Bus Round Up

I was at Borderbus the other day to get the picture of their on loan Scania, and was chewing the cud with one of their number about the dearth of recent bus posts on this blog. Maybe the following post will explain it a bit.

Good News! If you live in Harrogate as Transdev have this week launched their new fleet of fully electric buses. 8 Volvo electric buses have been acquired for the town, and, as this picture posted on Twitter by Transdev CEO Alex Hornby shows, they look pretty decent.

One of Harrogate Bus' new Volvo Electric buses

Good News! If you live in Belfast. The new Glider system is in operation. To all intents and purposes a tram on tyres with a steering wheel, as the driver is isolated from the passengers who self operate the 3 sets of doors, the new service started on 2 routes, and that all round decent chap Roger French went over to sample them. You can read his excellent report here. The following photo is Roger's.

One of the new Glider vehicles in Belfast.                      pic (c) Roger French

Good News! If you live in Liverpool. The 100th new double decker for the City has arrived. Rob Jones, MD of Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire posted this picture on Twitter of the new arrival, and ADL E400MMC.

The 100th new decker for Liverpool

Good News! If you live in Surrey. A new multi-operator ticket has been launched. The Acorn ticket, which covers an area of North Surrey and Berkshire including places such as Windsor, Heathrow, Kingston, Woking and Epsom costs £7 a day or £30 a week and is valid on the services of 12 different operators, although not on any TfL services. This is an initiative from Surrey County Council. I'd love to think other councils are listening but I very much doubt it.

Good News! If you live in the North East. Martijn Gilbert has taken up his new post as MD of Go North East. Covering a large part of the North East, reaching as far South as Hull, GNE also includes East Yorkshire Motor Services, and it must be said Go Ahead handle things a whole lot better up there than they do here. With Martijn at the helm things will only get better and better up there, a real bus man and enthusiast who puts passengers and staff first. I wish him well.

So what's been going on in East Anglia? Well two 13yo ex First Scotland B7tl Geminis have transferred from Great Yarmouth to Essex, allowing 2 other 13yo B7tl's, these ones ALX400's to move to Ipswich. A 16yo B7tl President is getting a lilac front, and there was much hoo-ha on Facebook (apparently) as to where a 6yo ex Leeds Volvo B9 Gemini2 was going to be allocated. If you can contain your excitement I'll tell you it turned out to be Lowestoft.

And so to my friends at Borderbus, who are still waiting for the last of their 4 ex London Scania Omni City deckers to be returned. You may recall these Scanias arrived before last year's Lattitude so Scania haven't been exactly frantic to get them done. So while they wait Ensignbus have loaned them this ex Metrobus Scania Omnidecker. I know this fleet fairly well from my journeys in and around East Grinstead, I have been on RYB more than once, and I have to say, beyond doubt, they are the worst fleet of Scanias I've ever travelled on - real spine jolters! So I was relieved to be told it's only here as a loan!

Ex Metrobus Scania YN53 RYB on loan to Borderbus

However, I can reveal that when the last of Borderbus' Scanias returns (hopefully this week) it will still have the centre doors intact and operational. Drivers on the 580 expressed the views that the extra doors helped passenger flow at places like East Norfolk College and Bungay High School and so asked for them to be retained. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that will be the only bus with operational centre doors in the region - by design, not fluke with a loan or pre-converted bus.

And that's it. You can now, I hope, see why bus posts are few and far between. At least when Anglian was at their prime, or the Ollies still around there was always something to be written. Now I have to travel further and further outside the area to find anything, and that is a luxury I can't do that often. As and when anything happens (keeping an ear on the Galloway situation, plus other possible developments) I will, of course report it. Cheers.

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