Diamond Bus North West

[gilesbus1]

RE: Diamond Bus North West

(14/07/2019 00:25)Winston Wrote:  I never suggested Rotala would run Vantage out of Atherton should they bid successfully, I simply said that Atherton may be initially retained in the event that additional depot capacity is required. As Bolton depot is superior to any other NW depots, that's why it's becoming Rotala NW headquarters.

TfGM want Vantage re-tendered. That's why it wasn't included in the sale to Rotala.

Yes overheads will be higher, but so will the number of buses generating income, it's all proportional. The Atherton routes being shipped in to Bolton are replacing spare capacity from the loss making Vantage contract & TfGM school buses. Once the Bolton purchase goes through, Diamond NW will go from mainly low margin tendered work to majority of it's revenue/profit being generated from commercial work which *should* eventually be far more profitable once the business is sorted out. That can then be used to subsidise and maintain competitive tender bids if desired, Diamond WM is still heavily involved in tendered work, I don't see the NW being any different. If Quality Contracts come in, bidders may be tendering for complete packages of routes rather than just individual route tenders, which may work in the favour of bigger operators like Diamond & Go North West that have plenty of finance to draw upon over your Vision Bus etc. I don't see where fuel comes in either, for the reasons mentioned above. Even more so with the heavy vehicle replacement plan which will result in lower engineering costs, lower fuel costs due to being micro hybrids/Euro 6, these buses will also come with the Low Emission Bus Certificates which will make them eligible for low emission grants.

I'm sure Rotala will have looked at all the potential scenario's and run the numbers before making the decision to buy First Bolton, close Atherton, plus the knock on effect of moving that work to Bolton & Eccles, with potential dead mileage involved etc. I doubt they're not going to suddenly give up all the original Diamond NW tendered work, just because they will soon have First Bolton's commercial routes, they want to expand/not contract. I think you need to let the takeover happen and bed in first, before trying to predict the future.

I aren't overly convinced by it, the tenders and the low return commercial work based at Leigh and Wigan will simply be lost or given up, that has been what has happened in the past hence why Diamond North West exists at all, its just simply not profitable operated from Bolton, like the Shakerley wasn't before. Cross subsidy of routes isn't allowed under the Transport Act 1985.

Large super depots generally don't work unless you are where the super depot is, e.g. Bolton, they also effect staffing in that clinks form, engineering in that it becomes poor and unable to deal with oddities in the fleet, and expensive to operate and sometimes under utilised, they are a complete utter useless failure. Also they affect people's health, with high levels of pollution from operating buses, buses that are damaged being towed in from miles away. I've no intention of ever using the 132 again as its not reliable when operated by Atherton so it certainly won't be operated by Eccles, which is 25 miles away from Wigan. New buses fixes nothing.