People are complaining to Stagecoach directly about the capacity.
Someone called Ross Stafford, Asst Ops Manager gave this reply:
Quote:Our internal monitoring of services has previously highlighted
punctuality issues for our Service 20 (which does have a knock
on effect to Service 21 at times) which has shown bunching of
services. In a bid to address this we have registered a service
change with effect 9th October 2011. We are confident that this
will see an improvement in the punctuality of services which in
turn should see a better distribution of customers across our
operating vehicles.
We will continue to monitor passenger numbers and if there are
still issues after the service change I will raise these with
our Operations Director Mr Burton.
Stagecoach know they have problems, but seem to believe it is related to poor timekeeping and "bunching".
Stagecoach should rightly be commended for updating an ancient fleet of buses after the takeover in a very quick amount of time. I don't want to get involved or start a decker debate again and I understand the business issue. However, this was started with the BLE's getting withdrawn for more darts, don't forget that when we got the MANS we lost a large number of darts to Wales and that gave the impression that Stagecoach had partly grasped the capacity issue, but have now taken a seemingly backward step.
The fact is that for certain corridors a constant supply of darts does not work as people will be standing on cramped vehicles or getting left behind, the replacement of the BLE's with darts is wholly inadequate and if the replacement darts are are just a stopgap then there really is no point. The BLE's were good workhorses and good full-sized buses with plenty of life left in them and really should be left in service until adequate replacements are found, darts are not adequate replacements.
Oh wow, so I make a point that shoots a certain moderators arguement right out the water, and it gets deleted.
Just proves my point, doesn't it.
I say again - there are no spare low floor deckers for Merseyside to have, and the cost of conversion of a London example is more than the vehicle is worth.
(23/10/2012 11:00)mbonwick Wrote: [ -> ]Oh wow, so I make a point that shoots a certain moderators arguement right out the water, and it gets deleted.
Just proves my point, doesn't it.
I say again - there are no spare low floor deckers for Merseyside to have, and the cost of conversion of a London example is more than the vehicle is worth.
They then should buy some new ones. Might have a high initial cost, but like nearly all buses, they pay for themselves in due course.
I would bet that even if Merseyside did get deckers from Stagecoach, they would be given cast offs from other regions (that get the new ones!)
The Darts aren't new anymore. I imagine they have probably paid for themselves by now too. Stagecoach are going to have to buy new vehicles by 2015, because AFAIK, isn't there a 10 year rule on the 14/86 QBP, or did I imagine that?
If, in Stagecoach's opinion, the vehicles would pay for themselves, they'd already be on order.
What's wrong with cascades from elsewhere? The world doesn't revolve around Liverpool and you can't have everythign new all the time....
(23/10/2012 11:21)mbonwick Wrote: [ -> ]If, in Stagecoach's opinion, the vehicles would pay for themselves, they'd already be on order.
What's wrong with cascades from elsewhere? The world doesn't revolve around Liverpool and you can't have everythign new all the time....
Because such a large city, with a hell of a lot more passengers should take priority over the likes of Preston. We deserve better, nice cosmetically, good capacity and reliable buses.
The 2 Darts sold to Howards Travel have been collected today
Its been made a point of a couple of times that the Tridents need converting - may I ask why? Genuine question as I don't know if it is to comply with DDA or something else. Reason I ask is GTL ran deckers on the 20/21 service in particular that were ex London buses that still had the middle doors on them they were simply locked off.
As for making financial sense well surely if the 345 comes and you live in Walton or Everton Valley, and the 345 is decker operated as it can be at times, then you will pick that over the 21? My point? Unless Stagecoach act sharpish overcrowding may result in them losing business.
(23/10/2012 11:24)First Class Wrote: [ -> ] (23/10/2012 11:21)mbonwick Wrote: [ -> ]If, in Stagecoach's opinion, the vehicles would pay for themselves, they'd already be on order.
What's wrong with cascades from elsewhere? The world doesn't revolve around Liverpool and you can't have everythign new all the time....
Because such a large city, with a hell of a lot more passengers should take priority over the likes of Preston. We deserve better, nice cosmetically, good capacity and reliable buses.
But what is Stagecoach's market share? Just because Liverpool is bigger, doesn't mean more people use Stagecoach buses.
Preston is somewhat unusual in that bus patronage has always been very high.
You've got "better, nice cosmetically, reliable buses" already - or have the new Enviro300s slipped your mind?
One thing I'll say on this is that (and this is just as much aimed at Arriva) anyone who says that the 10/A don't justify at least partial decker operation clearly isn't either a regular user or monitoring passenger numbers correctly. Not being a user of some of the other routes, I can't really comment.
The other thing is that I don't think whether a route justifies larger capacity or not always dictates the actual order - it sometimes seems that the company are trying to get away with the smallest (I.e. cheapest) buses they can. Just look at the Solo SRs in St Helens - yes it's great we have new vehicles but capacity wise, they're inadequate. But when they come £20K under the next product in the Optare catalogue, it's a no brainier why it happened. Going back to the like of Stagecoach's involvement in the 10A now, sure the Enviro300s are nice new buses but, along with Arriva's Pulsars, they're still too small to be solely operating the route. High frequency, single deck just does not work along a lot of these corridors.