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First South West (Kernow & Buses of Somerset)

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Baxenden Bank

Baxenden Bank

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23 Oct 2013
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4,743
Goldfish62 said:
What a mess!
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Pretty standard stuff where there is a tendered service provided by a different operator than the commercial element of the same route. Perhaps Cornwall has not had this for a while.
Not exactly a 'brave new dawn' for the bus users of Cornwall though.
Anyone with a season ticket ought to be able to get a proportionate refund if the new service is materially different than when they bought their ticket. Potential difficulties if some level of service is still provided but not exactly suited to the ticket holders needs eg daytime service still valid but you only travel in the evening which has a new operator not accepting your season. I'm thinking of a 3 month or annual ticket here as I see from the leaflet that monthly tickets will be accepted. Good practice would be to offer a refund anyway.
 
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Goldfish62

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Baxenden Bank said:
Pretty standard stuff where there is a tendered service provided by a different operator than the commercial element of the same route. Perhaps Cornwall has not had this for a while.
Not exactly a 'brave new dawn' for the bus users of Cornwall though.
Anyone with a season ticket ought to be able to get a proportionate refund if the new service is materially different than when they bought their ticket. Potential difficulties if some level of service is still provided but not exactly suited to the ticket holders needs eg daytime service still valid but you only travel in the evening which has a new operator not accepting your season. I'm thinking of a 3 month or annual ticket here as I see from the leaflet that monthly tickets will be accepted. Good practice would be to offer a refund anyway.
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No, I agree it's standard stuff but it's usually to the detriment of the passenger. Not really the message that CC have been conveying.
 
Baxenden Bank

Baxenden Bank

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4,743
Goldfish62 said:
No, I agree it's standard stuff but it's usually to the detriment of the passenger. Not really the message that CC have been conveying.
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Agreed.

I think it is fair to say that things have not gone smoothly since First failed to win the big contract.

How people regards First's behaviour is clearly mixed.
 
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Andyh82

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19 May 2014
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4,546
Goldfish62 said:
What a mess!
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When I came down to Cornwall 2 summers ago, I travelled for 3 days for what was then £24

This involved loops such as Truro-St Austell-Newquay-Truro and Penzance-Helston-Redruth-Penzance

When I visit this summer, how much would the same trips cost. This is the main concern to me.
 
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Andyh82

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Lizard1324 said:
Does that mean there will be 4 additional open top routes?
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Looking at the A4 & A1/A2/A3 timetables, it looks like there must be changes after 24 May as the first and last A4 bus no longer seems to run on/off the A1/A2/A3
 
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Goldfish62

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Accelerator59 said:
According to this, there’s 5 brand new Enviro 200MMCs, some 64 plate E200s from Go Ahead London, one 57 plate from East Yorkshire and an E400 also from London. https://www.ukbuses.co.uk/fleet/plymouthcitybus.pdf
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I think there's far more than five new E200s. From posted photos there seems to have been a steady stream arriving over the past couple of weeks. There will also be the 16 going over from FK.
 
richw

richw

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Andyh82 said:
Looking at the A4 & A1/A2/A3 timetables, it looks like there must be changes after 24 May as the first and last A4 bus no longer seems to run on/off the A1/A2/A3
Click to expand...

there are further first timetable changes at whitsun. A look at some of the timetables gives this away as mentions only valid until xx May
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

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I wonder whether the M6s will sometimes in practice run in pairs to avoid some of the hassle in Mousehole. When not all the required buses are available for the M6, First have allocated a d/d to operate Newlyn Bridge journeys from PZ, and I've seen them operate a minute or two apart from the full journey on many occasions.
 
MB162435

MB162435

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Looks like the PR1 is every 15 minutes on a Saturday under the new contract with the service operating until 21:30 as per the weekday, not the current 10 minute frequency
 
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Goldfish62

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Busaholic said:
I wonder whether the M6s will sometimes in practice run in pairs to avoid some of the hassle in Mousehole. When not all the required buses are available for the M6, First have allocated a d/d to operate Newlyn Bridge journeys from PZ, and I've seen them operate a minute or two apart from the full journey on many occasions.
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What you're thinking of was Summer 2018 when there was a 2bph service instead of the enhanced 3bph service. It couldn't cope at times and needed extras running. Where larger buses have been substituted due to breakdowns they operate to Mousehole turning at the Coastguard's.

The situation in Mousehole can be avoided by one bus waiting at the Coastguard's until the previous one comes up from the harbour.
 
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Nickincornwall

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28 Feb 2020
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Plymouth, Plymouth
richw said:
full size Scania omnicitys and the Scania version of eclipse body has turned up today for GCB... Good local knowledge wouldn’t bring in full size single deckers, we all know they are too long for majority of the routes. They’d be ok for Tinner evening journeys probably!
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Firstly, full sized singles are good for 21/22 plus evening 27 in St Austell area.

Secondly you assume no juggling with the existing pcb fleet. For example the 25 round the Barbican and West Hoe is usually one of buses 160/1 or 250/1 all short Enviro 200 but Sundays are full sized enviro as they work with the 5. But we have had deckers, full sized saloons and short saloons, so there could well be internal juggling which happens.

Whatever is allocated it will be appropriate to the service and will be able to be driven etc since the senior management have decades of experience in Cornwall, with Western Natiomal, Truronian and Western Greyhound.
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

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Goldfish62 said:
The situation in Mousehole can be avoided by one bus waiting at the Coastguard's until the previous one comes up from the harbour.
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This would be ideal - I only wish a similar situation was in place in Goldsithney on the U4, where for most of the day two buses in opposite directions are timed to coincide at the worst possible place i.e. the junction of Fore Street and South Road. What happens most often in practice is that the Penryn bound bus has to continue up Fore Street past the turning in the hope that the Penzance bound bus can complete the tight left turn and get out of the way, allowing the Penryn bus to reverse and make the right turn into South Road. On occasion, this happens without difficulty, but sometimes it can prove extremely problematic, like last Wednesday lunchtime, when everything came to a standstill owing to a build-up of cars in Fore Street behind the Penryn bus, which prevented the PZ bus from making its left turn. In the meantime, traffic from the St Hilary direction, including my car, sat wondering how it would unfold and hoping that an emergency vehicle wasn't going to appear.
 
MB162435

MB162435

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richw said:
there are further first timetable changes at whitsun. A look at some of the timetables gives this away as mentions only valid until xx May
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Will Kernow do a printed book version for the end of the month, if there are more changes in May?

Or will they just update the book in May when they print more copies
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

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carlberry said:
I hope all the people who complained about First not publishing details of subsidised services in their booklet will be just as vocal about a website that claims to be 'Transport for Cornwall' but only contains details for a fraction of the transport services in Cornwall!
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The choice of that name could be considered disputatious, if not provocative, and I'm unclear, having read every word and sentence of the website, who precisely 'owns' the brand, given the mention of First Kernow under the 'how we're funded' section. If Cornwall Council have signed off on this, their naivety is being exposed, and that bodes badly. Lucky for some the local elections are cancelled (officially, postponed, but we'll see.)
 
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Goldfish62

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carlberry said:
I hope all the people who complained about First not publishing details of subsidised services in their booklet will be just as vocal about a website that claims to be 'Transport for Cornwall' but only contains details for a fraction of the transport services in Cornwall!
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Any particular reason why you think people won't be just as vocal, if not more? Being critical of the actions of one company does not automatically mean support for another.
 
richw

richw

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Busaholic said:
The choice of that name could be considered disputatious, if not provocative, and I'm unclear, having read every word and sentence of the website, who precisely 'owns' the brand, given the mention of First Kernow under the 'how we're funded' section. If Cornwall Council have signed off on this, their naivety is being exposed, and that bodes badly. Lucky for some the local elections are cancelled (officially, postponed, but we'll see.)
Click to expand...

It says it’s a partnership of PCB, ots, hopleys, Summercourt on one page.
Then at the bottom it says it’s part of the Go Ahead group.
 
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embers25

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16 Jul 2009
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didbygraham said:
Only just gone live and presumably still being uploaded / updated as only a few timetables listed so far.
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The ones that are there are full of issues. Several have no explanation of codes, the 11 opens a random webpage, not the timetable and the description says Wad not Wadebridge, the 12 has errors in timings and why is the 12a separate at the bottom. Separate 16 and 16a timetables is also silly. The Gorran Havern service is just bizarre, particularly the midday loops in Meva and that it doesnt show the St Austell loop properly so it looks like they dont serve the bus station when they do. Also, on the 10 is it legal to show it all as a through service due to length.
Also, surely this site should show all services as otherwise people now need 2 sites, 1 for Kernow and one for GA. Lastly, how are people supposed to know this isn't the full final timetable list as it doesn't say 'more to come'. This is embarrassingly bad and you can see why Kernow published their timetable as you clearly can't rely on GA to give a reliable timetable yet...despite being only 2 weeks out.
 
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