A PARTINGTON resident, described as a ‘whinging passenger’ by a Stagecoach employee, said he won’t stop his campaign to get the 255 to run on time.

He has also criticised Stagecoach’s proposed improvements and said they would create an “illusion of a service running on time”, with no “real changes” being made except that drivers would being given longer to complete the same route.

“A 59 minute journey will now take longer, on paper at least, and I will get home at exactly the same time I do now,” he said.

Anthony Henderson, 27, of Wood Lane, has written a letter to Stagecoach every day, since February 4th, stating how late the previous day’s 255 had been.

He said the 5.31pm 255 bus, which runs between Chester Road and Partington, had been late every day for two years and last month, he added up that his time spent waiting for the bus over a 20-day period was almost five hours.

“My only aim is to get a service that is reliable and frequent,” he said.

Two weeks ago the Messenger published a letter from Mr Henderson about the 255 bus and it quickly topped the website’s most read articles - generating a number of comments from bus users with similar concerns.

He also started a Facebook group Why Can’t the 255 run on time?, which has almost 150 members.

Mr Henderson was angered when Steve Whittaker, a Stagecoach bus driver, posted a comment on the Facebook group calling the members ‘whinging passengers’.

Mark Threapleton, managing director of Stagecoach, has apologised for Mr Whittaker’s comments and said they were “personal opinions” which had since been removed from Facebook.

Both Mr Threapleton and Lesley Hester, operations manager at Stagecoach, said changes due to take place from April 11th, would address the late services.

Ray Cossins, commercial director at Stagecoach, said: “We are aware of some issues affecting afternoon peak journeys on this service and have been analysing ticket machine data to try to identify trends in late running.”