Preston Bus has thrown its weight behind a campaign calling for “long-term solutions" to the chaos that hits the city whenever there is an incident on the M6.

It comes after the operator revealed it experienced a month’s worth of cancellations in a single day following a lorry fire on the motorway earlier this month.

Just one lane was left open on the southbound carriageway around junction 31 on the morning of 22nd May. Preston Bus says the knock-on effects drove its timetable into disarray for the rest of the day.

In a letter to Ribble Valley MP Maya Ellis, seen by the Lancashire Post, the firm says almost 10 per cent of the Preston Bus network failed to operate, because buses were stuck in queues and unable to complete their journeys.

Preston Bus services were throw into chaos by a fire on the M6 on 22nd May | various

placeholder image — Preston Bus services were throw into chaos by a fire on the M6 on 22nd May | various

Seventy individual bus journeys - equivalent to over 350 miles - had to be cancelled and hundreds more were delayed. At 4pm that day, “not a single Preston Bus service in Preston was running on time, with buses taking well over an hour to travel between Royal Preston Hospital and the city centre”, the company’s commercial director, Thomas Calderbank, wrote.

Ms. Ellis - whose constituency covers northern parts of Preston - spoke in Parliament about the traffic problems caused in and around that area as a result of issues on the M6.

During Business Questions in the House of Commons on 15th May - a day when the northbound carriageway was shut for more than an hour between junctions 31a and 32 after a crash at around 6am - she said: “Economic growth requires people to be able to get to work. This morning, yet another road traffic accident happened on the stretch of M6 motorway that goes through my constituency

“This has a hugely disruptive impact on the mainly small roads around it in my constituency. Yet again, my residents in Longridge, Grimsargh and all the surrounding areas woke up to the prospect of another journey to work that takes two hours instead of 20 minutes - and that is becoming a monthly, if not weekly, occurrence.”

The MP is now hoping to arrange a ministerial meeting to discuss the problem next month.

Ms. Ellis has also expressed her support for a longstanding proposal - backed by Preston MP Sir Mark Hendrick - which would see a new bridge built over the River Ribble between Penwortham and Lea, linking the Penwortham bypass to the Preston Western Distributor Road (Edith Rigby Way).

One of the claimed benefits of that scheme would be to provide greater resilience across the local road network when the M6 is closed.

“At the moment, if the M6 goes down, all the traffic is forced onto small country roads that simply aren’t built to take that volume of cars,” Ms. Ellis said.

In his letter, Thomas Calderbank said Preston Bus was “deeply concerned” about the long-term impact on “public confidence in our services” of the disruption caused by M6 closures.

“While this used to happen every so often, this is now becoming a regular occurrence, with over ten major motorway closures within the last 12 months.

“M6 motorway closures are now the number-one factor affecting the

reliability and punctuality of Preston’s bus network,” he added.

Preston Bus says its “dedicated and hard-working team of drivers stayed on beyond their scheduled finishing times to operate services” during the problems resulting from the fire on 22nd May.