Whilst the bid was led by South Gloucestershire Council (as one council needed to act as lead), it was a joint award with Bristol City Council. https://news.bristol.gov.uk/news/fu...ross-bristol-bath-and-south-gloucestershire-2
Ha, I was being a little facetious too, but they were the only ones that came to mind as having recently become available. Didn't realise (or forgot) that 66723 had left, but as far as I am aware the rest haven't officially yet been withdrawn.
66723 entered service last week at Swansea Ravenhill depot, and is an indirect replacement for fire damaged Enviro300 67433, latterly based at Port Talbot.
On the First West of England website, SOME new timetables are shown under TIMETABLES - FORTHCOMING. These are all Bristol City timetables, nothing for north Somerset. Under 'Planned Changes', still no information. Travelwest shows new timetables but there are errors eg X7 journeys on Mon - Fri are shown operating to Walton St Mary but returning from Six Ways!
And there is nothing here about dramatic cuts to services like the X9. As above the new timetables in 'forthcoming' do not include any of the Weston and Excel services - in fact they only show minor changes for one week only and none of the significant changes - so we are still somewhat in the dark. Traveline still shows a dramatic cut to the X9. But is is possible that the future Traveline timetable is just a Weston board and not the full service? It just looks so odd otherwise and is not consistent with "There are minor changes to early morning and evening journeys to provide a more reliable and punctual service." I am not familiar with the Nailsea and Clevedon routes so this is rather a stab in the dark...
It also says Sundays will be every hour so i would be surprised if they ran it less frequently Monday - Friday. I think you're right; it might be just the Bristol or Weston board and not both (if they are both running the route that is otherwise could just be a mistake).
I sware this had an added bit earlier!
From my understanding, Leeds sent two or three StreetDecks down. Must have returned with the new influx of E200MMCs at SPS
I got on the 11:00 departure from Broad Quay yesterday. It was good. I got on Bristol LD8518 972EHW and XJJ653V, both on the 349. I got LD8518 972EHW to Keynsham then got XJJ653V back to Bristol. It was a good day out. I also spotted M645RCP and LD8515 969EHW. I also saw FD02 UKR and AP04BUS, all on the 349.
The Excel services have been split between Weston and Marlborough Street, I understand, to improve efficiency. However the X2 should solely be Weston and X8 solely Bristol worked.
A novel way to brand the service, as geographical branding wouldn't really work.
In the absence of a geographic "hook" and being multiple services, it makes sense for those to be branded in that way. Mind you, the 1/2 have the one example (37335) being branded for Citylines 2 but I can't recall how much interworking goes on between the 75/76.
As you know there has been a lot of interworking with the 90s, so assuming that arrangement continues, we could perhaps see red fronted streetdecks painted in this way too, as Citylines south wouldn't work for the 75/76.
It changes every time the services get redrawn. Over recent times, 75, 76, 90, 91, 92 and 96 have all been seeming randomly interworking across Hengrove. No idea if it continues from the latest revision.
It will apparently be one of the Bath Solo SRs. Anything else will get stuck around Specklemead in Paulton and Greenacres at Midsomer Norton. It was tight enough when Somerbus had YJ64DHU!
I thought it probably had to be
It is becoming a bit of a mishmash of branding, some and individual routes, east and now blue.
They're all under the Citylines banner but one size can't fit all. It's not a big deal really.
The branding is consistent (Citylines with a block colour), the sub brand is whatever is operationally possible so a colour is the most basic (for cross city routes), a direction is the next level (for inter-worked routes) and a route number if the allocation can be kept consistent. It's a very good balance between marketing each route (which would obviously be the ideal) and the reality of actually resourcing the vehicle run out (if you cant get the operational side of the company to support things like this then you end up like Stagecoach Cheltenham and Gloucester where it's unusual to get the route number on the front to agree with the route number on the side!).
