I recently visited my local bus hub in New Brighton, just outside Morrisons, where you can catch a wide variety of buses, including services to Liverpool, Birkenhead, and, of course, Woodside. Over the years, New Brighton had many more services, including a brief stint from First Bus CLP. However, in recent years, it has been reduced to just five bus services: the 410, 411, 414, 432, and the 433.

As you can see above, the Wright Gemini 2 primarily serves the Liverpool-bound routes. This is set to be upgraded sometime in 2026 with new buses and potentially new routes. This is all rather exciting for me as it means I will have something new to document, as the current scene is rather bland. However, in the future, we are going to see a lot of changes.

As well as the 432/433 services we do have some basic Wirral bound services as well with the 414,410 and the 411 which is a loop type route operating from New Brighton through to Woodside then around Birkenhead and back again ending at New Brighton before starting the loop again. I may do a blog post regarding bus loops around the Merseyside region as they’re quite a few around.

As you can see, we don’t have much variety in the vehicles serving the New Brighton area. We mostly have Wright Streetlites from the North East, including five from Birkenhead introduced back in 2015. We also have the rather popular Wright Gemini 2 Hybrid operating on the 432/433 routes and occasionally on the 410 and 411 routes as well. I plan to do a future post detailing some of the changes coming to the Wirral with the Public Ownership taking place this year.

As you can see, buses currently terminate on one side of the Promenade in New Brighton before turning around to start their service back to Liverpool or Birkenhead, for example. However, with the franchising model taking place in October, we could see Arriva replaced by Go North West or Go North East if they succeed in their bid for the Laird Street depot, where most services currently operate from.

It will be fascinating to observe the changes over the next few months as we move towards our own franchising system, where the local government will manage the routes and operators. Hopefully, we’ll see some new competition in the coming weeks and months, and I’ll definitely be commenting on and documenting it here on the blog. So, be sure to subscribe.

One final note, I have noticed that we have been getting quite a few buses from the North East, which I am personally not too happy about as it reminds me of my time visiting Redcar and Middlesbrough this time last year when I was in a new relationship. It makes me feel like I am being stalked when I am not! However, it’s nice to see that we have a Gemini 2 Hybrid replacing one of the Streetlites that have recently been withdrawn.