An angry commuter heckled the launch of the Bee Network in Oldham this morning.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham visited Oldham Bus Station, now known as Oldham Interchange, with colleagues from Transport for Greater Manchester (TFGM) as well as the leaders of both Oldham and Rochdale councils.
However, a little over 10 minutes into the launch on the service changing hands from First Manchester to the public-owned Bee Network, one frustrated woman interrupted.
The woman, who did not give her name, said: "This morning I was waiting half an hour for a bus that usually comes every 10 minutes.
"This bus that I usually get is every 10 minutes and I was waiting over half an hour - I had to catch a taxi this morning to get to work on time."
Vernon Everitt, the transport commissioner for the county, replied that there were some "teething problems here in Oldham" due to the handover.
It was later explained that the delay for the 409 service she was waiting on was due to a bus failure and The Oldham Times was told that it "was a one off there weren't further delays".
Speaking about the issue, Mr Burnham said: "That one was a particular service failure, that wasn’t to be replicated across the board there was a particular issue with the service that that lady was trying to use, so that’s being dealt with and we’ll deal with the complaint and make sure she wasn’t left out of pocket either.
"But no, there hasn’t been widespread issues, there’s been one or two teething problems but then that’s to be expected – if you went back to a Monday morning under the old deregulated system you would have found the same week after week.
"The pledge I’m making to people here in Oldham, and across Greater Manchester, is this service will be better than what you’ve had before - and you can hold me to account on that."
The mayor caught the bus himself this morning, travelling on the 59 from Middleton to the city centre which was "bang on time" although there was an issue with tracking the bus which he called "frustrating" due to it being a "national issue".
While the Bee Network promises "cheaper travel" for Oldhamers with single journey tickets capped at £2, commuters could now spend more for weekly and monthly tickets - including children's passes.
Passengers opting for a weekly ticket used to pay £18 with First Manchester but will now pay £21 to board a Bee bus.
Children's weekly passes are also more expensive with the Bee Network, jumping up to £10.50 - although the new service offers parents a 'school run' five-day bus ticket for £7.60.
To rectify this, TFGM has set up a compensation scheme in a bid to not leave residents "out-of-pocket".
When asked by The Oldham Times how accessible would the scheme be to those less tech-savvy, the mayor replied: "We want to make sure it’s accessible to everybody and that’s why I’m emphasising that compensation scheme today, I want people to know about it.
"I want people to use it if they are out-of-pocket, what I would say as well though, it is not like-for-like because obviously the Bee Network weekly allows you to use any bus whereas those old operator weeklies were just linked to their service.
"Now I know some people just use them because they’ve only needed to use the buses of one particular operator, but not everybody was in that position."
He added: "The any bus weekly offers a lot more flexibility to people, in few cases it’s a couple of pounds more but we will compensate people and that will be in place all year until we move to another change in January 2025 - when we’ll go to a much flatter, simpler structure."
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