https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWfWnoCncU0

Took a while to find again as the script is in Polish.
Watching these videos frustrates me that we don't have anything as basic and simple as this form of quiet and emission free transport in the U.K. Annoying we had it all before, and annoying that instead of re-installing it we just wait around for technology to become better and cheaper. Modern Britain thinks it's a world leader, yet it's miles behind with infrastructure. We can't even provide decent transport in major towns and cities! The private car wins hands down. When we do try change something we have to have our own backward way of doing it.

Interestingly when a Reading trolleybus visited the town last year and was parked up in Broad Street, many British people had no idea what it was, or just thought it was an old bus. Many Europeans who stopped though knew exactly what the poles on the roof were for and were surprised to know that the town had trolleybuses in the first place and wondered why on earth they were removed.
Still, enjoy the video. Might have to travel there and have a ride on them one day.

Cheers

All of these centre diversions took place in the low point for transport, the 1990's. The rush for the fad of pedestrianisation without thought for public transport has left almost every town and city in the country with this same cross town route problem, of course as always with the exception of london. Almost every single Reading Corporation route was cross town mainly for operational reasons, but lives revolved around them after they had been running for so long. For example kids from an estate to the south would go to school in the north of town. Crosstown routes have problems with what operators like to call cross contamination, but then again in Reading, when the routes were severed neither side was any more reliable and on most occasions it would require more vehicles to run split. The balance I have noticed is that routes that cross town should have a frequency of at least 10 minutes to work, those with less work better as a radial route. High frequency routes doubling back and running the same direction in both route directions (phew) should always be avoided as it causes nothing but confusion and annoyance. As great as it is to not make the public walk and drop them to places as close as possible, the majority do not like doubling back as no progress is made on their journey. A two minute diversion into the new station northern entrance by the north Reading routes put many people off using the bus to get to town as well as the addition of terminating in the town centre away from other bus routes simply to please a particular group of passengers who wanted it to stop immediately outside the town centre Sainsbury's

Cheers

With the current system the individual is still in control of how long something takes. A wise old driver told me many years ago (Reading still had mk1 metrobuses) to never make eye contact with anyone who isn't on the bus. The moment you make eye contact with somebody running for the bus they stop running and take there time as they now hold you to ransom! I would normally wait for runners if the frequency is 15 minutes or less, but if there was no talking once on, they wouldn't get much more out of me. Bus Drivers eh?

I just watched a video on the youtube of Lublin trolleybuses and it appears they have quite a modern system. Since they chose to refresh the system they have added mileage by wiring the most popular frequent routes. Their vehicles also seem to have off wire traction capabilities. .

Clever stuff

The first 90 seconds of this video demonstrate the de-wiring and re-wiring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4a6ZsFPon0

Cheers

Trolleybuses in Castellon Spain have unwired sections in the town centre. They can drop booms on the move and have catchers to place them back on the wires at a particular stop provided the bus is near enough positioned correctly. Solingen in Germany has by far the best system as far as I'm concerned. Nice long runs between stops. Routes that cross the town centre, with easy interchange in the middle. Tram like signalling in some areas. At one end they run beyond the wires on small diesel engines to the terminus which will be battery run soon, and best of all, they connect with the Schwebebahn in the suburbs of Wuppertal. I guess my point for wiring is that if the bus runs a route at high frequency all day and all year, why not wire it instead of being battery reliant all the time? I'm sure this will be far cheaper in the long term as well as the permanence benefits. The other issue with battery buses that concerns me is the disposal of the batteries after use. The experience with hybrids so far suggests continually charged batteries are expensive to replace and need doing so every other year. Most of Reading's hybrid fleet have now been converted to rather under powered regular diesel engines.

So they are light years ahead of us then

Certainly the above is the type of step forward we need in the U.K, but in urban areas it's no longer enough. In Reading, the cash on the town routes moved to no change available vaults which, although initially sped things up as people were ready to hand over money, has actually slowed things down while we wait for people to find the correct money at the last moment. This of course meant that as town drivers we no longer had any responsibility for making sure it tallied up at the end of a shift. nor did we have to pay anything in. So the journey took longer but with less hassle at the end of a shift. Mobile ticketing with QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code) codes is quick if individuals are prepared when they board, and this was popular in a big way when I left the job, but with the added revenue loss of many adults simply using under 18 tickets on the app as there was no registration required. You could not believe some of the so called responsible adults, many from respectable areas on there way to good jobs, who do this. Reading Buses frankly weren't that bothered by it as it meant less complaints, more awards. As James Freeman once said about an earlier different form of fraudulent travel, getting something out of them is is better than nothing. However, I never thought this fair on the honest paying passenger who expect the bloke next to them to have payed the same as them. Anyhow, I'm not sure what ticket machines are used elsewhere but contactless is what takes the longest to use at the moment, taking far longer than handling change, as the technology is quite crude. This was fast becoming the most popular way to pay as it required next to no effort except to say what ticket type you want.

Cheers

Unfortunately many bus routes in our towns and cities need to go through these areas of congestion. In the U.K we think rather differently to what public transport is for compared to elsewhere. There is an enormous amount of attention to interurban transport and how people from other communities around cities access them but not much attention paid to how people move around within them. The local bus (or trolleybus, tram or anything else) must go to areas with congestion because it's normally these areas where large populations live or where the traffic generating points, such as hospitals, are. The Eastern 'MRT' project Reading Council recently proposed would have moved several bus routes away from the Newtown and Cemetery Junction area which is a huge bottleneck for road traffic but also a large generator of passenger traffic for public transport in both directions. Moving the public transport away from the area to avoid the congestion seems rather backward when it is that very congestion we are trying to remove. Moving the regular traffic to the new proposed route in Reading would have been the better option for public transport. Back in the 1960's and 70's when new major road building towards urban centres occurred, such as the M32 into Bristol, this would have been of benefit to public transport on the previous main corridor the traffic used. The cars from elsewhere used the new road while buses continued running along the original corridor serving the communities along it free from the main flow. Now I am not suggesting that building new urban motorways is what we should be doing, but public transport bypassing inner areas is not the way forward. Sorting the area of congestion with public transport is what's needed.

Persuading people onto public transport is difficult, especially when it remains a regular bus. The biggest barriers against people using the bus I can see, after 18 years of driving them, is the speed the vehicles travel. One point to this is other road traffic of course, however the other factors slowing the vehicles are largely ignored. The driver having to see every individual onto the bus is the first major factor. If there was a major change by operators in how they collect and protect their revenue which led to people stepping on and off the bus in the same way they would use a train (or tram) then this would make a huge difference to the speed of the vehicle. Pay as you enter vehicles have to wait for the individual to prepare themselves.
The next factor is the amount of stops. Here is where local councils can get involved since they normally decide on the locations of these. Many stops in my town are in out of date locations that are difficult for buses to use and more awkward stops have been added between the originals over time in a vague attempt to promote public transport in the post deregulation era. A minimum stop distance in urban areas is what is needed to speed up bus services so that vehicles make better progress.
Getting more people onto public transport is supposed to lead to less road traffic so bus only lanes can be justified in heavy congestion areas. These would be even more acceptable by many people if some sort of permanent infrastructure is present. The infrastructure presents a commitment to reliable public transport. It builds an established corridor to draw people towards and trolleybuses are the cheapest way of doing this.

Cheers.

As great as I think it is that these types of vehicles are becoming the norm, I will never understand why overhead and trolleybuses aren't ever considered anymore, particularly in Britain. Times have changed with that technology too since the early 1970's when they last ran. The vehicles don't cost that much and tend to last longer than diesel buses, plus if routes are running established corridors, why not have a permanent feed. The permanent infrastructure makes the psychological difference to the user much like a tramway, the vehicles obvious different look makes changing ticketing to off vehicle much easier, plus vehicles can be equipped with short range batteries for emergency diversions. The versatility of infrastructure free vehicles isn't always a plus point when it comes to establishing transport.

On another note I have often thought that the real time information guessing game should be replaced with a figure of how many stops the bus is away. Real time information is certainly fully trusted by the public and they get very frustrated when real life doesn't match the real time, which is quite often. The real time never works 100%. Operator opinion seems to be that displaying something, even if it isn't accurate, is better than displaying nothing. I would still use paper timetables or the online version if I was using a bus route.

As somebody who has worked for James Freeman as a bus driver, I shall not pass comment on his opinions here just that he wasn't always so honest with the public at Reading Buses. His ideas about public transport are very different to mine.

On the subject of driver assaults, I always found it quite easy to negotiate with people under the influence of drink, sober people were harder work. The biggest transformation in people getting more aggressive with drivers in Reading, was the installation of attack screens!

I think it was a number 27, started running from Tilehurst but later turned at Norcot Junction. I think it ran down Beresford Road and through the bus link there. My sister used to catch it to work at Rivermead and she was frequently the only person on it, until it disappeared during a timetable change.

I would think that the Network Day Ticket would be valid on the new services if they connect with other RT services,however if they are isolated possibly not.
 I personally think that Reading Transport are stretching themselves too far here and don't currently have the management, operational or engineering staff to deal with the extra workload. When I left they were struggling to cope with the operation of the london to Windsor service and, as with the last time they took on more services, the Town network will suffer as a consequence.