Where Does The 22 Go 2?
After leaving its town centre terminus, the bus passes the front of Reading Station ...
... and takes the 22 to Caversham, an old community just north of the river.
We enter the Caversham Heights development passing housing which generally dates from the 1930s.
The long straight stretch of Albert Road and Caversham Avenue come next and we note plenty of front gardens turned into car parking.
After a right turn into Uplands Road our particular trip 'enjoys' a tight squeeze between two parked cars.
At the left hander ahead, we see more front garden parking for multiple cars ...
... before joining Kidmore Road with housing which probably dates from post WW2.
There is a pleasant oasis of greenery ...
... before our pink gas bus trundles via Woodcote Way nack towards Reading and joins the A4074 ...
One thing is clear. There are plenty of cars in Caversham Heights!
... where the Thames Travel X40 sticks with the 22 ...
.... all the way back to the town centre, sharing the stops ...
... now equipped with posh 'flags' ...
... and whence the X40 fare is cheaper.
The route of the 22 is clearly not "good bus territory" and, were fbb to be consulted (for a substantial fee, of course), he would be recommending that a deal be struck with GoAhead Thames Travel to divert the X40 via the Caversham Heights estate, thus giving the people a better service and removing a loss-making route from Reading Buses' catalogue.
Seemples!
As a bonus, the revellers of the estate would get a proper evening service and late late buses on Friday and Saturday nights.
Party Time!
Portsmouth And Bournemouth
There's a bit of a craze going on. The two authorities are "working tirelessly" to improve, nay to enhance bus travel for their respective communities.
Cheaper fares? More frequent services? A printed timetable book? An up-to-date route map?
None of these!
Both councils are seeking to improve their bus stops. You would have thought that this was the desire if the bus operator! Of course, when the operator was the council, it was a policy of civic pride that passengers were well looked after as they waited.
They certainly were in the centre of Brighton ...
... and Sheffield ...
... in some cases with toilets attached!
Portsmouth has gone for 27 "Super Stops" in the busiest locations.
The enhanced stops will be installed in key locations including Cosham, Southsea, Fratton, Hilsea, Copnor, and the city centre, helping to create a more connected and accessible transport network.
And the enhancements?
Sounds impressive. Let's hope all this luxury is vandal proof!
And there's more!
The only pictures of Super Stops suggest that they are very ordinary bus shelters with a repaint and a few extra bits. The highlight seems to be yellow arms to the seats ...
Meanwhile in Bournemouth we are told that bus stops have gone "green".
fbb is tempted to say "they are not green, they are orange" but he will resist the temptation.
Such infrastructure is not new nationally! When fbb was touring Cornwall a few years ago he saw lots of 'green' wooden bus shelters.
But back in his teenage years he waited for the United Counties bus from Billing Turn to take trips into Northampton. The shelter was, of course, 'green' but blackened in an "ungreen" way by today's standards ...
So how green is green?
Blast The Ballasting?
Blast The Ballasting?
Is "blast" blasphemous? fbb does not use expletives, deleted or undeleted, but occasionally loses control and utters something akin to "poo bags" for which asperity he does repent.
His track ballasting did not go well.
And it got worse! The white poster paint designed to reduce the natural grey of the ballast grains ...
... made it too pale. It was a right mess.
His track ballasting did not go well.
So fbb cut out most if the mess, glued in a new edge ...
... waited for the weighted join to set ...
... and began to tidy the mess and recover the failed bodge.
Well it's a start! More in due course.
Next Variety blog : Tuesday 4th August
FBB, sorry, but your suggestion to divert the X40 via Caversham Heights is a bad idea! Typical 1970's thinking - saves a few pounds, but makes the service poorer for passengers on both routes - either due to sections of route no longer served, or a diversion that makes everybody's journey take longer. Nought out of ten for that one FBB - don't even think about it! The Reading-Oxford service (X40) ran hourly in 1969, now it's every 20 minutes, so Go Ahead are clearly doing something right with it, so don't spoil it by adding a diversion that will simply irritate most passengers, and be of benefit to just a very small number.
ReplyDeleteThe planned "solution" presumably functions because somebody else will pay part of the capital cost of the new electric bus. I agree that the main cost of the service is the driver, but electric traction should reduce maintenance costs in the longer term, and when the finances are tight, every little helps.
A couple of days ago, Andrew K asked a question about profitable routes subsidising unprofitable ones - the principle of cross-susidisation. Prior to the 1985 Transport Act, the financing of council-operated bus services was not always entirely clear, since some functions of the transport "business" were actually performed by other departments of the council. For example, the accounts would generally be prepared by the finance department - but the cost of doing so was not always attributed to the transport department. The 1985 Act sought to ensure that the finances of all businesses involved in running buses were recorded on a similar basis, regardless of whether the business was owned by a local authority, central government, or a private company.
Naturally, businesses may have specific projects or products that do not earn a profit - and that is no doubt acceptable if it is anticipated that the product will ultimately develop to a point where it earns a profit, or, at least, makes a contribution to the overhead costs of the business. But is a specific project or product doesn't show any reasonable prospect of ever earning sufficient revenue to at least make a contribution to overheads, then sooner or later the company will have to call a halt. The comments made by Reading Buses, encouraging people to use the service 22 buses, suggests that they must be reasonably close to that point!
Cross-subsidisation of bus services does have its own problems. The services that generally make a profit are those that serve densely populated parts of towns and cities; while the less profitable routes are often those that run to "wealthier" areas. In other words, the profits made from the less wealthy customers are used to subsidise services for those with more wealth. That's a conundrum for the politicians to resolve, assuming they understand what is going on - which, in some cases, I doubt!
RC169
Thank you. In other words, cross-subsidisation has its issues, ethical as well as financial - but it isn't illegal, as we were led to believe?
ReplyDeleteCross subsidy is an issue where the loss making service is directly competing with another operator i.e. you are operating at a loss to undermine the competition.
DeleteI think Anonymous at 13:00 has covered the question of legality of cross-subsidy. The problem is determining the exact operating costs that need to be applied to each route - there are various costs which may not be easy to allocate to a specific route, such as layover times between journeys on different routes.
DeleteRC169
Until recent years the X40 route through Caversham was different - it operated direct via St Peter's Hill and Woodcote Road. St Peter's Hill is narrow and delays ensue when two large vehicles meet; and suffers congestion in the peaks.
ReplyDeleteThe current routeing allows the X40 to avoid St Peter's Hill, and take advantage of the bus-only road alongside Caversham Library. This helps the reliability of the X40, but means it encroaches on the 22's territory much more than it did before and is often the bus that turns up first.