SSmith2009
Member
I'm sure the E12's with Centrebus have a latch to open the windows but can moved over to be locked.
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Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Bus News
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m79900
Member
Why is it that the threes versa are so bad compared to ones on the my15 and sixes?
I think it’s down to the quality when they left the factory, as well as different maintenance per depot. The 11 plates 801-809 aren’t too bad (split these up and you have 806-809 which were new to Derby and are better by a margin), the 12 plates 810-827 are absolutely awful, the 63 plates 828-835 are just as bad however the 14 plates 836-851 are amazing.
It might also be down to the engine type as 801-835 are all Mercedes however 836-851 are the more powerful Cummins engine which are better in terms of reliability
m79900
Member
thanks
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Still not a patch on the scanias they replaced though!
All fun an games around East Midlands Airport today as Download festival is back in town for the weekend. Even the traffic around Derby city center seemed to be a bit slower than normal. Bus times seems to show some very large delays to the routes around the Airport and some small ones to other routes around the area:
Midland Classic 9: 1425 Burton to Airport made it to Melbourne at 1800 2h 25 late. Looks like the route will be split at Ashby according to the facebook page.
Kinchbus Skylink (yellow): delays of up to 4 hours.
Trent Skylink (blue): not a bad a the kinch skylink as looks like most buses are stepping back in Nottingham.
Trent Skylink express: not so express today with the 1245 ex Nottingham arriving at East Midlands Airport 4 hours late at 1731.
Trent My15: Like the blue Skylink not so back with 40-80 min delays.
Midland Classic 9: 1425 Burton to Airport made it to Melbourne at 1800 2h 25 late. Looks like the route will be split at Ashby according to the facebook page.
Kinchbus Skylink (yellow): delays of up to 4 hours.
Trent Skylink (blue): not a bad a the kinch skylink as looks like most buses are stepping back in Nottingham.
Trent Skylink express: not so express today with the 1245 ex Nottingham arriving at East Midlands Airport 4 hours late at 1731.
Trent My15: Like the blue Skylink not so back with 40-80 min delays.
Bet that was thrilling. This had a knock on effect on EMR today too - delays to services through East Midlands Parkway with staff unable to reach on time due to significant travel delays caused my train and others to be late out of London, according to guard and EMR's website at the time.
Out of interest considering how late most services were running yesterday due to Download Festival how would this have affected drivers breaks and also the drivers driving hours? I would have thought depending on how duties are worked that it could have had a knock on on other services considering how late drivers were running and not being able to take off their next piece on time.
Top delay award going to the Kinchbus Skylink which got to the airport about 5hrs20mins late, and an honourable mention to the Download shuttle from East Midlands Parkway to the festival site, a distance of about 8 miles, which took just under 7hrs to complete the journey!
TheManOnThe172
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Do bus operators get consulted when local authorities decide whether to offer a licence to a major event? (In an ideal world, someone like Transport Focus would also be consulted, and make appropriate representations - but as far as I can tell, they mostly just write things down and put them in filing cabinets).
Modest delays to those not attending an event must be considered unavoidable collateral damage, I guess - and it is reasonable to expect people to plan journeys to accommodate a bit of delay. But how much delay is it reasonable to expect people to cope with? Nobody times their journey, even to an exam, hospital appointment, wedding, funeral, or flight to accommodate a delay of four or five hours.
At some point, surely someone should say No to licensing of an event with arrangements that can reasonably be anticipated to see innocent people delayed for several hours.
Modest delays to those not attending an event must be considered unavoidable collateral damage, I guess - and it is reasonable to expect people to plan journeys to accommodate a bit of delay. But how much delay is it reasonable to expect people to cope with? Nobody times their journey, even to an exam, hospital appointment, wedding, funeral, or flight to accommodate a delay of four or five hours.
At some point, surely someone should say No to licensing of an event with arrangements that can reasonably be anticipated to see innocent people delayed for several hours.
Sometimes - but it depends on the event.
And even then, councils don’t have to take operators concerns into account - last year, there was a cycle race through Newark-on-Trent, shutting several roads in and around the town.
Operators weren’t consulted until what can only be described as very late on, and even then, only certain operators were included in those discussions. Those operators naturally objected, had meetings with the council, and the net result following all that was… nothing. The race went ahead as originally planned by the council, and the operators had no option but to suspend all services in the town from 1400 until close of play.
And even then, councils don’t have to take operators concerns into account - last year, there was a cycle race through Newark-on-Trent, shutting several roads in and around the town.
Operators weren’t consulted until what can only be described as very late on, and even then, only certain operators were included in those discussions. Those operators naturally objected, had meetings with the council, and the net result following all that was… nothing. The race went ahead as originally planned by the council, and the operators had no option but to suspend all services in the town from 1400 until close of play.
markymark2000
On Moderation
Generally no and if it's anything like Creamfields in Runcorn, Arriva has no clue what is going on, puts out no notices to passengers about the delays or closed stops. Not do they tell drivers what stops are open or closed so it leads to a lot of confusion and every driver then does their own thing. You can't call the depot as they signal doesn't work due to the amount of people there.
What I often find doesn't help these festivals though is that they don't try to get people to travel sustainably and as such people drive and the roads nearby are not suitable to accommodate cars for upto 90,000 people.
You only have to look at download. Pick up/drop off is on the festival site. The bus link to East Mids Parkway for the train connection, running HOURLY!
East Miss Parkway could have become a large transport hub for the festival. Huge car park which is often disused, use that for a pick up/drop off point. Run the buses every 20 minutes minimum so all trains are accommodated and you're taking pickup/drop off pax. Work with Megabus for through ticketing on their buses which stop at East Mids Parkway. You're onto a winner. The issue is, the festival's don't care how people get there or back. Plus the more traffic that there is, the more people will drop off in the "no stopping" zones which means more money for someone (police, council or private company)
East Midlands Parkway may be running hourly, but it's more frequent from the airport and hotels, and every 30 minutes from Derby yesterday, Saturday and Sunday, every 20 minutes today and Friday, and on Sunday right, runs through the night then "every few minutes" to clear people from the site.
Derby timetable: https://downloadfestival.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Download-23-Shuttle-Bus-Derby.pdf
East Mids timetable: https://downloadfestival.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Download-23-Shuttle-Bus-Parkway-v2.pdf
Do Megabus serve East Midlands Parkway? It doesn't show as a pick-up or drop-off point on their website.
Where are the drivers going to come from for these extra services? Have you forgotten Stagecoach and the Commonwealth Games?
Oh they absolutely do. There is a link on the festival website to The Big Green Coach, the official travel partner, which lists 66 pick-ups, if I've counted correctly: https://www.biggreencoach.co.uk/events/download-festival-tickets-coach-travel. Then NatEx are running 11 routes on top of that. (https://timetables.nationalexpress.com/routes, and filter by download"). Megabus show 9 destinations if you select Download Festival as a pick-up. How many organisations that "don't care" have an official travel partner?
Sorry, but I beg to differ with a large part of your post!
(Apologies for not copying the text as a quote: the table on Big Green Bus is huge, NatEx can only be seen by filtering the standard list on their website, and Megabus likewise. The shuttle buses are PDFs).
Not for some years. And before that the routes had been declining and getting shorter. At their peak there were 9 per day.
markymark2000
On Moderation
East Mids Parkway would have got train passengers from London, though - much easier as well as some other destinations. There's also the potential for the drop and go style thing there to reduce traffic on local roads.
They did until a few months ago as they were selling Megatrain tickets.
Across all companies in the area, it could work. That's how Parklife works in Manchester. Stagecoach get the contract, they sub out to other firms to get more buses. Creamfields was the same in 2021. Other firms ran buses on behalf of Arriva/Warrington's Own Buses. Plenty of options. Doesn't have to be run in house.
Everyone partners with big green coach. It's a great thing called lip service. Loads of festivals do it, doesn't meant they're serious about getting people to travel sustainably. National Express may have just seen an opportunity to make money. They now have quite a growing events division.
Megabus tend to be a reseller in some way for Big Green Coach or other event companies. One of the only festival/event buses thet Megabus run is Silverstone.
Yes, they were serving it until very recently. I've just checked and it seems to be removed for now but it was still served until a few months ago as it was on the Megatrain thing.
I thought megatrain hadn't returned post pandemic. Do you know when it restarted? I used to use it several times a year, though it became less useful over time - there started out being three a day to Keighley (and beyond to Skipton, Colne, Burnley), but then the late service (the most useful to me) started to only run to Bradford and then at least one of the others only served Huddersfield.
The megabusplus service (coach connecting into train) never restarted, but EMR continued to supply a number of megatrain only tickets for journeys on the London to Sheffield/Nottingham route until around September last year. East Mids Parkway and Chesterfield dropped off the destinations list not long after that, what with them not being served by coach services either.
I used to book these fairly regularly and the last booking I can see was for a trip I made in August. Presumably the megatrain agreement ended when the megabus brand was transferred over to Citylink.
Trent are normally quite good in that the drivers stay on a specific route so for them the delays may not have spread to other routes. Midland Classic have sometimes restarted services in Burton with a new bus and driver if there is a delay on the network (normally the A38!)
Whilst yes it would be better to have a more frequent service to 'Parkway' I would imagine more people head to Derby where there are more buses both Skylink and the Notts and Derby shuttle. Also the fleet needs to cover the normal day to day work which a large part is school work for the decker's hence the lower frequency from around 1430-1500. When I use to get Notts and Derby for school you could tell when it did a download run earlier in the day!
Blimey that must be some record. Fortunately only 2h50min on the 1400 from East Mids Parkway today. Passed the 1530 Skylink ex Derby which was about 30 mins late going out of Derby. Seems to have lost 1h 50mins since then so traffic seems to have built up again this afternoon/evening.
station_road
Member
The shuttles are run by Notts and Derby, a separate company to TrentBarton (although still part of the Wellglade group, they mostly operate independently - there is no mention of the shuttles from Derby direct to Download on the Trent website for example, just the regular Skylink buses to the airport and then shuttle from there)
STINT47
Member
Trentbarton are not short of drivers and it's now very rare to see a service being cancelled due to no driver.
A number of drivers are helping out at Download as part of additional /overtime before or after their shifts or on rest days. There has been little change to the number of cancelled services this week due to no drivers.
The day to day cancellations on Trentbarton are largely now down no bus being available, with some parts of the fleet really struggling for reliability.
The start of most days see depots being short of buses to meet the full service and its not unusual to see several break down during the day.
Trentbarton must be spending a small fortune at the moment on CWT recovery as they seem to end up towing several buses a day.
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Flange Squeal
Established Member
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What do we think the main reason(s) for this may be? I've read that parts supplies have been affecting operators, but is there any evidence of anything else such as a shortage of maintenance staff etc?
Looking at the daily list of cancellations, today, Monday 12th June being a prime example, the assertion that TrentBarton are not short of drivers is simply not true!
cnjb8
Established Member
Have a look at Bustimes, there are lots of vehicles that weren't tracking today
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Bear in mind a lot of drivers would be working over on the Download buses; it's a big contract for Notts & Derby and pulls drivers from Trent too. As a result, anyone wanting overtime would already have it, so once a few people are off sick there's no one free.
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Andy Pacer
Established Member
Doesn't necessarily mean they weren't out there though.
Does the list say which cancellations are due to driver shortages?
No. At the top of the list on Facebook it says 'predominantly due to staff shortages'
STINT47
Member
The reasons for the cancellations are given on an internal system used by Trentbarton. The reason is nearly always no bus rather than no driver at the moment.
derbybusdepot
Member
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- 17 Dec 2015
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- 358
Seems to now be a valid excuse, blaming the fact that there is a parts shortage, or shortage of engineers.
Personally I think any company that cosistantly fails to operate scheduled services should have government subsidies reduced.
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