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Post by stevieinselby on Jun 6, 2023 19:59:22 GMT 1
What sort of mileage does a conventional diesel bus on the 36 do on an average duty? Would an electric vehicle manage to do the same without needing to come out of service for a recharge? Looking at the tracking for yesterday, and without doing rigorous analysis, it looks like there are some buses that are doing 300–350 miles in a day if they in service continuously from early until late, but others will be doing less if they are not needed for the evening or may not be used as intensively intra-peak.
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Post by stevieinselby on Jun 4, 2023 11:57:32 GMT 1
Unless I'm forgetting any, no scheduled routes got withdrawn for 'YorBus' so at least nobody loses out with it now going. Also if you think rural Calderdale was a bad suggestion be thankful you don't live in Bristol with their new DRT covering most of the outer areas including replacing some routes that used to be operated by Double Deckers That's right, Yorbus completely covered a number of tendered and in-house routes – all the Ripon City services that NYC run using their own minibuses, and the descendants of the Ripon Roweller network and the 144 that Dales & District run either peak-time only or 3 days a week only – and these scheduled routes all continued unchanged (except for the recent S106-funded improvements to the Ripon City services). This was actually quite a smart move from NYC, as while it may have cost more to be running the services in parallel it will have helped them see how people travelled when they had the choice between an infrequent scheduled service or an on-demand service.
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Post by stevieinselby on May 26, 2023 18:25:07 GMT 1
The start of July sees the demise of YorBus. North Yorkshire's demand responsive service around Ripon, Bedale and Masham finishes on 30 June, on the basis that the grant funding has run out and it's ridiculously expensive compared with normal bus routes so NYC are not going to pay for it themselves. Well well well, who would have guessed 🤔 www.northyorks.gov.uk/news/2023/yorbus-pilot-will-shape-future-transport-provision
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Post by stevieinselby on May 8, 2023 17:16:07 GMT 1
From mid May, NYCC have listed the 42 Selby Cawood York service as having additional Saturday journeys from Stillingfleet to York, and an additional late afternoon Saturday working from York to Selby. If Bus Times is right, then TWO of these journeys will mirror an existing journeys between Stillingfleet and York. bustimes.org/services/42-cawood-selby-college?date=2023-05-27I wouldn't have thought that Stillingfleet was big enough to warrant additional journeys, never mind a duplicate service, neither Naburn for that matter. It is primarily for Naburn Lock caravan park. Because of the restrictions on Cawood Bridge, Arriva can only use baby buses (8.9m E200s or Solos). These buses can get pretty busy as they get near to York, especially now the frequency has been dropped to every 2 hours, and there have been problems especially on Saturdays with the bus being full and people being left behind. An extra bus is being put on during the busy spell in the morning, which will provide 3 extra journeys into York – two of them duplicating a service from Selby and then one additional journey in between – to reduce that overcrowding and ensure all passengers can board. The buses start from Stillingfleet because there's nowhere to turn a bus at Naburn Lock, so they will run empty from York down the A19 to Escrick and then across to Stillingfleet where they turn towards York – and so there, once they're on the normal route, they might as well run in service and pick up passengers from Stillingfleet if required, even though that isn't the main aim. The evening peak isn't quite so concentrated, especially with the late night buses running til 2300, and so one extra journey back to Selby at 1750 to give an hourly service at that point should be ample. I believe these extra journeys are funded by the parish councils (but I could be wrong), and the intention is that they will run while Naburn Lock is open, and so may be suspended during January, February and March.
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Post by stevieinselby on May 8, 2023 16:35:07 GMT 1
Since Alex Hornby's departure there has been a noticeable drop in standards. There have been a lot more off brand vehicles running on branded services for one. Keighley seems to have been the worst for it. Shuttle B7RLEs have been spotting running on local services amongst others The complaint for years has been that Keighley would rather cancel a service than run it with a spare Shuttle vehicle. Which is one of the problems with having buses liveried for particular routes or sub-brands. If you don't have enough correctly-liveried buses to run the day's service then you either run a wrongly-liveried bus (bad) or cancel services (really bad). The more different brands you have, and the smaller those brands are, the more likely this is to happen.
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Post by stevieinselby on May 6, 2023 23:25:24 GMT 1
Route branding was a Trandev Blazefield thing way before Alex Hornby arrived - Route 1, 36 and 770 (now 7) at Harrogate for example and for a while the 24 had been branded the Nidderdale Branch. To my mind, there's a difference between applying some extra vinyls to embellish the basic corporate livery and designing a whole new livery that looks nothing like the corporate livery. Splashing a big number 1 on the side of a red bus when all your other buses in the town are red makes it easy to identify what route the bus is on and which company runs it, that's absolutely fine and is good. But that isn't what they do any more. While I'm not the biggest fan of the current liveries for either Arriva or Stagecoach (and I think that in both cases, what they had before was far better), they have got a consistent brand. You see one of their buses, you know it's one of their buses. I am not massively bothered about different Transdev divisions having different liveries, but when within one division there are numerous brands and you can't tell that they are run by the same operator, that's a problem, especially if it's an area where they don't have a monopoly. Go North East is the same, and TrentBarton.
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Post by stevieinselby on May 2, 2023 19:30:47 GMT 1
www.transdevbus.co.uk/keighley/2023fares-keighleyDay Tripper up to £14 now, didn't it start off at £9. Doesn't feel such good value anymore but I suppose you can still get from York/Ripon to Manchester/Preston for £14. That said ever increasing prices for day tickets the greater the geographical area is a bit of a bugbear of mine. Essentially the bus companies are charging a single price for bus seat for about 16 hours. I could take that seat up for the full sixteen hours shuttling between Keighley and Bracken Bank for £3.80, or Skipton and Leeds for £5.70 or from York to Manchester for £14.00. Each days travel would be using exactly the same resources, i.e. one seat for 16 hours so why the huge discrepancy in prices. It's not like a taxi where the driver has to provide additional fuel the further you go, these are all scheduled services which will run anyway, whether the seat is empty or not. Yes, you could spend all day going backwards and forwards between Keighley and Bracken Bank, but in practice very, very few people would do that – most people will be making a small number of short journeys, and so £3.80 is a fair price for what the average person wanting to buy that ticket will do during the day. Bus companies are not going to set fares and tickets based on the 0.1% of passengers who want to spend the day gricing and ignore the 99.9% of passengers who are just going about their daily business.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 28, 2023 10:54:57 GMT 1
My job isn't well paid and has a hefty amount of responsibility, including the prospect of prison should I make a mistake that costs a life, but you see me cutting my cloth to meet my needs not downing tools demanding more pay! If drivers aren't happy I suggest they find better paid work rather than messing everyone around, I'm very sure we can find someone willing to take their place for the wage offered. Bring on the robots, I'd quite happily take a chance on a computerised automated driverless train than put up with this strike crap from a bunch of babies! There are already shortages of train drivers, which suggests that the job is not well paid enough for the level of responsibility and the demands and conditions. If you want train drivers to leave for better-paid jobs then we'll see even more cuts to rail services as TOCs are unable to recruit and retain staff ... or at least, not without significantly improving the pay deal, but that's the free market for you – if you want to have enough drivers then you have to pay drivers enough. Fully driverless trains on the national rail network are a complete non-starter, certainly not in the next 20 years. If your job really does demand a high level of responsibility then I hope you approach it with a better attitude than you show on here.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 26, 2023 20:18:38 GMT 1
Another new development is the reintroduction of a seasonal Sunday service between Garsdale and Hawes and then continuing to Castle Bolton (presumably via Askrigg) – great to see this side of the valley getting a Sunday service, slightly surprised it doesn't serve Redmire for the Wensleydale Railway as well – but no timetable or start date yet.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 23, 2023 22:35:19 GMT 1
With the state of the company at the moment what would be the cheapest option? The cheapest way to increase capacity is to use bigger buses. The cost of buying and running bigger buses is a lot less than the cost of buying and running additional buses and employing additional drivers so that you can run more buses.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 23, 2023 13:25:13 GMT 1
Has anyone seen what Dales & District are using on their new Ripon city services? The publicity talked about new minibuses, but obviously there's nothing tracking because they're still in the stone age (and a week after launch, still haven't got round to putting a timetable on their own website)...
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 15, 2023 12:30:59 GMT 1
This is all Thorpe Park has ever needed - a diversion of services rather than a dedicated one. It is some commitment by Arriva though with the 163 to be diverted at that frequency. Wonder how many extra drivers it'll add to the boards. One extra bus on the route would allow them an additional 7 minutes running time each way, which ought to be enough to run up Century Way and back.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 12, 2023 21:19:33 GMT 1
Not sure on the accuracy of the bustimes info - the RS1 is meant to be serving a new housing development not the middle of nowhere en route to the (closed?) Army Barracks which the listed Chatham Road timing point would imply. Seems reasonable to me. The new housing development is off Clotherholme Road – but it doesn't look like it would be particularly suitable to run a bus through the estate, so running on the road past the estate and then turning round at that crossroads is probably the best option.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 12, 2023 19:25:56 GMT 1
Question is are they going to bother putting any bus stops and timetable cases up - its a dark art in Ripon knowing there is a bus along a road away from Transdevs routes and even more so where it is actually going to stop. There is an old United flag which might be served by the RS1 on the Kirkby Road (Google streetscene link would not work) No point in putting any infrastructure in place, the routes will be a faint memory in 25 months after the S106 funding has run out. They've never bothered with flags for any of the Ripon city services before – although there are registered stops, it appears to run on a hail-and-ride basis, assuming you can divine which roads it runs along, which they won't tell you anywhere – so unlikely they will do anything remotely useful or constructive now.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 12, 2023 19:22:34 GMT 1
NYC are touting it as good news, even though as far as I can see they have got square root of sod all to do with it, it's all developer S106 and the city council who have put the money up for it. Slightly worrying that, according to the article, "Ripon City Council has been working on the plans for five years" ... what have they been doing for 5 years, washing cars at the weekend to raise the money? NYC have excelled themselves today, tweeting about it with #Rippon (sic), and on the linked web page it says "The timetables will be live from Monday next week (17 April)" as though that it is something to be proud of when they've had 6 weeks since the routes were registered to produce timetables before the launch but they just couldn't be bothered.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 12, 2023 12:35:39 GMT 1
Seems that there are some improved local services in Ripon from Sunday although the new North Yorkshire Council isn't that much improved on the old NYCC for information; at least you do not now need to dowload a pdf only to find its not changed. Dales & District are listed along with the council minibus fleet and Saturday journeys are to be introduced. www.northyorks.gov.uk/roads-parking-and-travel/public-transport/bus-service-changes-and-newsRS1 to the western suburbs gets a new route "with additional journeys every half hour" and theire is new RS4 to North Bridge. Those twin bastions of incompetence, North Yorkshire Council and Dales & District, strike again. NYC has only just this week updated its "forthcoming changes" page after a two month wait, less than a week before a raft of changes and after several changes that hadn't been announced in the last update. Neither NYC nor D&D have produced timetables for the new services, but then we would never expect them to actually promote their buses or try to encourage people to use them – fortunately Bustimes has got the gen. - RS1 to Bishopton now run by D&D, increased to hourly Monday to Saturday including peak times (but minus one journey at lunch time) and with an extended route around Bishopton
- RS1 extended beyond the bus station to the new M&S with two journeys per hour, on a 20/40 split
- D&D now running weekday journeys on the RS2 at 0740 and 1735. NYC off-peak timetable unchanged but now also runs on Saturday
- RS3 timetable unchanged but now also runs on Saturday
- New NYC RS4 running three times a day to Ure Bank, Monday to Saturday off-peak
It's all slightly odd, the addition of Saturday journeys is very welcome, but the changes to the RS1 in particular have the whiff of S106 funding to me and I can't see them being maintained beyond that – especially the journey to M&S, which is less than half a mile from the bus station. But because the bus coming in from Bishopton sits and waits in the bus station for 8 minutes before continuing to M&S, and at least as long on the way back, it would be quicker for most people to walk – I really don't see there being any demand for 2 buses per hour between the bus station and M&S! The RS4 looks like it is just filling in time where the bus currently does a loop on the RS1 but won't be needed for that any more.
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 10, 2023 19:01:57 GMT 1
The power units in the Versas are damaged beyond economic repair, one Versa is undergoing trials with a new power supply however that's not guaranteed to work so the rest won't have any work done until a fully tested power unit is approved, be it that or another one. Was that from their previous use on P&R, or because they've been sitting in a shed for two years unused? It doesn't say much for the powertrain if 5 years of fairly light duties was enough to knacker them 😲
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Post by stevieinselby on Apr 10, 2023 18:38:32 GMT 1
York Hospital Park and Ride has been withdrawn on April 1st so the re-opened Poppleton Park and Ride, also introduced on April 1st, could well be using buses previously used on the Hospital Park and Ride, and not some of the Leeds Electric fleet as rumoured. Why would they need to source any additional vehicles, when they've got a dozen electric Versas that have been sitting in James Street doing nothing for the last couple of years? Interestingly, the 59 isn't tracking on bustimes so I don't know what vehicles they have been using!
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 31, 2023 22:14:17 GMT 1
WYIS are reporting today as being the last day of Transdev working the 12 and for tomorrow only it will be worked by York Pullman but using Reliance vehicles. That checks out.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 28, 2023 18:24:58 GMT 1
You need to look at the truth. Hornby started the service commercially, when First withdrew that leg of the X84. That was the wrong decision, so they then had to go cap in hand to the Council for a subsidy. Even that isn't now sufficient, and they now want to cut the service further, which the "Friends of Dales Bus" are rightly criticising. Absolute nonsense. They stepped in to run the 784 (as it was then) in the hope that they could save it and make it viable by running it at a lower operating cost than First had done as the X84. The industry has not recovered as well as hoped and the general economy has fared worse, and so the route remains unprofitable, and needs subsidy to keep it running. If they hadn't stepped in in the first place then the council would have had to fund it for the last 18 months as well as in the future, and for the last 18 months there would have been a worse service on the route. When Transdev decided that the 64 and 72 were not commercially sustainable in the current climate, initially NYCC put in place short-term funding to maintain the existing timetables – it was never their intention to keep this going long-term, as they don't subsidise any service to run more than every 2 hours as a matter of policy. This planned reduction in service is simply the transition from the short-term "oh heck, we need to do something to keep the wheels turning" phase into the long-term planned timetable phase.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 27, 2023 22:57:39 GMT 1
Maybe if the 64 still went Otley and maybe if it replaced the 62 Leeds Bradford Airport it could have picked up more passengers. You mean you want them to reinstate routes that they have already abandoned because they didn't get enough traffic, as a solution to other routes not getting enough traffic? 🤔
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 23, 2023 23:30:36 GMT 1
Rather than attach this to any specific service change period, I thought I'd start a new thread due to launch dates being spread throughout the Spring/Summer. Service 822 from Pocklington via York and Ripon to Pateley Bridge and Grassington will start on May 7th, no timetable available yet. One of the most infrequent services going, service 825, will launch in June running just once a month each way, so god help those who miss it lol! www.dalesbus.org/825.htmlHaving seen the very low number of passengers using it, I'm less surprised that they couldn't justify a weekly service and more surprised that they are bothering at all with one bus a month. It also appears that the KLCH routes – Preston/Lancaster to Richmond via Hawes, and Lancaster to Malham via Settle – have disappeared from the programme, and no indication that KLCH will be running any Sunday service on the 580/581, which is all rather disappointing. Although there is the very good hourly service between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale, that doesn't do a lot for getting people into the Dales when there are no onward connections from there.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 23, 2023 10:21:31 GMT 1
It might be to do with congestion. With roads as they are timetables are becoming fictional however well run the bus company. They might have stats on daily congestion which is fed into scheduling. It is a mess for customers and wil reduce patronage. But maybe it would be worse to try to keep clockface. AS we get more and more cycle lanes and more and more cars buses may be foreced to abandon all routes. see twitter.com/beetrootandpeas Daily congestion is not so predictable that one journey can be timed at 47 minutes and then the journey 17 minutes later at 49 minutes and then the journey 26 minutes later at 48 minutes. It's nonsense.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 22, 2023 23:08:46 GMT 1
If the stop is shared with other services that could be a factor as could how use of a bus station is charged; simply departures or time on stand. They're doing the same in York, where there is no bus station and buses just layover at bus stops on residential roads at each end of the route - see my post up-thread at Mar 6, 2023 at 10:38am - just random intervals and random journey times that make no sense at all.
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Post by stevieinselby on Mar 22, 2023 17:50:47 GMT 1
576 Timetable now on too, pretty much every 20 min at tea time peak! Also, looks as though the 184 arrives in Oldham at xx05, why make it depart at xx19?! Make it xx20. Same with a lot of services now, leaving at random odd minutes. New evening 576 times now leave at xx03/xx33 from Halifax... Why? It is like there is some sort of mission to make timetables as messy as ever and unmemorable. Yes, First are on a mission to make all their timetables as unfriendly and incomprehensible as possible. They've done the same in York, it's absolute garbage what they're coming out with now.
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