Thursday 23 November 2017

Re-inventing The Wheel Part 1

Or Re-inventing The Minibus?
It hardly seems a moment since fbb was reporting the return of the Minibus Revolution as instigated by the late Sir Harry Blundred. This version of the revolution was to take place in Ashford Kent where the town service had the old fashioned minibus treatment. It all kicked off back in February 2017.

See Ashford's Astounding Announcement (3) Read again.

From this week "Little and Often" became "Little and Even Less Often" as further frequency reductions were introduced.

Route B runs from northern estates at Kennington, Bockhanger and Bybrook ...
... into Ashford centre; then on, southbound to Park Farm and Bridgefield.
Bidgefield, you may remember, is where the buses were due to use an old farm-track bridge to reach an estate on the far side of the railway. For some reason this was not ready but still adorned with "No Entry except buses" signs.
The Accommodation Bridge Connecting Park Farm South with Bridgefield. The consortium has paid KCC the sum due to upgrade the bridge. Finishing the upgrade works and installing some missing bits of panelling will limit the risk of trespass on the railway. This is a pre-requisite for a bus service entering Bridgefield.

It is now open, although Streetview does not acknowledge the existence of Bridgefield itself.
When this route started, the frequency was every 6 minutes, every 15 evenings on Sundays. Changes in September and this week have knocked that back to every 10 (or is it every 9?) and every 20.
Reductions have also applied to the "C" route.
One of fbb's correspondents (Roger by name) has updated the old man; because Stagecoach have "redeployed their resources" on two new "Little and Often" routes.
The old half hourly "E", which had its origins in  service branded "The E Line" ...
... loses its link to the Hospital ...
... and runs cross-town to 
... South Willesborough, most recently served by the "G". The "E" is every 20 minutes; so three 16 eaters every hour ...
... replace two 40+ seats every hour. It doesn't seem a good deal for the passengers or one that will attract much extra business - "Little and Not Very Often".

Godinton Park (the north western bit of the old "G") increases from every 30 minutes to every 15 as a "Little and Not as Often as You might Expect" route.
Again, to follow the Blundred pattern, you might expect a bus every ten minutes
Roger sends a selection of pictures, for which many thanks, one of which is the timetable frame for the northbound E and G.
How unhelpful. Admittedly E and G run together along the Godinton Road, but, mostly, they are VERY different routes; so why show them as a muddled mess.

But Roger saves his opprobrium for the quality of the vehicles themselves. He reports that opening windows have had to be added, as a well loaded bus became incredibly stuffy.
The seats are large, high-backed and posh - BUT ...
... they are narrow and the leg room is ...
... negligible and less than negligible over the (grey) wheel arch.
There are 13 fixed seats with three (or is it four) tip-up extras.
These, of course, are lost if wheelchair, or even a baby buggy or two are part of the consist.

As Roger says (and he ought to know!) these ar simply NOT suitable vehicles for a busy (?) urban route.
There is yet another "timetable" picture, taken at the town centre stop in Bank Street.
Now we have As, Es and Gs on the same list. As and Es travel southbound from Bank Street whereas the new "G" runs north-westbound to Godinton Park - or is it Repton Park?
Poor.
The current edition of Buses magazine reports recent developments in a short article. It ends with, perhaps, he most telling comment on this manifestation of the minibus revolution - re-invented!
Maybe 300% is a bit over the top, but it is clear that passenger growth is not (yet?) matching the increased costs of the "Little and Often" network.

Will it last?

But the disease revolution is spreading.

 Next re-invention blog - Friday 24th November 

8 comments:

  1. These sound so very like the Dolmuses you find in Turkey - although they don't have timetables. See: https://tinyurl.com/y9br5ovs and https://www.wikihow.com/Ride-a-Turkish-Dolmus.

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  2. Brings back memories(or possibly nightmares) of the Eager Beaver service in Sheffield in the 1990's.

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  3. Looks like it's essential to do a Weight Watchers course before attempting to travel. I remember the Blundered vans in Torbay trying to accommodate holiday luggage...chaos.

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  4. Stagecoach tends to allow experiments have a decent length of time to prove or disprove themselves - which is probably three years, rather than nine months. Neither First nor Arriva tend to take such a long term view. But I'd agree that the vehicle layout needs some work - comments on the Mellor bodied examples in use with Arriva in Maccelsfield seem to be more favourable.

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  5. But why go for these minibus and not just buy the smallest version of the E200MMC and be done with it?

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  6. Andrew
    Both the capital and running costs of the Sprinters are significantly below that of either the smallest sized Solo or E200. And they are a lot easier to get round crowded estate streets - certainly the ones in Ashford don't seem to exhibit the kind of knocks and dents that most big buses have to a greater or lesser extent.

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  7. As a Repton Park resident and constant grumbler about these routes....

    Monday AM : 07:12 E from Repton to the station - On time but scheduled 3 minute hesitation in Bank Street (not like we want to catch a train or anything).
    Monday PM : Arrive at the station at 17:54 by train and catch the late running 17:49 G.

    Tuesday AM : Aim to catch the 07:12 E but catch the 07:05 G at 07:11...
    Tuesday PM : At 18:11 Stagecoach website shows Es due at the station at 18:30 and 18:51, should be 18:23 and 18:43. Three minutes later and the 18:30 has disappeared from the list. I walked home, passing three 'South Willesborough' bound Es between the Station and County Square (six minutes walking time?).

    Wednesday AM : Catch the 07:12 E which IIRC was on time and again waits 3 minutes in Bank Street.
    Wednesday PM : At 18:22 Stagecoach website shows an E due at the station at 18:36. At 18:33 it's given up showing the late running 18:23 and is now counting down for the 18:43, due at 18:42. The 18:23 E turns up at 18:37ish. (I was distracted to note the exact time)

    Thursday AM : Catch the 06:53 E which is on time and again waits 3 minutes in Bank Street.
    Thursday PM : It's on time. Hah! No, of course I'm joking... At 18:17 the Stagecoach website shows the 18:23 due at 18:37, 18:22 and it's now due at 18:38, 18:28 and still expected at 18:38, 18:35 it's skipped over to the 18:43 due at 18:42. Catch the G instead which was roughly on time.

    Friday AM : It's bin day around 07:20 on Godinton Road and a five-ten minute delay was not unusual in the past, will we be able to get three L&Os in a row for a picture? ;-)

    ~~~~

    In regards to your post, what's confusing about the timetable panel at Repton Park? It shows both routes which run along a common route to the station. If you want confusing, go to the station and look at the panels there - one for M-F, one for Saturday and One for Sunday showing all (Stagecoach) routes that serve the station. I've lost track the amount of times I've informed people they're looking at the wrong days panel but I've not checked them since last Sunday so maybe it's changed....

    As for the buses themselves, sit in any of the three offside tip-up seats and you can ring the bell with your shoulder!

    The only plus that L&O has brought to Ashford is contactless payments.

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  8. Oh, I forgot... The G runs every 15 minutes does it?

    M-F Departures from Ashford International towards Godinton Park / Repton Park
    0716 0743 0755 (60m gap, is there something missing here?) 0855 0914 0929 and then every 15 minutes (in theory) until 16:59 and then 1715 1731 1749 1806 1833 1858 1923 1954 2014 2034 2054 2119 2320......

    Taken from the PDF timetable downloaded from the Stagecoach website on the 3rd November.

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