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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 5, 2024 20:21:33 GMT 1
Arriva's 42 service due a timetable change this month too. I've just noticed For a guess, that's the reintroduction of the additional Saturday services with Naburn Lock caravan park reopening after its winter shutdown.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 5, 2024 16:57:45 GMT 1
We'll be introducing a brand new timetable on Coastliner - we'll still run every 30 minutes between Leeds, Tadcaster, York and Malton during the day, hourly to Pickering and Thornton-le-Dale and hourly to Scarborough - plus buses every 2 hours to Whitby. Some early morning and evening buses which currently serve Malton will now finish at York, to best reflect the numbers of customers travelling, but we'll now be running an hour later from Malton to York in the evening. Sounds like they're transferring (some) operations to Rawcliffe from Malton, meaning that the lightly loaded services that were effectively positioning moves at the start/end of the day are being dropped. The same old spin though ... "a brand new timetable" that, by the sounds of it, has exactly the same service pattern as the old one, but maybe just a but of extra running time to improve reliability.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 4, 2024 12:57:01 GMT 1
But wasn't the 72 regularly operated on eclipses and during Dalesbus times equivalent services along the route also using doubles (ie Arriva's 875 in 2020) I think it's journeys via Linton that can't - so at the moment just the first and last trips of the day could, but from April they could use bigger buses on alternate journeys. Except that the timetable is designed to be operated by a single bus all day, so they aren't going to want to mess around swapping vehicles on and off the route.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 4, 2024 12:53:36 GMT 1
Without disrupting the quarter hourly frequency between Keighley and Eastburn, the other alternative if Keighley were to be interested would be to link it with the 64 and/or 72 (depending on how they are planning to work it when the frequencies increase) and possibly extend it to Silsden, thereby providing a direct (of sorts) service between Silsden and Skipton. Only issue could be the 78a serving Cononley village which Transdev were previously reluctant to do with big buses, so may need to be Solo or Sprinter operated? I would love to see a regular direct service between Silsden and Skipton, and tacking it onto the 78A is probably the best way of doing it (even if it does make for a much longer journey between the two), you should be able to do a round trip in 2 hours, and it would improve links between Silsden and Airedale Hospital as well. Transdev used to use a mini Dart on the 78A, so I'm sure that there wouldn't be any problem using a Solo or a Strata on it (and unlikely that there would be the demand to justify anything bigger), and they've got plenty of those in Keighley so it isn't as though it would be an odd-one-out. But wasn't the 72 regularly operated on eclipses and during Dalesbus times equivalent services along the route also using doubles (ie Arriva's 875 in 2020) The 72 usually has an Eclipse on Sundays, when it sticks to the main road – the rest of the week it runs through Hetton and Linton, and you'd struggle to get an Eclipse round those roads. Likewise, double-deckers on Sunday stick to the main roads and don't go under the low bridges on the side roads. When Transdev first took over the 72, they were often using an older Versa (which I think was a smaller model), which obviously could fit down those roads, but they decided it wasn't the ideal fit for the route.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 3, 2024 21:33:04 GMT 1
It probably doesn't help that the 78A timetables are written by the council so Transdev can't do what they used to, continuing the service to Keighley commercially and taking rest breaks there. Once Transdev lost the 78A they rescheduled the M4 to cover the section between Airedale and Keighley. I don't think there's many other bidders in the area. When Transdev/Blazefield ran the 78A, some journeys were subsidised by NYCC but others ran commercially. I'm sure if they wanted to return to that arrangement and put in a bid that was cheaper than NYCC Fleet's own bid then the council would give it due consideration. Their main aim when awarding tenders appears to be to spend as little money as possible, so if Transdev were to propose an alternative timetable that worked out cheaper then I am sure they would take it. There are plenty of examples of councils/PTEs accepting substandard timetables because it allowed the operator to do it on the cheap – the Connexions services in Wharfedale being Exhibit A! With the 78A only running every hour at best (in ye oldene dayes) and more likely every 2 hours, it doesn't contribute much to the combined effort between Cross Hills, Airedale and Keighley, not when Transdev are running the 66, M4 and 62 commercially and covering it much better! The other operator in the area most likely to bid for the route could be Jacksons, but they seem to have given up on everything these days.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 3, 2024 11:44:13 GMT 1
The interesting thing is however with North Yorkshire Council throwing out to tender it's in house routes in the Hambleton/Richmond area, are they tendering all their in house routes over the next few months? Is the plan to save money by fully axing it's social transport department as it seems a strange move considering how much it's expanded it's public service network over the past few years. Pretty much all of NYCC's bus services are geared around using buses/drivers that would otherwise be sitting idle during the day between school journeys. The only ones that I can see where they actually have diagrams dedicated to public service buses are the 71/78A between Skipton and Airedale, and the 492 between Sherburn, Tadcaster and Wetherby. It may be that they are changing the way they provide this school transport in Hambleton and so it is no longer cost-effective to run the daytime buses themselves. Either way, replacing non-accessible minibuses with actual buses run by an actual bus company can only be a good thing for passengers, especially if it results in a better timetable on a route so dismally underserved as the 155.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 2, 2024 22:15:01 GMT 1
The thing is though Dales and District have lost yet more work, so I wonder if they are bidding high in the hope of gaining the contract based on them being located right in the operating area for Dales contracts, where as everyone else is located well outside of the area? About 10 years ago, Dales & District had about PVR of over 20 buses – and since then, they have been on a slow, steady, apparently inexorable decline. I think the only new service they've taken on in that time is the recent RS1 around Ripon which started its improved timetable last year. With the loss of the 159 then by my reckoning they're down to a PVR of 3 (not counting any school contracts) - one for the 73, one for the RS1 and one for the 136/138/139/144, and one out on Sundays on the 856. How much longer will they keep going before they throw the towel in?
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 29, 2024 23:52:22 GMT 1
The impression I get is if Arriva or First cancelled 52 services in one day, people would be up in arms about it, but Transdev seem to get a free pass. Transdev has more resources than an independent bus company does. Do we have any reason to believe that other operators don't cancel that many journeys? I've just looked at the tracking data for First York from yesterday, as a random sample, and according to the data on Bustimes (which I am well aware may not be completely accurate) there were 46 journeys that don't appear to have run. And that's just on one random day, not specifically looking for bad news. The difference is that where Transdev are up front about it, most other operators just keep schtum, so it's much harder to know the scale of the cancellations.
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 29, 2024 15:56:56 GMT 1
could the lack of Lancaster to Settle be due to the return of Dales-rail this year which is pitched as linking those two areas. No. The Northern Dalesman from Lancaster didn't run last year because the DalesRail was cancelled, meaning that there were no DR passengers connecting with the bus at Ribblehead for Hawes and Swaledale. The DalesRail service that is being reinstated this year runs from Rochdale and Manchester, not Lancaster (it has never run from Lancaster AFAIK!), and is running on Saturday rather than Sunday ... so there won't be DR passengers connecting with the 830 if it does run. Yes, there is the Bentham Line getting passengers from Lancaster to Giggleswick (for Settle), but in terms of linking with Dalesbus it just doesn't offer any real opportunity to explore the Dales. There are no other connections in any direction from Settle, no way to get to Ingleton other than coming from Hawes, and the first train is too late into Skipton for any useful Dalesbus connections. It's a shame that the much improved Sunday service on the 80/81 between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale that LCC have paid for is basically a dead-end, when there ought to be so much potential for it to be a gateway.
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 28, 2024 23:08:08 GMT 1
Good to see that the 820 has been retained this year, but disappointing that the two Lancaster routes aren't coming back, so there's no Sunday service to Settle at all unless we get a surprise announcement about the 580/581. Also suggests that the 825 has bitten the dust, although not a surprise after the minimal service it has had previously. And unsurprising that the 876 has been shortened, as it ran pretty much empty between York and Leeds last year. One big plus is that the summer season for the 820/821, 822 and 874/875/876 starts on Easter Sunday and runs through to the start of October half-term this year, rather than the mess we saw last year when the 822 was designed around providing connections with other routes all of which had different start or end dates – so we get a longer season and it's consistent across the group of routes. (I was on the 864 a couple of weeks ago and it was packed! Every seat taken from Skipton up to Malham. Hard to believe that AFAIK it's the first time in more than 20 years that the route has had a winter Sunday service. Certainly seems to be justified)
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 27, 2024 21:37:16 GMT 1
8 - new operator, not Transdev - "21 transport" Regarding the 8, bloody hell! 21 Transport as far as I know are a social care transport provider based in Goole![/quote] (Ironic that "21 Transport" is taking over the 8 and not the 21 😎) They already run school buses in the Harrogate area so I assume it will use one of those vehicles, the 8 is timed to work around school journeys already. 616H to Harrogate Grammar and Rossett High 620H to Rossett High 670H to Harrogate High 680H to New Park Primary They run school contracts as far afield as Nidderdale, Wensleydale and Ryedale, so they either have a lot of dead mileage or they have several outstations or subcontractors.
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 19, 2024 10:12:31 GMT 1
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a service with a 9-minute frequency before! In London, pick pretty much any number you like between 4 and 20 and there's a bus somewhere running at that frequency...
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 11, 2024 14:04:23 GMT 1
I wonder what York will do when it goes fully electric as it's not good when a power cut renders buses useless with loans having to be drafted in from all over the place. At least with Leeds there is another depot close by to charge buses at but with York it's a 48 mile round trip using the A64 and roads through East Leeds to Hunslet. I think York need to re-think the overall objective and just have half the buses electric with the rest diesel including keeping the bendi buses as well because they come in handy for YCFC matches, for when major events are on etc. To give an example, it took 2 hours to fully clear the queue after one recent Saturday match up at the Vanguard Park and Ride stop, if you had at least 2 bendi buses running on the 9 that time would have been significantly reduced. How often do we get power cuts that last so long through the night that there wouldn't be enough charge in the buses? It isn't like they are trolleybuses that need to be constantly connected, an outage for an hour or two – especially if it's during the day while most of the buses are out on the road – will have a dozen more severe effects on the road network and public transport system than electric buses not charging. Plenty of operators with large numbers of electric buses are continuing to buy more, so they are clearly not having any regrets about it. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of even First York to put extra buses on the 9 when there's a big match on, double deckers would easily clear the queue if they had a couple of extra ones running.
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 5, 2024 21:19:49 GMT 1
It was suggested a few months ago on the RailUK Forum depending how the tendered results went then most of Coastliner would move to York with Malton becoming an outstation with a couple of buses for the Whitby runs. Service 20 seems to be remaining with Transdev as well. If all Coastliner services were moved to the York depot then I can see a lot of the 843 journeys that run to/from Malton being culled. All 8 of the departures from Leeds after 5pm run through to Malton and terminate with the bus then going straight to bed. How many of those journeys will continue beyond York if they then have to run empty back to York afterwards? My guess would be no more than one or two, basically the end of evening buses to Malton. Likewise morning journeys from Malton towards Leeds departing before 0745 on weekdays, or 0900 on Saturday, come straight from the depot so it's hard to see that there would be enough demand for many of them to continue running if they have to add dead mileage on as well. But going the other way, the first 3 journeys to Scarborough start straight from the depot in Malton but would now need to add dead or little-used mileage from York or the first journey(s) in and out of Scarborough would face cancellation. It strikes me that moving Coastliner operations to York would make the operation less efficient, and would see a lot of marginal services at the start and end of the day removed.
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Post by stevieinselby on Feb 4, 2024 0:01:48 GMT 1
WYIS are reporting that in April East Yorkshire (Pocklington depot) are to take on the 22/23 York-Ripon-Knaresborough, 181 (Castleline) York-Castle Howard-Malton and 194 Malton-Hoveringham from Transdev Interesting ... Go-Ahead are certainly trying to expand the company! There's going to be quite a bit of dead mileage on the 22/23, I wonder if the focus of the route will change at all to see more diagrams starting/ending in York.
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 29, 2024 13:46:18 GMT 1
Unless TfGM, or their contracted operators, are buying vehicles from Transdev at book value as a separate deal then when the franchise comes in all the vehicles currently at Rochdale become free to cascade. Diamond sold their depot & fleet (or at least a substantial number of vehicles) at Bolton to TfGM for use by the replacement operator, Stagecoach didn't appear to sell any vehicles (not sure of the status of the depot as to whether owned or leased but there was no big announcement so I assume it was a lease that transferred) whilst Arriva did neither and cascaded their fleet out immediately - the lack of Stagecoach & Arriva vehicles does explain the vehicle issues and all the loans and cascades GNW had to bring in as that is a big shortfall on day one. As there is no compensatory arrangement in the franchising system (i.e: TfGM aren't buying businesses at market rate & then contracting out, they are just removing the right to run buses from existing operators and tendering replacement services) there can be no obligation on the old operator to hand over any assets they don't want to or leave anything in Manchester after the last day of commercial operation. With Transdev having about a dozen Renowns and two dozen Presidents that urgently need replacing, as well as several other vehicles that are rapidly approaching retirement age, it probably makes a lot of sense for them to keep hold of the buses they have in Rochdale and cascade them – likewise I'm sure Arriva and Stagecoach will easily be able to find good homes for any vehicles surplus to requirements elsewhere in their fleet – whereas perhaps Diamond didn't have an obvious destination for the buses they no longer needed and so selling them to the new Bee operator would have been a good call (and may have got them some brownie points with TfGM into the bargain!)
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 26, 2024 14:42:45 GMT 1
It seems like they are snapping up companies that have opportunities to profit from things other than normal bus services. Ensign, and their reselling of vehicles, and it seems a focus on coaches as seen in Aberdeen and Cornwall If they've done what they have with Ensign, and let the company run relatively as normal without much interference, hopefully it shouldn't start to decline? Possibly. I'd forgotten they had bought Ensign and kept it running as a separate company. Given how they seem to be trying to distance many of their bus companies from the First brand, it probably makes sense that they are not trying to subsume it into an existing operation.
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 26, 2024 12:36:45 GMT 1
This seems like a really odd move. There is pretty much no overlap between the worlds of York Pullman and First York.
York Pullman - a handful of minor subsidised village buses - lots of school and college contracts - Moorsbus and Dalesbus routes - private hire coaches - good working relationship with other independents
First York - major city buses only, no rural routes at all and very few contracts (mostly add-ons to commercial services) - no school or college buses as far as I can see - they did one year of Dalesbus and that's it - no private hire as far as I can see - no evidence of working relationship with other operators
I can see the Pullman brand going downhill rapidly from here.
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 22, 2024 23:57:54 GMT 1
The original excuse of blaming the weather is looking a bit embarrassing now. It's entirely possible that the bad weather was the straw that broke the bus station's back, and that until the storm gave it a battering it was holding together OK (albeit not safe, but they didn't know it at the time). So not wrong to say that the problems were caused by the weather, but not necessarily the full story either.
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 21, 2024 20:47:30 GMT 1
Can anybody explain what this is all about? M-T times are exactly the same as the FO ones? Just typical computer generated garbage that no human has cast an eye over. Arriva often do the same with schooldays and school holidays, post timetables with separate journeys shown for the two periods but with identical times throughout. Doing it different for Friday compared to the rest of the week is a (ahem) First for me!
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Post by stevieinselby on Jan 10, 2024 18:34:12 GMT 1
First York are making some changes to the Park & Ride network from 28 January: www.firstbus.co.uk/york/routes-and-maps/york-park-ride/park-ride-changes-28th-janThe 2 (Rawcliffe Bar) will now run via Bootham in both directions, calling at Theatre Royal (inbound), looping round the Station Road gyratory and then resuming its current route back out. The 59 (Poppleton Bar) will now run via Water End and Leeman Road (for NRM) in both directions, with the city centre route unchanged. This is because the diesel artics currently used on the 2 need to be replaced, but single deckers would be insufficient for the number of people using that route, so to allow double deckers to run it then it has to avoid Leeman Road. The 59 is changing so as to maintain a P&R service to the railway museum.
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Post by stevieinselby on Dec 19, 2023 20:07:12 GMT 1
The Stephensons website was revived back in 2018 with "We're part of the York Pullman Bus Company Group" on it, so it isn't exactly news 😂
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Post by stevieinselby on Dec 1, 2023 19:14:30 GMT 1
Surprising to see Arriva E200 1066 on the 42 in York yesterday – I thought only Solos and baby E200s were allowed on Cawood Bridge, and the full-size E200s were overweight.
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Post by stevieinselby on Dec 1, 2023 15:12:37 GMT 1
The first registrations for January have now appeared with a timetable change for service 42 Selby to York registered alongside a variation (nothing else mentioned) for A&A's service 30 Horsforth to Pudsey route. Could the 30 variation mean the 9 tender has been altered? I wonder if the variation for the 42 will be a cessation of the additional Saturday morning journeys to York while Naburn Caravan Park is closed for the winter, as that was the rationale for putting them on.
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Post by stevieinselby on Nov 26, 2023 19:08:34 GMT 1
I'm led to believe the Nova 3/class 68 trainset's are now only used on the Scarborough-Manchester Piccadilly service (albeit sporadically) prior to withdrawal very shortly. If indeed that is the case, could i ask what the replacement trains will be on that service. Will it be the 802's or "doubled up" 185's ? I think more likely 185s, if necessary doubled up, as plans to withdraw 22 of them have been shelved. TransPennine have 19 class 802s, and the current timetable only requires 12 in service. That should give some scope for allowing them to be used on the Scarborough route, meaning that the 185s can run doubled up on the Teesside, Hull and Humberside routes. Although thinking about it, it might make more sense to prioritise Teesside or Hull for the 802s, because they could make some use of electric power – either from Northallerton to York then Manchester to Airport, or Manchester to Liverpool – although unlikely that there would be enough 802s to run all trains on either of those routes, whereas the more limited through services from Scarborough means fewer trains are needed there.
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