Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

[anw2015]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Major annoyance at the moment for me are the first buses out of the depot turning up early or late. The 7.20 329 from St Helens has a habit of either being 2 minutes early or 10 minutes late. Certainly not good enough when you are trying to get to work!! No excuse imo!

[Ultralow]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(11/12/2012 21:55)anw2015 Wrote:  Major annoyance at the moment for me are the first buses out of the depot turning up early or late. The 7.20 329 from St Helens has a habit of either being 2 minutes early or 10 minutes late. Certainly not good enough when you are trying to get to work!! No excuse imo!

The 89 is the same always late or doesnt turn up due to it turning up late from the airport from 4pm onwards .

[M113 YKC]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(11/12/2012 21:55)anw2015 Wrote:  Major annoyance at the moment for me are the first buses out of the depot turning up early or late. The 7.20 329 from St Helens has a habit of either being 2 minutes early or 10 minutes late. Certainly not good enough when you are trying to get to work!! No excuse imo!

I reckon that this is an issue across the board! I travelled on one of the first 62s from Bootle to Walton, which was expected at 07:04. On one occasion, it appeared at 07:00-ish and was six minutes early at the Rice Lane timing point. On other occasions, I didn't see it until about 07:10. Occasionally, it'd operate on time. As a result of poor running, I can't rely on that service now. Also, early buses tend to run late due to the quiet roads... My 55 is due at 06:41 on Chapel Lane in Netherton, Old Roan-bound, and it always appears between 06:30 and 06:35 - it's never appears after 06:40! The 06:49 58 from Netherton, which the bus starts after operating a 210 journey from Liverpool to Maghull, always turned-up at about 06:55 - impossible for me to make my onward connection... These are situations that I've had to go through since September, so they don't relate to the poor weather (although future situations may be a result of that).

Don't these buses run for us?

[anw2015]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Exactly! Luckily I have flexible working hours so it doesn't matter if I'm late as I can easily make the time up. Its still unbelievably annoying when you miss the bus as it was early. Especially with the weather as it is atm.

[CX54 DKD (Moderator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Whilst there's no real excuse for the early running (though don't forget they can run up to a minute early and that is classed as 'on time'), I can understand why you may sometimes have 10 minute or so delays on the first service out of the garage.

What I imagine it comes down to is which vehicles work first time on the morning run out and which vehicles present themselves with faults. It may not even be that the bus for the service you're waiting for is defective and requiring replacing for the duty; another bus being defective may require the bus allocated to your service to be used on another service instead meaning that when the driver for your service gets in, they've got to get hold of someone to find out what to take instead and through all the faffing about that creates, delays can be expected I suppose. If it's a very regular daily thing though, you'd just be best getting in contact with Arriva and raising your concerns so they can see if there's anything they can do from their end; they may not even be aware there's a problem without being prompted!

[Jack]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
From what I've seen during the week the 89 is nearly always a B10BLE, if anything it's Dart SLFs that have been creeping on lately but even then it's just one every few days. Not seen Pulsars on the 89 for a long time during the day.

[Jack]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
After saying all that 2972 was on the 89 today! Also 2495 and 2713 on 33

[buses7675 (Website Founder)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Its surprising this happens (the early running) as the Wayfarer machines all have GPS fitted to them and as stated above, other than running 1 minute early (not ideal but allowable), anything more would get noticed and the driver surely pulled up about it.

[motormayhem]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Random time checks get done daily by down loading data from the machines and it flags up where the driver as gone through a timing stage early.

[CX54 DKD (Moderator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Noted 2701 back out this afternoon though parked up outside the offices, down the bottom end so I'm not sure what service it was operating (may actually have been acting as a spare bus). Regardless,nice to see this back out, as one of the best Renowns we have, and not resigned to an early retirement!