Stagecoach MCSL - Gillmoss Depot

[Gillmoss 0324]

RE: Stagecoach Merseyside - Gillmoss Depot
I've had a fairly positve reply from Nathan Ward at Stagecoach regarding deckers and overcrowding

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Thank you for your impassioned email regarding the use of double deck vehicles at Stagecoach and in Merseyside in general.

You are correct in saying that vandalism and anti-social behaviour have historically been the reasons that double deck use has been limited in Liverpool. However with the all presence of CCTV and the wonderful work that the bus companies have done with Merseytravel and Merseyside Police in the TravelSafe scheme I believe that ASB has been vastly reduced and is no longer the awful menace on our buses.

Sadly though our fleet now is mainly single deck with only a very small number of deckers. We do have to carefully use them and as you may have recently noticed we have used them on the 217/227 service which was historically the worst route for ASB.

I can certainly assure you that contrary to rumours on internet forums we have no plans to withdraw our current fleet of double deckers.

As a depot we are trying to grow our business and the use of bigger vehicles can assist in this. The Enviro300 vehicles you mention do have an amazing capacity of upto 69 people but the reality is that standing up for long periods is not customer friendly and not what we should be aiming for.

That all being said there are no imminent plans to bring in any deckers from other parts of the company/group but it is certainly something that we would like to happen in the future.

I hope that although I can not promise bigger vehicles that you can appreciate that we are aware of the issues on the network.

kind regards

Nathan Ward
Operations Manager

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Whilst not saying they will be go for new/cascaded deckers in future they're not completely ruling them out for Gillmoss and also isn't dismissive of some of the points mentioned.

To be fair I don't think Stagecoach and Arriva are doing things that badly. However there are 4-7 core routes in Liverpool which do struggle capacity wise and can't really be increased in frequency. Some form of decker operation on these routes would solve this/be the way to go, but again you don't know whether local management have asked for this but have it rejected.

They'd be a stronger case for deckers at Gillmoss if Arriva came off their share of the 14's but as this is also profitable for Arriva and a route either operator consider theirs that's unlikely and from what I've seen it's the 10/10A/10B, 12/13, 15, 18, 20/21 and possibly 53's which have more of a overcrowding problem than the 14's at the moment.

Beyond the busy routes both Pulsars and Enviro300's are fine. But single deck operation in Liverpool with one or two exceptions really needs to be with full size +44 seat vehicles which can take on fairly decent sized loads and standees better than dart's/Enviro200's or Solo's can. Arriva and Stagecoach do need to clear the midi's out of Liverpool and the current management have to some degree recognised this. Dart's are not a good idea on routes like the 8/9, 10B, 17's, 19's 26/27 etc. let alone the busier ones like the 20/21 etc.

Case of wait and see but lets hope some progress can be made here.