Bus Shite

[Yoss]

1 hour ago, Remspoor said:

Mayflower was originally a shipping company formed in the early 1600's 😁

 

or this lot.

https://twitter.com/travelmayflower

 

Yeah, I had a quick Google and everything seems to lead back to this one twitter account but if you scroll down enough more and more of the posts seem to feature Wheelers Travel orange and white stuff so I think they are connected. 

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Found online

Probably best left there!

[quicksilver]

Those route maps paint a very sad picture - it was the same in Northampton, I think they were down to three or four routes when they packed up. One thing that summed up FIrst's attitude nicely was that the council had started selling the 1977/78 batch of Bristol VRs when they were just over ten years old, but First stopped withdrawals and kept the remaining ones for another whole decade while newer buses were sent away. A bizarre consequence was that there were independents running ex-council VRs on school work in the town at the same time as members of the same batch were still in regular stage service with First.

[crad]

the issue with buses (and public transport more widely in britain i think) is that we seem to think it MUST make a profit- why not make them not for profit enterprises- any profit they do make can be reinvested into the service, but the main priority should be providing a good service for people to reduce car usage, imo. we used to have 2 buses an hour between horsham and brighton, a bus to worthing and i think (i might be wrong) that the compass burgess hill- horsham bus also used to be twice hourly. i know in the sticks it might not be profitable, but make the service semi regular and a decent price and people will use it! (i hope that isn't too political!)

[anonymous user]

8 minutes ago, crad said:

the issue with buses (and public transport more widely in britain i think) is that we seem to think it MUST make a profit- why not make them not for profit enterprises- any profit they do make can be reinvested into the service, but the main priority should be providing a good service for people to reduce car usage, imo. we used to have 2 buses an hour between horsham and brighton, a bus to worthing and i think (i might be wrong) that the compass burgess hill- horsham bus also used to be twice hourly. i know in the sticks it might not be profitable, but make the service semi regular and a decent price and people will use it! (i hope that isn't too political!)

Why would anyone operate a business not to make a profit? Most bus services are operated by private companies, if they tried to just cover costs they would not last long. I suppose you could try to estimate one off failures/repairs over and above general running/service costs and build that in, but then I suppose end of life replacement would have to be built in as well. 

But why would anyone run a business just to turn over money?

[crad]

20 minutes ago, anonymous user said:

Why would anyone operate a business not to make a profit? Most bus services are operated by private companies, if they tried to just cover costs they would not last long. I suppose you could try to estimate one off failures/repairs over and above general running/service costs and build that in, but then I suppose end of life replacement would have to be built in as well. 

But why would anyone run a business just to turn over money?

i'd have it run on some sort of local level with public money- plenty of people here (admiteddly that's just in the village) would be willing I think. it's all a bit pie in the sky i suppose, I just think there must be a better way- otherwise the only future i can see for mass transit is in big cities of the london/brum ilk.

[busmansholiday]

South Yorkshire PTE ran the buses at a loss, paid for by the council taxes. You can argue all you want, but they were full and frequent, charging car drivers an arm and a leg to park in the city centre also helped. Privatisation is all about profit, they don't care a fuck about social needs or pollution / traffic reduction. First are just as useless in Sheffield.

[Yoss]

52 minutes ago, anonymous user said:

Why would anyone operate a business not to make a profit? Most bus services are operated by private companies, if they tried to just cover costs they would not last long. I suppose you could try to estimate one off failures/repairs over and above general running/service costs and build that in, but then I suppose end of life replacement would have to be built in as well. 

But why would anyone run a business just to turn over money?

I think the point being made is that it should be a public service, not a business. Does anybody believe bus services have improved with privatisation? There might be some areas on busy corridors where it has but it will be at the expense of other areas. 

It used to be that the busy services payed to keep the less busy services running. Cross subsidisation. But that tends not to happen any more. The network maps I posted yesterday are a perfect example of this. The first one was from 1987, six months after deregulation and five months before the first competition moved in. Half of those routes were not profitable but they were still well used. 

[CreepingJesus]

I remember Kelvin Scottish having 'difficulties' supplying our school buses after deregulation, and some scruffy ned called Brian Soutar swooping in with his cape fluttering to save the day. The novelty of getting RMs and Lodekkas to school soon wore off, and ultimately we moved house to be closer to the school, rather than put up with any more of it.

Deregulation was a stupid idea, badly executed. The only possible outcome of the resulting free for all was that chancers like Soutar, who worked out quickly how to play the game, were able to build monopolies over time. The 'free market' - in itself a dreadful and deliberately misleading term - is always a race to the bottom, and actual utility is usually an early casualty. 

[Yoss]

28 minutes ago, CreepingJesus said:

The novelty of getting RMs and Lodekkas to school soon wore off, 

I agree with everything in your post except this bit but I'll admit I may not have been a normal child. Our middle school didn't have its own playing fields so once a week we'd get carted off to somebody else's in a Southampton Corporation Regent V. That never got boring. Certainly more fun than what we had to do once we got there. But again that might just be me. 

[artdjones]

This company have been profitable for over 100 years. And Lincolnshire is not the busiest part of the UK.

[CreepingJesus]

34 minutes ago, Yoss said:

I agree with everything in your post except this bit but I'll admit I may not have been a normal child. Our middle school didn't have its own playing fields so once a week we'd get carted off to somebody else's in a Southampton Corporation Regent V. That never got boring. Certainly more fun than what we had to do once we got there. But again that might just be me. 

I didn't mind them as such, and Lodekkas were a feature of my childhood, so that didn't bother me: but the ones sent out to transport us were the worst examples of their types; in poor condition, unreliable and so disliked by the drivers that they took it out on us. Just a miserable experience.

I remember Strathclyde council's buses that used to take us to the pool when I was in primary. Bedford or Leyland based tin boxes, that I kinda hope somebody's preserved so future generations can experience that grimness! Ripped vinyl seats on a cold winter's day, when you haven't had time to dry off properly, is certainly 'character building'!

[GregZX]

11 minutes ago, CreepingJesus said:

I didn't mind them as such, and Lodekkas were a feature of my childhood, so that didn't bother me: but the ones sent out to transport us were the worst examples of their types; in poor condition, unreliable and so disliked by the drivers that they took it out on us. Just a miserable experience.

I remember Strathclyde council's buses that used to take us to the pool when I was in primary. Bedford or Leyland based tin boxes, that I kinda hope somebody's preserved so future generations can experience that grimness! Ripped vinyl seats on a cold winter's day, when you haven't had time to dry off properly, is certainly 'character building'!

You’ll find many such examples in the Bridgeton Bus Garage owned by the GVVT. 

https://gvvt.org/

Their open days are fantastic if you haven’t already been. A sand beige Marina sometimes makes an appearance as well as a bonus. 

[martc]

Sörnäinen, 1956.

[quicksilver]

23 hours ago, artdjones said:

This company have been profitable for over 100 years. And Lincolnshire is not the busiest part of the UK.

Delaine are the total antithesis of First. A small family business with no interest in empire-building, concentrating on doing the same thing they've done for decades and doing it extremely well. No gimmicks, just a consistent, reliable service that has earned them a formidable reputation and a loyal customer base, and a livery that has never changed so they're instantly recognisable. They're often held up as a shining example of bus operation done right.

[artdjones]

And compare Delaine's livery to the insipid rubbish that First vehicles carry.

[SunnySouth]

Genuine question; have Delaine ever had to fight off any significant competition? Or are they fortunate enough to occupy a quiet corner of the world that none of the usual predators are interested in?

[cms206]

Two of this week's high mileage heroes, Volvo B12Bs KEZ 9120/21 new to Ulsterbus in 2006.

[Yoss]

I've been playing with Bluestars online bus tracker. It is minutes of endless fun. I'm sure plenty of other companies have real time bus trackers but I'm not sure they go in to quite this amount of detail. 

So this is all the bus stops in the Bluestar area. 

 

Then you zoom in to see the individual bus stops. 

 

And click on a bus stop. From where it shows various options. So you go to the bottom of the page and click on track buses. 

 

And it shows you where all buses serving that stop actually are in real time. 

So far that's fairly standard I know but bear with me. 

Click on one of the buses and it tells you which one it is. Both fleet number and registration. 

But it also tells you if it's single or double deck, for those of you who hadn't figured it out from the fleet number. 

 

But this is where it gets good*. As mentioned earlier Bluestar started six new routes to replace the ones withdrawn by First Bus, necessitating some hastily draughted in buses from other parts of the Go Ahead empire. So I wondered if these temporary buses (so they say, though I've no idea how long temporary means) are on the system so I looked up a 19. Not only are they on the system, still with Go North East fleet numbers, it even tells you it's a different colour! 

Now that is attention to detail. 

I haven't been in to town since these started so these Go North East Wright Geminis are the only things I've seen. So I use this tool to see what else is out there. 

Hmm, two tone green. 

 

A quick Google shows this. 

Which actually started life here in Southampton with Unilink before moving to the Island so it's gone full circle. 

Then I found this. This one even has a name but that can't be a colour scheme can it? 

 

Oh dear, it really is. These come from Swindon. 

 

Like I say, minutes of fun. 

[Eyersey1234]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:11 AM, SunnySouth said:

Genuine question; have Delaine ever had to fight off any significant competition? Or are they fortunate enough to occupy a quiet corner of the world that none of the usual predators are interested in?

Not to my knowledge 

[ETCHY]

On 2/22/2023 at 9:00 PM, quicksilver said:

Delaine are the total antithesis of First. A small family business with no interest in empire-building, concentrating on doing the same thing they've done for decades and doing it extremely well. No gimmicks, just a consistent, reliable service that has earned them a formidable reputation and a loyal customer base, and a livery that has never changed so they're instantly recognisable. They're often held up as a shining example of bus operation done right.

Reminds me of the late lamented John Fishwick & Sons based out of Leyland. They lasted over 100 years. Now sadly gone.

 

[busmansholiday]

That tracking is typical GO, EYMS is the same.

 

Stagecoach tracking just shows where the bus is, allegedly.

[CreepingJesus]

Emphasis on 'allegedly'. The chaos with Stagecoach here has got so bad that they're making up time by shortening routes on the hoof and substituting buses when they've got any spare(ish). I don't even bother with the tracker now, after a bus randomly vanished into thin air back in December: I don't know where it did go - maybe it got abducted by aliens? - but it certainly didn't turn up here, so I abandoned my plans and went home; the other day a bus materialised in the bus station 45mins late and refused to take on passengers for the bit it was cutting out, and fucked off again. Was it the same bus? Maybe. Cheers for leaving me standing about like a spare thumb, twice. 

They've been early too, which is doubly annoying. The shite they're running breaks down in the stupidest ways (wheelchair ramp interlock and damaged engine cover were two recent ones) and is generally falling apart.

All I know is that the one thing I can rely on, is that I can't rely on it. Cheers Stagecoach, yer doing a grand job.

[Dyslexic Viking]

An old bus has met its end and was dumped as was common in Norway in the past. The ferry stopped and the bus was pushed off and went to the bottom and the ferry continued its journey.

And if a ferry was not available one had to improvise.

[Leyland Worldmaster]

On 2/27/2023 at 6:18 AM, ETCHY said:

Reminds me of the late lamented John Fishwick & Sons based out of Leyland. They lasted over 100 years. Now sadly gone.

 

A couple of memories of Fishwicks:

[Leyland Worldmaster]

17 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

An old bus has met its end and was dumped as was common in Norway in the past. The ferry stopped and the bus was pushed off and went to the bottom and the ferry continued its journey.

And if a ferry was not available one had to improvise.

Fucking hell! Environmentally conscious* decision! 😱

[Zelandeth]

Apparently there was a particular cliff edge on Shetland which was regularly used for similar purposes for any end of life machinery when my folks lived there in the late 70s.

[Dyslexic Viking]

I am not surprised that this was common in other places as well. Here it was also very common to leave rubbish and vehicles on the ice in the winter, then they disappeared in the spring. A company in the Trondheim area according to rumors dumped many vehicles in the fjord there, buses, trucks, etc. There shud be a graveyard of buses on the bottom in this  area there and this lasted until 1982 if the rumors are true.

[martc]

A Karosa bendy bus at the filling station in Novy Smokovec, Czechoslovakia 1967.

 

 

[Leyland Worldmaster]

Some positive developments:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-64787812.amp

I think I read about this incident here.