for winter?
Thank you for visiting our wintry weather pages.
We've created a single area to help you find your way to the information you need to get around during the colder winter months.
Here you will find:
- Travel advice
- Weblinks and contact details for your bus and train companies
- How to find which roads your council prioritises for gritting
Travel advice
In the event of severe weather in Greater Manchester, we'll post regular updates given to us by bus companies on how their services are running.
The unpredictable nature of severe weather, and the time it takes to collate updates from operators, does mean, however, there may be times when what you see here has not caught up with what is happening outside.
More than 40 different operators run bus services in Greater Manchester. If you want to know if and how a specific service is running, you may want to consider contacting the company that runs it directly for the very latest advice.
In the meantime, here are some simple steps you can take to prepare your travel plans over winter:
- Find out which company runs your bus service and keep a copy of their contact details to hand, or in your mobile phone, so you know who to call if there are any problems. You can use your local Travelshop or the bus timetable section of this website to find these details.
- If your bus company has a website, check it regularly to see if there are any service changes. A list of operators' websites is available in the 'Buses' section of this site.
- Check www.nationalrail.co.uk or www.metrolink.co.uk before travelling for service updates on train and tram services in Greater Manchester.
- Allow extra time for your journeys, as wintry weather can affect road and rail conditions which, in turn, can make journeys slower.
- Use our Journey Planner to research in advance what alternative services or routes are available if your usual plans are affected. This might involve using more than one service or mixing types of travel.
- Call Traveline on 0871 200 22 33 to plan a journey. (Calls cost 10p a minute from BT landlines. Mobile and other landline networks may charge more. Lines are open from 7am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and from 8am to 8pm at weekends.)
- Pick up a copy of your bus or train timetable from your local Travelshop for future reference.
- Add '84268' to your mobile phone's contacts list. If you text the unique code on your bus stop sign to this number you'll be sent a snapshot of the published timetable, which details the next three services on that schedule to call at your stop. (Text messages cost 25p plus the standard charge from your service provider). Please note: In the event of severe weather, scheduled services are likely to be disrupted.
Who to contact
- To find out who runs your bus service, click here
- To find out who runs your train service, visit www.nationalrail.co.uk
- Contact details for bus companies in Greater Manchester can be found here
- Contact details for train companies in Greater Manchester can be found here
- Contact details for the Metrolink operator can be found here
Gritting
Each of the ten local authorities in Greater Manchester has a plan of action for gritting their roads. In the event of severe wintry weather, this will probably involve prioritising the busiest roads over others.
As a result, the chances of buses running on these roads during heavy snowfall or prolonged cold periods are much higher.
You can find out which roads your council will prioritise for gritting by using the following links: