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Author Topic: MetroBus  (Read 236452 times)
martyjon
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« Reply #660 on: October 05, 2018, 16:20:22 »

The Lord Mayor is elected in the same way as other city councillors and then elected from their number by the councillors, so in fact twice elected. By tradition and/or convention he or she doesn't cast a vote. But when my son was at primary school, he sang in a carol concert (or something, I've forgotten exactly what) in St Stephen's church, at which the LM (London Midland - recent franchise) was present in all his robes and chain and looking very splendid for the kids.

As for LM's vehicle, as the present LM is a Green, I'd have thought she could reject any form of car and go for a Mayoral bicycle or maybe a rickshaw?


An electric bike at that because with all those robes and chain of office I doubt whether shae would be able to pedal a pedal cycle so yes a rickshaw would be a good second choice.
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martyjon
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« Reply #661 on: October 05, 2018, 16:30:48 »

Maybe less civic pride but using one of BCC» (Bristol City Council - about)'s fleet vehicles is surely better on cost grounds. Then again, if looking at costs, is the office of Lord Mayor actually necessary? How many times has Bristol's Lord Mayor exercised his or her one and only political function - that of a casting vote? Does city promotion and welcoming Brenda or her clan  really require a berobed non-elected ceremonial dignitary?

As regards a vehicle for him/her if it is necessary. There's a huge fleet of vehicles owned by the city council, 456 of them - cars, MPVs, vans, minibuses. Just use any spare vehicle when required. One dedicated vehicle used infrequently is somewhat profligate.

There are hybrids, electrics and LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) vehicles in said fleet. The current Lord Mayor is a Green Party member. I can perfectly understand if she chooses not to use a dedicated gas-guzzling vehicle.

Aah, but the Lord Mayor has an official limo registration number AE1, which is always transferred from vehicle to vehicle when a change in the LM (London Midland - recent franchise)'s official car occurs.
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TonyK
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« Reply #662 on: October 06, 2018, 15:35:40 »

As former Mayor George Ferguson said of former Lord Mayor Alistair Watts, "I'm the power, he's the glory".
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chuffed
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« Reply #663 on: October 06, 2018, 17:15:19 »

 Hopefully not Forever and ever ! Amen, to that!
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martyjon
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« Reply #664 on: October 24, 2018, 08:29:32 »

Not really MetroBus but its Bristol Buses.

Visited a new client in the Knowle/Wells Road area yesterday and returning to the City Centre I arrived at the Bus Stop and I was gob smacked to see on the tree trunk of the adjacent tree there was a yellow/black diagonal warning plate attached as a warning that "this tree leans out into the bus lane bus drivers". Seated on the LH side of the bus I counted 3 more trees with similar signs on the journey from the Broad Walk to the London Inn/Tesco bus stops. No wonder Bristols buses are coming in for a hammering over unreliability when they cant use the bus lanes provided due to obstructions like this.

Why the FH don't BCC» (Bristol City Council - about) chop down these offending trees, remove the stumps and plant new saplings in their place, Oh I'm forgetting BCC are hard up so why don't they just chop the trees down at the 4 feet level to let the buses use the bus lanes provided.
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TonyK
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« Reply #665 on: October 24, 2018, 17:00:01 »

Because we like trees. Those signs were there long before the unfortunate incident on Fishponds Road involving an unmarked tree.
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Red Squirrel
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« Reply #666 on: October 24, 2018, 17:38:30 »

Back in my youth I well remember the jolly clatter of those very trees as I passed that spot on the No.3 bus heading for skool. Muller Road's KSW's almost all had thoroughly dented panels at the front of their top decks; all done without the benefit of bus lanes too.
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GBM
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« Reply #667 on: October 25, 2018, 08:25:34 »

Back in my youth I well remember the jolly clatter of those very trees as I passed that spot on the No.3 bus heading for skool. Muller Road's KSW's almost all had thoroughly dented panels at the front of their top decks; all done without the benefit of bus lanes too.
{Way off topic alarm} As do most of First Kernow busses, especially those around the Landsend area with very indented roof-lines.
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GBM
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« Reply #668 on: October 25, 2018, 09:03:31 »

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/first-boss-reveals-cause-delays-2134184?fbclid=IwAR1JBQm_mCi-W97a5AimBIeI0kjWEXH91dIlYtxfPeUWJY_XSVJd-zOHS0k


The managing director of the company running almost all Bristol's buses has got behind the wheel of one of his buses himself - to see exactly why his company has come in for fierce criticism in recent weeks.

With complaints about cancelled, late or overcrowded buses continuing, and even a protest against the level of service on Bristol's buses planned, James Freeman has written to the people of Bristol to express his concern, and to relate how he spent his Saturday.


Mr Freeman has previously explained that the nightmare being experienced by thousands on the buses around Bristol since September has been due to a number of factors.

These include an increase in traffic when the school run re-started in September, an influx of tens of thousands of students filling up buses in mid-September, starting a number of new routes, particularly around Thornbury and Yate and the Metrobus in south Bristol, roadworks and a bus driver shortage which has left them a reporter 150 drivers short across the region, and having to bring in drivers from as far afield as Cornwall to drive buses in Bristol.

But on Saturday, Mr Freeman decided to see what the problems on the roads were for himself. He still has a bus drivers' licence, so took to the wheel.

READ MORE
Full statement from First Bus boss after weeks of poor service for Bristol
In an open letter to the people of Bristol, he said he was 'very concerned' about the levels of service from First bus recently.

And he said his experience driving a bus - the 349 between Bristol and Keynsham - for a day, opened his eyes to just how challenging it is keeping a bus on time in the face of roadworks, crashes and the huge levels of traffic.

"I am very concerned, like you, the people who use our services every day, along with my fellow team-members from First West of England, about the reliability of our buses at the moment and the effect that this is having on us all," he said.


James Freeman, MD at First Bus in Bristol

"As some people may know I hold a full PCV licence, so I availed myself of the opportunity to do a day’s bus driving on Saturday. It was very instructive and supported what so many members of our driving team at First West of England have been saying to me recently.

"Much has been made recently of our current driver shortage, but I am really worried that this is obstructing our collective appreciation that the real problem is congestion.

READ MORE
'Why I'm organising a mass rally in protest at Bristol's bus service'
"That is not to down play the driver shortage problem, which is clearly our immediate problem, but it is essentially a short-term issue and we are already making great strides to deal with it.

"But what I experienced as a bus driver on Saturday worried me a lot so I wanted to share this with the wider public…

"I did three round trips on the 349 service from Bristol Bus Station to Keynsham starting at 11am, and following a break I did two more trips on the same route, finishing at 8pm.

"On each trip I was careful to leave 'on the button' and get away absolutely on time, but each time my progress was hampered by events that we couldn’t have foreseen or by the road system itself. This meant that for almost all the people waiting for the bus, it was late!


(Image: BristolLive)

"To give you all a flavour, during the day several things happened:

"Firstly, I was stopped entering Rupert Street by a minor road traffic collision which was cleared away quite quickly but delayed me by several valuable minutes.

"Negotiating the traffic system at Temple Meads, where the road system is being radically changed in a series of stages that is lasting two years, added an unscheduled seven minutes to the journey as we crawled through the sets of repeated traffic lights more slowly than you could have walked it.

READ MORE
First bus boss admits it will be 'few weeks' before Bristol bus nightmare is sorted
"In Keynsham, I was confronted with a set of pop-up traffic lights, courtesy of Wessex Water who were presumably doing some essential maintenance, which held me up towards evening for several minutes but had disappeared by the time of my next trip!

"The inbound section of the A4 in Brislington was terrible on every trip except the last one, adding five to seven minutes to the journey each time. And everywhere there was congestion and slow-moving traffic couple with long delays at traffic lights for no very apparent reason. Despite this, I did manage to accomplish all five trips because the route has seventeen minutes’ relief time to catch up after each round trip.


"I talked to the other drivers in the canteen. All around me there were similar stories of delay and indeed frustration at not being able to meet the needs of our customers. And this was on a relatively quiet sunny Saturday.

"We all know it’s worse in the week.

"For the buses to succeed we need more priority than so far has been provided – above all, the priority needs to be joined-up. Bus lanes are only part of the answer: In increasingly congested cities, all-too-often they just take us from one delay to the next!


READ MORE
Passengers lament 'terrible' FirstBus service following 'two weeks' of disruption
"As a bus operator we have apologised and take full responsibility for those issues that are within our control that have contributed to the reliability issues of late, and we are working hard to resolve those.


"But traffic congestion is the single biggest obstacle to running a reliable bus service. The causes of traffic congestion in our region are complex and manifold, and they need both a constructive mindset and joined-up action from all parties involved.

"Bristol deserves a better bus service, and I fully intend to deliver it – but we at First West of England cannot do this on our own," he added.

((If only managers in other areas would follow this example))
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grahame
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« Reply #669 on: October 25, 2018, 09:58:28 »

((If only managers in other areas would follow this example))

I have a very great deal of time for James who really is switched on to the problems faced on Bristol's congested roads.   Good to hear / read of him getting an update by driving on a Saturday; actually I doubt this was a one-off - I'm sure he got a better feeling for the current pulse, but suggestions that much was new to him are probably wide of the mark.
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WelshBluebird
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« Reply #670 on: October 25, 2018, 10:11:58 »

I have a very great deal of time for James who really is switched on to the problems faced on Bristol's congested roads.   Good to hear / read of him getting an update by driving on a Saturday; actually I doubt this was a one-off - I'm sure he got a better feeling for the current pulse, but suggestions that much was new to him are probably wide of the mark.

Indeed.
As much as I give First in Bristol and Bath a lot of stick, I must give credit where it is due and agree with your comments about James. Saw a few people also say he was driving a couple of weeks ago to in an attempt to fill in for the lack of drivers they have.
It can't be easy for First, even just the roadworks and congestion in the area would be enough to mess around with any operation, let alone a shortage of staff or buses. My main criticisms of them are to do with communication with passengers when things go wrong rather than the actual service a lot of the time.
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Phantom
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« Reply #671 on: October 25, 2018, 10:56:27 »

An interesting one, the 349 service is opertated by aBus and not First Bus, I wonder why he didn't go out in "one of his own"?
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johnneyw
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« Reply #672 on: October 25, 2018, 11:40:07 »

So, according to Mr Freeman a lot of the blame is down to those pesky customers wanting a bus, those ingrates in Bristol who don't want to work for Worst and those darned drivers who daren't risk their job commuting by bus.
Late buses aren't the biggest part of the issue to me anyway. On a personal level, over the last few month, the no show rate for my evening commute home is now passing 75% on an at best half hourly service. On occasion I've had to walk 6-7 miles home, often one or two miles.
This has been happening before the students came back (and the line closures) but then again, perhaps I'm just one of those pesky customers at the root of the problem.

Edit, speling correction.
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martyjon
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« Reply #673 on: October 25, 2018, 12:00:32 »

An interesting one, the 349 service is opertated by aBus and not First Bus, I wonder why he didn't go out in "one of his own"?

The 349 is one of a few services operated by aBus on behalf of First Bus in the Bristol Area, First Bus being the holder of the licence for the route and operates the route evenings. In this respect from Sunday 28th October these journeys will be curtailed at Keynsham Church and First have contracted Cityfox taxis to meet these services and provide transport for the passengers beyond the Church to their destinations.

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« Reply #674 on: October 25, 2018, 12:17:45 »

It seems to me that the causes of late running are largely predictable. For example: Students have turned up in September in previous years; the roadworks near Temple Meads were know about long in advance; general congestion due to volume of traffic happens each day. I can't believe that this was a surprise to the manager who went out to drive the bus. These factors all need to be taken into consideration when designing the timetable. The result would be longer (potentially much longer), more realistic journey times in the timetable, especially at peak times. The problem for the operator is that to maintain service frequency with longer journey times requires more vehicles in traffic. Sadly it appears that First are struggling to provide enough vehicles/drivers even for the current timetable.
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