Tuesday 14 September 2021

Nevers Heard Of It (2)

 Logos Proliferate

Le réseau de bus Taneo couvre le territoire de la ville de Nevers et des douze autres communes de Nevers Agglomération ...

... établissement public de coopération intercommunale assurant la gestion et le financement de ce réseau dans le cadre de ses compétences obligatoires.

L'ensemble du réseau, à l'exception de certaines lignes scolaires, est exploité par délégation de service public par Keolis Nevers ...
... reconduit pour six ans en 2014. Un premier réseau apparaît dès 1960 avec le Service urbain de Nevers exploité par les Cars Petit ...
... et remplacé en 1978 par la STUNIV (Société des transports urbains nivernais) ...
... qui en gardera la gestion jusqu'en 2007, année où Keolis reprend la gestion du réseau, qui est restructuré et prend le nom Taneo.
En 2015, le réseau Taneo est constitué de 16 lignes régulières et sur réservation et de divers services complémentaires transportant 2,6 millions de voyageurs par an.

If the French language of the above is a bit of a struggle we can summarise it fairly simply.

Buses in Nevers started with services run by a M Petit
Next the growing network was contracted to STIV...
... (a Transdev Company)
Since 2007 the contractor has been Keolis ...
... who introduced the brand "Taneo"

Keolis is, of course, nationalised, with SNCF as the major shareholder.

French Wikipedia tells fbb that Taneo runs 40 buses, so a relatively small operation. Nevers itself is a town the size of Hitchin, but the "Agglomeration" (The Nevers "Region") nearly doubles that. So for comparison purposes we could look at Kettering.

The Northamptonshire town is largely in the hands of Stagecoach although Whippet has a dabble in rural services. Most of the former town services are now covered by diversions of interurban routes.
Nothing is more frequent that every 20 minutes and Sunday services are sparse indeed.

And so to Nevers.

The first place that fbb goes to the network map.
Most of the services are concentrated on Nevers itself with extra maps of routes extending further into the "Agglomeration". These run to Pougues ,,,
... in the north then Sermoise and Challuy ...
... and a bit more of Sermoise in the south.
At first glance, the urban area of Neevers has better coverage than Kettering but the interurban network is not so extensive. We can pick these locations up on a geographical map.
The above map from Michelin is roughly 12 miles top to bottom.

Only three routes (T1, T2 and 5) run on Sundays and Saints Days, each operating at every 90 minutes.
This is probably no better than Kettering for the urban area, but much worse if you wanted to go further. There will be other inter urban services, usually infrequent, and not part of the Taneo network.

The Coursinelle is a FREE town centre circular running every 20 minutes Monday to Saturday.
It looks as if it is one bus in steam and there is nothing like it in Kettering. Yesterday we saw that the Nevers bus station is right next to the railway station and everything calls there; which is good news for multi-modal interchange. In Kettering service 2 stops near to the railway station ...
... whilst the bus station, which used to be close by, is long gone. the 47 refers to an occasional peak journey only. Service 2 is hardly attractive to rail passengers.
First spot the time point at the station!

From Taneo we have lots of good things on your mobile phone, including real time info and, of course, a journey planner.
But fbb is most interested in these ...
... but the remaining three sections will offer things of use to many potential passengers.
There is an office ...
... some distance from tthe bus station ...
... but fbb could fins no indication of when (or whether) it was open to the public. After all ...
Tout est en ligne!

Tomorrow fbb looks at timetables - but until then, a couple of pictures of yer actual buses!
More tomorrow!

 Next Nevers heard of it blog : Wednesday 15th September 

3 comments:

  1. In the interests of accuracy, STUNIV was not a Transdev company. It was part of Groupe REUNIR.
    In 2002, fares covered 32.2% of the costs of operation, while the income from the Versement Transport - a tax on employers to pay for transport - raised Euro37.35 per person, with a further grant of Euro38.72 per person to run the network. Compare and contrast with Kettering...

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  2. The pattern of a reasonable town network, and a virtually non-existent rural one, is pretty standard for France, where a decent interurban network never really developed- for historical reasons I've forgotten!

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    Replies
    1. Because competition with the railways was discouraged.

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