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RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - Lynx - 11/09/2015 17:45
(11/09/2015 17:31)Mayneway Wrote: The whole things smells very childish.
Mr Fairbrother should accept that the school wants a different operator to run the school services and move on. If the issue of school buses being late has been an issue for a while then surly as owner he should have been aware of it and done something about it, possibly running buses dead from depot to start of school service and vice versa at home time rather than interworking them with regular services, unless a shortage of buses/O discs is an issue?
The head teacher sounds just as daft though blaiming de-regulation for the issue arising lol.
Incidentally a similar thing happened in Manchester a few years back. First operated 2 or 3 commercial school services on a schools behalf and after the autumn term had them taken given to a local independant instead as the morning journeys were always unreliable due to interworking.
True, Fairbrother could have done more to rectify issues with the service. He should have enough vehicles, but O discs could have been a problem. He does however appear to have acquired another solo so this must not be to much of issue. I also don't quite understand why the head teacher felt the need to bring up deregulation, makes him look rather silly.
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - T42 PVM - 11/09/2015 23:00
I agree with Post 192, Clearly the Head Master is passing the blame onto David Fairbrother to cover his own rear end, At least the head teacher has picked another decent operator so things could of been worse!
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - Mayneway - 12/09/2015 09:25
(11/09/2015 23:00)T42 PVM Wrote: I agree with Post 192, Clearly the Head Master is passing the blame onto David Fairbrother to cover his own rear end, At least the head teacher has picked another decent operator so things could of been worse!
The head teacher isn't passing any blame to cover his own rear end he's simply asked another operator to run the school services due to the unreliablity of Fairbrothers due to them interworking the school services wit thier regular pound 2 town servics. Yes the head teachers comments are rather childish and pointless but let's be honest if you were sending your kids to catch the bus to school every morning and were charged a pound and the bus not only turns up late at the stop but drops the kids at school late would you not be angry? I know I would.
Presumably as Mr Fairbrother was told about this during last term he had the opportunity to put things right and choose not too, and as a last resort has gone crying to the press for sympathy.
The bus industry is very cut throat. Operators pick up and loose services all the time this is no different.
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - RSTurbo50 - 14/09/2015 09:36
This will hit Fairbrothers very hard indeed. The three school services from Penketh High School were good earners and to lose this revenue every day will be a big loss to the profits..
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - RSTurbo50 - 15/09/2015 08:01
It's ran commercially so the school don't pay for the service (as far as I'm aware) and the money made is by charging the pupils..
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - Mayneway - 15/09/2015 10:06
Doing a bit of detective work but the article suggests pupils are charged a £1 flat fare per journey. The comments with the article suggest Springfields single deckers are not big enough and pupils are forced to stand. So let's say on average 60 pupils per school journey is £60, twice a day, and they operate 3 services to the school so that's £1800 a week. Plus would they receive some kind of concessionary re-inbursment. For a small business that's thier weekly cash flow which probably goes towards drivers wages etc.
I can understand why he's upset but only he could have done something about it.
Smiths of Marple have just put thier school fares up to a flat £1.50 a journey. They offer no weekly or monthly passes it's simply pay £1.50 twice a day or walk. To think I used to pay 36p to get to school and I'm not that old either lol
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - RSTurbo50 - 15/09/2015 15:39
^^^^
That's spot on.
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - The H man - 15/09/2015 20:33
(15/09/2015 17:32)Lynx Wrote: Tickets for Springfield buses are usually sold by the schools they serve in batches of 5 or 10 at £1 each. They can be used at any point and don't have a expiration date. I know a lot of people avoid using Springfields services for 2 reasons, 1 being that the ticketing system is inconvenient and there buses are to small for some of the services they serve.
Complete rubbish, amazing what some people think
Only one of our schools sells tickets themselves, and cash fares are also available.
The rest of our services are either closed contracts (no fares) or £1 journeys...
Vehicles to small? Ok... 2 x 74 seat daf, 1 x 74 seat leyland olympian, 1 x 78 seat Dublin olympian, 1 x 79 seat volvo olympian, 2 x 89 seat mega bus skyliners.
All used on schools.... how big do you want them?
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - Mayneway - 15/09/2015 21:01
(15/09/2015 19:34)Dentonian Wrote: To be commercially viable, it would need to go a bit beyond "towards" drivers' wages. I wasn't aware Smith's of Marple had commercial school services either. I thought nearly all GM school services were TFGM tenders, with the remainder subsidised by the (private/faith schools or Acadamies) in question.
Without digging too deep - not least in case I missed it earlier in the thread - I assume that both Fairbrothers and Springfields gave/are giving 8 weeks notice to withdraw/introduce their services respectively.
Clearly the 3 school services are commercially viable otherwise Mr Fairbrother wouldn't be kicking up a fuss nor would he have operated them for the number of years that he has done.
In your realise post you seemed to question RSturbos comment about the school services being 'a good earner' so I was simply pointing out that £1800 a week is a hell of a lot of money for a small business like Fairbothers. Small change for TFGM who can spend thousands on local radio adverts for Metrolink despite the savage budget cuts - whoops wrong thread
Smiths of Marple operate mainly in Derbyshire and Glossop and I believe have a standard school fare of £1.00 per child - now increased to £1.50
RE: Fairbrother's of Warrington - Lynx - 15/09/2015 22:43
I have deleted my previous post because I decided it was perhaps unfair.
The knowledge that my post was based on was from the last academic year and of course much has changed, so it was perhaps outdated and unfactual. I appreciate that it may have caused "the H man" some distress and just want to make sure that it didn't come across as anything personal! Something I'm keen to avoid. So my appoliges if it seemed that way!