Reading buses - merged posts

bobm

Administrator
Hero Member

Posts: 10143

Reading buses - merged posts

« on: July 01, 2018, 17:56:24 »

Braved the heat to pay a visit to the Reading Buses annual open day.

Usual attractions at such events - bookstalls, BBQ, rides through the bus wash and a free shuttle from the station. Also the chance to look around the control room and, in a sign of the times, a chance to have your name in lights - on the electronic destination display on the front of a double decker.

Reading have colour coded their routes for a number of years and the range of vehicles were on display during the day before ending the afternoon with a parade around the town.

Also a chance to see some buses from Reading's past.

This one brought back some memories - I remembering catching it to school and it was old then and only pushed into service when there was nothing else

..and I had forgotten about this Videmat ticket machine. The trick was to put as many coins to make up your fare as possible (and you could use halfpennies then). The machine, after making a lot of clanking noises as the coins were checked, then produced a ticket with a photocopy of the coins inserted. So the big attraction? The more coins, the longer the ticket!


	Logged

CyclingSid

Data Manager
Hero Member

Posts: 2093

Hockley viaduct

Reading shows the way??

« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2023, 07:09:45 »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-67241888
Possibly more of a puff for the mayor?

Quote

In recent weeks Reading has been joined by Greater Manchester in bringing local bus services back under local authority control and Merseyside is also looking to go down the same route.

Not sure that reads right, I think Reading Buses have been under LA control for a long time (or were they "controlled" through a shell company)


	Logged

Ralph Ayres

Transport Scholar
Hero Member

Posts: 396

Re: Reading shows the way??

« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2023, 10:49:57 »

Sloppy journalism. As I understand it, Reading council simply owns one of several companies running buses in Reading, effectively in competition with any other operator who chooses to run when and where they like in Reading (subject to meeting certain legal requirements, registering the route etc) . That's very different from Greater Manchester which plans the overall network, sets fares and does a tendering arrangement for the right to run each route.

I'm sure there's something for other local authorities to learn from both approaches.


	Logged

Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

Pages: [1]

« previous next »