Saturday 3 September 2022

Saturday Variety

STOP PRESS
Announced this morning - a National £2 fare cap tp apply from Jan to March 2023 - but it is not compulsory foroperators to join thr scheme. The Confederation of Passenger Transport has a meeting for its members with the men fom the ministry. So that will make things a lot clearer - or won't!

Looks like a typical ||SaFT mess in the making!
-------------------------------------------------------
Quiz Part 1 Answers.

Arrival. The company has suspended work on its bus and its Uber electric car.

Battersea. The control room at the inconic power station. Bookings are now being taken for tours

Cable Car. Formerly the Emirates Air Line. A new sponsor has been announced - see below.

Drain. The unhappy nickname of the Waterloo and City underground line.

Exeter. Stagecoach has been able to do a deal which excludes all other operators. The bus station is, as predicted, far too small, even for Stagecoach services.

Flat Fare. Experts will tell you that it is technically a Maximum fare - but there aren't too many pre-existitng fares in the city that are less than £2.

Glasgow

Huddersfield. Pacer used by a Community charity.

Ilfracombe

Jakarta

Ketton

Liverpool. The tease was to refer to "one of Rotheram's buses", being Steve Rotheram, (no second "h") Liverpool mega-Mayor; and NOT RotherHam, South Yorkshire town!

Manchester.

Second half tomorrow.

Air Line Becomes A Cloud
The new sponsor of the London Cable Car is well known company IFS. 

No, neither had fbb - but one of their more recent promo videos will explain all.
So now we know.

fbb realises that Transport for London is desperate for any bag of pennies it can get, but surely it is daft to rename the stations.
Confusion for customers!

Where will it all end?

New Version of North East Voltra
You though that "Voltra" was a route brand for GoAhead North East? So did fbb.
The launch had to be virtual.
But a recent twitter suggested that "Voltra" equals "Electric Buses".
And look at the bus - weird or what?

Not that weird as shown at the "switch-on". Note the cardboard "switch" unconnected to any power source!
This time the electric buses (i.e. Voltra) are for the QuayCity services.
Once upon a time Quaylink was a dedicated service linking Newcastle with its developing and upgraded Quays (there is a clue in the name!). The trendy service started with trendy weird looking buses.
Over the years, the original Quaylink has been absorbed into several "normal" routes with only the name hinting at something special. The new name is QuayCity.

But now it will be electric!

HCT Update
It looks even more certain that HCT will soon disappear completely. Manchester is long gone, South Yorkshire is gone, West Yorkshire is gone, London is gone and Bristol is on its way out. Its "community services" have already gone and the company now says:-
That would leave Jersey and Guernsey remaining of the once huge so-called "Community Interest"  company.

Counting Sheep
The theme of the fbb's duplicate fellowship meetings tomorrow and Monday is "Signs and Symbols". One oft-repeated symbol in Christian writing involves a wide variety of Ovine observations.

So part one the September leaflet is this little teaser. The graphic should enlarge if you want to attempt a sheepish solution.

 Next Variety blog : Sunday 4th September 

2 comments:

  1. HCT Bristol shut down yesterday. There is no service on Metrobus route m1 this weekend, with First taking over from Monday.
    Authorities are trying to find operators for the remaining routes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The "trendy weird looking buses" were Designline Olympuses, which were turbine-electric hybrids. What goes around, comes around! I guess the polite comment is that they were ahead of their time - however the propulsion system couldn't generate sufficient charge and the buses were withdrawn after around five years.

    ReplyDelete