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Rail replacement bus hits bridge

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yorkie

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/7381903.stm


A replacement bus service taking train passengers from Coventry to Northampton has struck a railway bridge.

The driver and six passengers on board the double decker bus were not injured but one passenger was badly shaken.

The crash happened at about 1230 BST in Attleborough Road, Nuneaton, Warks. Rail company London Midland said the bus driver was on a designated route.

The bus was hired because engineering work at Rugby had closed the West Coast Mainline.

The road was closed while the crash was investigated. There are long delays and motorists were advised to avoid the area. Witnesses have been asked to contact police.
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Makes a mockery of the requirement for route learning, gauge clearance tests, etc that are required for railways. Passengers who have paid through the roof for a ticket to use a mode of transport that is subject to incredibly stringent rules can suddenly have all those rules designed to keep them safe abolished and forced onto an unsafe mode of transport.

In the past, one line would close while adjacent lines would remain open. Now for H&S reasons both lines must be closed, forcing less safe transport methods to use. But the H&S authorities are, as we know, not interested in overall safety. Far from it. They don't really mind if a rail customer is involved in a crash - providing the crash happens on the roads. Then it's OK. :roll:

Will we ever get a level playing field? I seriously doubt it.
 
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To be fair in this circumstance I wouldn't fancy doing a track renewal under live OLE.
 
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yorkie

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JsT said:
To be fair in this circumstance I wouldn't fancy doing a track renewal under live OLE.
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If that's what they are doing this time then it is understandable that they have to close the line, but it often isn't.


87015 said:
Coventry to Northampton via Nuneaton ???
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There are buses Nuneaton-Coventry and Coventry-Nuneaton, with a 13 minute wait at Coventry. It may be the same bus (but is not advertised as such), so I guess it may have been described as "from Northampton and Coventry" which somehow got translated into "from Northampton to Coventry" and the person who should have been proof reading the article did not take Geography and doesn't know what a map looks like.
 
Mojo

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"London Midland said [it] was on a designated route."

So what happenned then? Was a double decker substituted for a single or is it an arched bridge which the driver passed too close to the edge?

I can't work out if the picture on the BBC News page is a library picture or not.
 
Tom B

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It is probably because the companies used for such contracts are cowboy independents - who have lots of buses knocking around of a weekend, and staff who wouldn't mind an extra day on o/t. It's rare to see competent companies on RRBS work.
 
CosherB

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Yorkie is spot on. There is no comparison between safety standards on rail (very high) and on casual buses (rock bottom cowboy). The HSE should recognise this when demanding rail closures which force rail passengers from a super-safe system onto a fundamentally unsafe transport system - and they dont! They operate in a vacuum! And they damed well shouldn't!

Of course, this situation brings into the spotlight the massively uneven playing field in safety expectations between road (just about anything goes) and rail, air etc where proper safety standards are demanded. And this has an economic effect as well - one reason why lorries can transport freight cheaper than rail can.

This whole unequal un-thought-out situation makes me very angry! <(

CS
 
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Talk about irony...

Well, as glad as I am that there's no injuries and no fatalities, i can only echo Yorkie's comments. Why on earth was the bus there in the first place? Why didn't the driver notice that the bridge was too low for the bus (there should be height signs on or beside the bridge)?
 
CosherB

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Polish driver would probably have not been there. I don't go on coaches very often (it really is the last resort) but when I have it's often apparent that driver hasn't a clue where he's going. He often relies on the passengers to tell him.

If I catch a Pendo from Wilmslow to Euston I don't expect to have to tell the driver "straight on to Crewe, turn left to stafford, left again down the trent valley, straight on at Rugby and you can't miss it".

:roll::roll::roll:
 
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