ratty
Forum Member
Orange,Green and Cream Best livery ever
Posts: 636
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Post by ratty on Jul 13, 2012 9:38:48 GMT 1
Thats an interesting little line dropped in to the discussion, two words, QUALITY CONTRACTS. The two great schemes that the PTE are putting forward with immense vigour at the moment.Hmmm. Whilst we appear to be similar minded I still can't see it being a raging success without a hell of a lot of construction work to make segregated rights of way and installation of the electrical parphenalia. On the cost question, it probably will land up, half way house, between guided bus way and tramway in costs to the project. However, although for the greater good, the costs will not of course include the huge invisible cost caused by the construction of the system, the daily gridlocks/diversions etc. Finally, from what I believe (correct if I'm wrong), it is just this route that the PTE is putting forward, with no hint of further extensions. I find that fairly surprising, and gives to me the big hint that the PTE like somebody earlier said, were hell bent on getting a trolleybus system in, come what may. Yes this service will cover 'university land', and a good bit of in dustry in the southern suburbs, as well as part of the Middleton/Belle Isle area, there are other areas of Leeds which are crying out for a similar project but seem to fail to get a thought. For pitys sake, even in Blackpool, points have been installed at Talbot Square for future expansion up Talbot Road to Blackpool North station. So surely the 'big guns' in West Yorkshire have some sort of proposal.
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Post by timelesstable on Jan 15, 2013 23:05:31 GMT 1
Transport chiefs behind Leeds' planned trolleybus system say it may increase congestion in parts of the city. Costing £250m, the New Generation Transport (NGT) network will link park and ride sites at the north and south edge of Leeds with the city centre Full story www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-21029646 and also featured on the late version of tonights Look North
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Post by pontecarlo on Jan 29, 2013 10:40:02 GMT 1
It does seem bizarre that decades later we are going back to Trolleybuses!
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Post by www.buseireann.ie on Jan 29, 2013 12:54:14 GMT 1
Here's what I don't understand, why have a stop on Balm Road, the only time it'll be fully used is after Mecca Bingo sessions, and even then most people go to places in south Leeds rather than into town and go by taxi! it's such a low used stop generally, it hasn't got a shelter it's so unused, the number of people what use both stops on either side of Balm Road only amounts to a handful per hour if that!
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Post by timelesstable on Jul 2, 2013 6:40:21 GMT 1
Proposals for Leeds to become the first UK city to get a modern trolleybus system are a step closer after outline plans were approved by councillors. The £250m scheme would see an eight mile (13km) link built from the city centre to park-and-ride sites in the north and south of Leeds. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-23129739
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Post by timelesstable on Sept 19, 2013 13:20:09 GMT 1
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Post by timelesstable on Oct 16, 2013 7:07:31 GMT 1
So come on, own up, who is responsible for building up their very own collection of NGT weatherproof notices. Taken from the metro web site: Seventy per-cent of Headingley notices vandalised. Around seventy per-cent of legally-required notices about the New Generation Transport (NGT) trolleybus scheme posted in Headingley have been vandalised. The notices, which tell people how they can have their say in the Transport & Works Act Order (TWAO) submission process, are repeatedly being defaced with slogans about the scheme or removed. travelwestyorks.proboards.com/thread/3549/leeds-trolleybus-comeback-scheme-approved?page=2
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Post by Kenton Schweppes on Oct 28, 2013 20:33:31 GMT 1
Really don't see the point in these trolley things, they might as well spend the money on improving current bus services than spending loads of brass on these white elephants. Everyone else gets trams and we get trolley buses, well done Metro, you couldn't make it up. I'd rather the money be spent on other more worthwhile transport projects.
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Post by westyorkshirebus on Oct 28, 2013 20:40:28 GMT 1
Hardly well done Metro. The Leeds Supertram was cancelled by central government. Trolley buses is the next best thing, 'improving current bus services' is too wishy washy to be awarded funding.
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Post by Kenton Schweppes on Oct 28, 2013 20:54:34 GMT 1
Hardly well done Metro. The Leeds Supertram was cancelled by central government. Trolley buses is the next best thing, 'improving current bus services' is too wishy washy to be awarded funding. But better value for money......Metro pursued the trolley bus project, why? Like I said every else gets trams and we get trolley buses. Just think the money could be spent better, people said QC's were a vanity project but this one is the vainest of all vanity projects.
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Post by deerfold on Oct 29, 2013 5:25:02 GMT 1
So where would you spend the money (in a way that Metro are legally allowed to) - and do you think they'd have got funding from Central Government for it?
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Post by Kenton Schweppes on Oct 29, 2013 19:58:03 GMT 1
So where would you spend the money (in a way that Metro are legally allowed to) - and do you think they'd have got funding from Central Government for it? Its a bit of a poor doo if we have to come up with trolley buses to get some funding from central government just to get some funding for transport in West Yorkshire, 'let waste some milllions of pounds on something that isn't really good value for money, just cos we can, its ok we've had the green light from Westminster' jesus. As I said just actually improving the current services would be better value for money, it wouldn't have cost as much either. What have trolley buses got over normal buses that makes em so desirable?
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Post by dwarfer1979 on Oct 30, 2013 9:08:22 GMT 1
So where would you spend the money (in a way that Metro are legally allowed to) - and do you think they'd have got funding from Central Government for it? Just as an example, better bus priority and/or Guided Busway schemes that will benefit locations away from the places a single service may go through. Better Bus Area or Quality Partnerships, for which funding is available from the government and for a BBA scheme Metro would also receive the BSOG currently paid to operators (and something all the major operators currently in West Yorkshire appear to be in favour of), have been successfully implemented in Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham & Nottingham amongst others. These would allow Metro to offer benefits to a much wider range of places in West Yorkshire, do attract additional Central Government funding and with a BBA offer on-going financial input through the BSOG regime. I'm not against the idea of trolleybuses per se, as an industry we do need to look at ways of powering our vehicles that doesn't rely on fossil fuels and trolleybuses is a viable current technology that works well on busy corridors, but this scheme was designed for a tram and ignores the inherent advantages of a bus - that it can go beyond a core priority corridor to link more places without major infrastructure works. If Metro worked with the existing operators to upgrade the busy routes along the corridor as a whole using the off-road section to speed up journeys to make them competitive with the car, as would happen with a conventionally powered guided busway, which would offer more benefits to more areas for little extra money whilst still allowing them to have their headline grabbing 'wizzy bits', new Park & Ride sites & all the rest on top of a more rounded offering that improves services for more people and makes a bigger dent on the air quality in the city. A trolleybus shouldn't been seen as simply a cheaper tram but a form of better bus and design a scheme around the advantages of a bus not the limitations of a fixed rail system.
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Post by deerfold on Oct 31, 2013 20:11:09 GMT 1
So where would you spend the money (in a way that Metro are legally allowed to) - and do you think they'd have got funding from Central Government for it? Its a bit of a poor doo if we have to come up with trolley buses to get some funding from central government just to get some funding for transport in West Yorkshire, 'let waste some milllions of pounds on something that isn't really good value for money, just cos we can, its ok we've had the green light from Westminster' jesus. As I said just actually improving the current services would be better value for money, it wouldn't have cost as much either. What have trolley buses got over normal buses that makes em so desirable? But you're missing the legal framework that Metro have to work in - they can't just spend money "improving the current services" as these are run by private operators - it;s also somewhat wooly so I don't know what sort of improvements you want - frequency/vehicle improvements? Bus lanes/busways? I don't think the way buses are run outside London is particularly good. I don't think the tram's ideal - it is a bit of a poor do that we can't do what we were told we could at one point, but probably better than canning it.
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Post by timelesstable on Jan 9, 2014 20:38:47 GMT 1
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Steve Macz403
Forum Member
Waits at the bus stop for his bus, 2 days later bus turns up :D
Posts: 1,678
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Post by Steve Macz403 on Jan 12, 2014 2:21:40 GMT 1
It did seem like more money was spent on planning and providing consultancies for feedback. I gave some feedback back in 2008 when NGT was announced. My feedback was that the East Leeds route should have at least catered to run its full original Supertram route, rather than just Leeds - st James. Which is in walkable distance for most people too. It's no wonder why DFT didn't approve the east NGT route.
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Post by rwilkes on Feb 11, 2014 10:26:43 GMT 1
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Post by Kenton Schweppes on Feb 11, 2014 18:46:08 GMT 1
Well, its not rocket science in all honesty is it?
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SF07
Forum Member
Posts: 3,216
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Post by SF07 on Feb 11, 2014 20:31:09 GMT 1
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Post by clifton on Feb 11, 2014 21:29:24 GMT 1
No surprise Metro not liking the First scheme, giving it 2 out of 10 - see link below.. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-26136794Metro seem more obsessed with ploughing on building their own empire, while spending a fortune of our money in the process. They are on the same planet as Nexus which appears to be a different one to most other people.
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kendall17
Forum Member
Justice for the 96!
Posts: 4,514
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Post by kendall17 on Feb 12, 2014 11:45:35 GMT 1
Rolls eyes at that response from James Lewis.. I'd like to see First screw Metro over, refuse to operate the trolleybus & bring in their borismasters & cashless payment systems - unlikely, i know.
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Post by deerfold on Feb 13, 2014 13:23:14 GMT 1
Well First aren't going to do it without public money. The bus pictured appears to be a photoshopped New Bus for London - so popular that TfL have had to buy them and lease them to operators as no-one was willing to buy them themselves (including, at the time, First).
Cashless payment systems are coming anyway.
I'm certainly hoping it won'r be First running the trolleybuses.
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Post by westyorkshirebus on Feb 13, 2014 18:15:14 GMT 1
Well there is nothing stopping First doing all these innovations anyway, they only suggesting them to try and get public money and to stop the trolley bus which may end up not operated by them and/or without them retaining the same % of revenue.
A similar grand promise was made ahead of the launch of the ftr and look how long it took for them to lose interest in that.
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Post by dwarfer1979 on Feb 14, 2014 9:53:31 GMT 1
Well there is nothing stopping First doing all these innovations anyway, they only suggesting them to try and get public money and to stop the trolley bus which may end up not operated by them and/or without them retaining the same % of revenue. A similar grand promise was made ahead of the launch of the ftr and look how long it took for them to lose interest in that. Whilst First under Moir Lockheed did have a tendancy to launch big and then lose interest after a while, the problem with the FTR was that, Swansea aside, it was never implemented as it was designed and so was never able to stand out as intended. The FTR concept was essentially a cheaper way of delivering a BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) scheme without it looking like it was being done that much on the cheap but to work properly it required buy-in from the local authority to provide bus priority measures. York made some road modifications but no real increase in existing priority and when political control of the authority changed the support disappeared and the vehicles had to be moved on, the Leeds scheme also had no parallel investment and was essentially First trying to find some work for vehicles it had bought as they could find only one council willing to work with them. Swansea had full buy in from the local council with extensive new priority measures being introduced and they seem to working well there. To make the sort of difference First are talking about it requires the introduction of extensive bus priority and associated schemes to make the difference and as bus operators don't own or control the road network on which they operate it requires support and buy in from Local Authorities, without the buy in and partnership between operators & authorities there is no commercial basis for investing in special and expensive vehicles - some bits will appear in other forms as part of lesser schemes to suit a different environment but a big investment needs some chance of returns that without big priority schemes is always going to struggle (they may get to a similar place but in a slower & steadier approach over a longer time frame which won't achieve the local authorities goals in the same way). The point that First are making is that for the extra cost of the peripheral trolleybus bits you could extend the concept across a much wider network using hybrid vehicles and that First would be willing to commercially invest in a much higher standard of vehicle as part of such a partnership route. There is also a question over the long term worth of a trolleybus system with all the wires and associated infrastructure, particularly when you take into account the expected in service date of this scheme and the recent advances in hybrid, full electric & fuel cell vehicles that are starting to appear. Optare have delivered a number of full electric vehicles and Nottingham will soon have a very large fleet running on various urban cycles, Wrightbus are beginning a full route conversion of electric buses with non-contact charging that offers the real possibility of realistic battery electric buses for normal urban services (as are Volvo in a couple of places on the continent), there is an EU scheme to trial a number of ways of achieving sustainable electric bus operation which includes ADL amongst a number of other major manufacturers & cities, in London BYD have supplied a pair of full-size electric single-deckers that in service elsewhere are offering ranges that indicate real possibilities for normal urban bus cycles & the manufacturer is talking about being able to supply electric double-deckers in the near future and there are on-going, and larger scale, trials with various fuel-cell vehicle power options. The problem with the trolleybus scheme is that it is a dedicated trolleybus scheme and so limited in the area it can serve, the basic priority and infrastructure works are a good idea but if it was based instead on less restricted vehicles it could then serve a much wider area of Leeds and with the reduced costs of not needing to 'string the knitting' they could add further corridors to the scheme. The problem with the NBfL which is limiting its appeal and forcing TfL to buy them itself is two fold. Firstly it is a politically driven vehicle which raises the questions over what happens if someone else gets into power, operators & leasing companies were burnt once with the artics and a political change essentially seeing vehicles withdrawn early (often in the middle of contracts) leaving them with a large fleet of specialist vehicles that have a limited appeal on the open market leading to big losses to these companies as they write off expensive assets from their balance sheet as they can't sell them all to provincial operators. The second issue, and the reason why the NBfL will have a limited appeal on the open market either new or second hand at the end of its London life, is that it is a big (these things are longer than most deckers in the country at over 11metres), complicated (hybrid and everything else) & expensive (50% more than a standard double-decker) which means they offer little to justify their purchase over conventional vehicles - on the secondhand market most deckers are bought by independents for school work often in less urban areas, they won't want the complication of hybrids or pay the extra that these vehicles may cost and with multiple exits and stairways they are less suitable for carrying school kids (even if they can get enough seats in to make them more suitable to their length for the contracts). It may offer some opportunity as a headline vehicle for major infrastructure schemes such as First are talking about, the problem is the only authorities with the money to consider it apparently (WY & Tyne & Wear PTEs it seems, none of the shire counties have enough money to support their existing networks let alone waste on vanity projects) are tied into political agendas and their own schemes and don't appear interested in other ideas.
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Post by Arriva Wakefield on Feb 14, 2014 10:56:59 GMT 1
Well there is nothing stopping First doing all these innovations anyway, they only suggesting them to try and get public money and to stop the trolley bus which may end up not operated by them and/or without them retaining the same % of revenue. A similar grand promise was made ahead of the launch of the ftr and look how long it took for them to lose interest in that. Whilst First under Moir Lockheed did have a tendancy to launch big and then lose interest after a while, the problem with the FTR was that, Swansea aside, it was never implemented as it was designed and so was never able to stand out as intended. The FTR concept was essentially a cheaper way of delivering a BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) scheme without it looking like it was being done that much on the cheap but to work properly it required buy-in from the local authority to provide bus priority measures. York made some road modifications but no real increase in existing priority and when political control of the authority changed the support disappeared and the vehicles had to be moved on, the Leeds scheme also had no parallel investment and was essentially First trying to find some work for vehicles it had bought as they could find only one council willing to work with them. Swansea had full buy in from the local council with extensive new priority measures being introduced and they seem to working well there. To make the sort of difference First are talking about it requires the introduction of extensive bus priority and associated schemes to make the difference and as bus operators don't own or control the road network on which they operate it requires support and buy in from Local Authorities, without the buy in and partnership between operators & authorities there is no commercial basis for investing in special and expensive vehicles - some bits will appear in other forms as part of lesser schemes to suit a different environment but a big investment needs some chance of returns that without big priority schemes is always going to struggle (they may get to a similar place but in a slower & steadier approach over a longer time frame which won't achieve the local authorities goals in the same way). The point that First are making is that for the extra cost of the peripheral trolleybus bits you could extend the concept across a much wider network using hybrid vehicles and that First would be willing to commercially invest in a much higher standard of vehicle as part of such a partnership route. There is also a question over the long term worth of a trolleybus system with all the wires and associated infrastructure, particularly when you take into account the expected in service date of this scheme and the recent advances in hybrid, full electric & fuel cell vehicles that are starting to appear. Optare have delivered a number of full electric vehicles and Nottingham will soon have a very large fleet running on various urban cycles, Wrightbus are beginning a full route conversion of electric buses with non-contact charging that offers the real possibility of realistic battery electric buses for normal urban services (as are Volvo in a couple of places on the continent), there is an EU scheme to trial a number of ways of achieving sustainable electric bus operation which includes ADL amongst a number of other major manufacturers & cities, in London BYD have supplied a pair of full-size electric single-deckers that in service elsewhere are offering ranges that indicate real possibilities for normal urban bus cycles & the manufacturer is talking about being able to supply electric double-deckers in the near future and there are on-going, and larger scale, trials with various fuel-cell vehicle power options. The problem with the trolleybus scheme is that it is a dedicated trolleybus scheme and so limited in the area it can serve, the basic priority and infrastructure works are a good idea but if it was based instead on less restricted vehicles it could then serve a much wider area of Leeds and with the reduced costs of not needing to 'string the knitting' they could add further corridors to the scheme. The problem with the NBfL which is limiting its appeal and forcing TfL to buy them itself is two fold. Firstly it is a politically driven vehicle which raises the questions over what happens if someone else gets into power, operators & leasing companies were burnt once with the artics and a political change essentially seeing vehicles withdrawn early (often in the middle of contracts) leaving them with a large fleet of specialist vehicles that have a limited appeal on the open market leading to big losses to these companies as they write off expensive assets from their balance sheet as they can't sell them all to provincial operators. The second issue, and the reason why the NBfL will have a limited appeal on the open market either new or second hand at the end of its London life, is that it is a big (these things are longer than most deckers in the country at over 11metres), complicated (hybrid and everything else) & expensive (50% more than a standard double-decker) which means they offer little to justify their purchase over conventional vehicles - on the secondhand market most deckers are bought by independents for school work often in less urban areas, they won't want the complication of hybrids or pay the extra that these vehicles may cost and with multiple exits and stairways they are less suitable for carrying school kids (even if they can get enough seats in to make them more suitable to their length for the contracts). It may offer some opportunity as a headline vehicle for major infrastructure schemes such as First are talking about, the problem is the only authorities with the money to consider it apparently (WY & Tyne & Wear PTEs it seems, none of the shire counties have enough money to support their existing networks let alone waste on vanity projects) are tied into political agendas and their own schemes and don't appear interested in other ideas. Assuming the current weather is not a one off event, how would a trolleybus system cope with wires coming down on a regular basis - if we look to the ECML which has much more heavy duty equipment, and yet still has frequent problems with wind etc - not very well!!
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