How would you speed the journey up, given that in the absence of much (if any) e-2-e demand the route’s viability depends on intermediate traffic? It may just be a case of accepting that for inter-urban routes like this the bus will never be able to compete with the car on journey times.
That’s more a problem in a privatized bus market, if you want to know a solution then you could run a Slough to Aylesbury service that is similar to the former route 353 and 55 except maybe could serve Wexham Park Hospital as it is a major destination.
The 353 used to be my local bus, no one ever who got on at Slough stayed on until Berkhamsted, let alone Amersham/Chesham…
I updated my post now to be more specific
What I’m saying is there has never been a market for travel between Slough and Amersham, Arriva tried what you’re suggesting diverting the 353 to Hemel Hempstead but to no avail. There simply isn’t the demand for long distance bus travel in that part of the world and there never has been.I updated my post now to be more specific
I’m suggesting a through service form Aylesbury to Slough. The point of this service isn’t necessarily for it to be busy and packed with passengers, it’s supposed to improve mobility in that part of Buckinghamshire as that’s what buses are supposed to do.
I’m suggesting a through service form Aylesbury to Slough. The point of this service isn’t necessarily for it to be busy and packed with passengers, it’s supposed to improve mobility in that part of Buckinghamshire as that’s what buses are supposed to do.
Best way to improve connections between Aylesbury and Slough would be an express bus Slough -Maidenhead - High Wycombe and then the HW to Aylesbury train, with integrated ticketing. A through bus will be too slow to attract enough passengers to pay for any through service
But why would you travel on a bus all the way from Slough to Aylesbury when it’s quicker to go via High Wycombe? Hertfordshire tried recently with this sort of service and now they’re withdrawing one of the routes because no one used it.
The point of the through service is not for people to take the full journey. It’s mainly to provide direct connections from towns like Chalfont St Giles to Aylesbury, Great Missenden or Amersham Hosptial, and maybe Great Missenden and Amersham Hospital to Wexham Park Hospital and Slough.
Yes, we’ve received two copies of the leaflet for the 850. It shows what a good service it is. However the timetable shows a few reductions at shoulder time. The second bus into Wycombe has gone and the half hourly service now starts at 4.30 instead of 5.30. I hope that Carousel make sure that the buses after 4.30 are reliable and punctual or else potential passengers will be put off. The last bus from Wycombe remains far too early, it would be more useful if there were one or two later journeys. The service is not good for connecting with the train at Wycombe but the geography of the town makes that difficult. But it remains a very good service.
Is it too expensive to run a low demand trip run to increase passenger numbers on the other trips?
That and a challenge on driver numbers
What kind of answer is "That"?
A response to your question…
….and that they have been busy introducing additional services with a consequent impact on driver resources.
It's not really a good response just so you know.
As with so many things it depends on the specific circumstances. It will probably require an extra bus, if you are talking about filling a gap caused by peak running times, otherwise you assume they would have one in there so you are looking at it needing to generate several hundred pounds per day extra revenue. It may result in needing an extra driver shift, particularly if you are talking about start/end of the day as it may take the existing duty over hours, which may be considered difficult to accommodate if you have been expanding anyway recently or if you are struggling for drivers anyway so it may not be worth doing and risking reliability on the core services (& again an extra driving shift you are looking at needing to find significant sums of money).
It's not just the marginal cost of that trip it also depends on how else that resource can be deployed.
I missed a comma out between That, and the next word, whilst doing it on my iphone, and I had referenced your statement above. Still, if you now wish to have a more considered response...
It's not that heated
Should've been here for the First Group discussions in 2013 (that's sounding like a Vietnam veteran, tbh). To be honest, that sort of addition of a late service is perhaps something that BSIP funding is also designed to facilitate. As you say, diverting the last 32A from Asda and down to Marlow might be a cute way of doing it though how that would impact on drivers' hours is another consideration.I share your feelings for the staff locally at Arriva. As far as could be seen the divers were doing their best but there were too few buses allocated and inadequate maintenance resources - anything roadworthy was thrown out in service. They did have a good try to operate a decent network but for whatever reason were not given the resources to make it work.It's not that heated
I do feel for the Arriva staff locally. They were hamstrung by decisions from corporate and a consolidation with one main operator makes sense.
I wonder. How are the ex Arriva drivers doing at Carousel. Are they like well accepted into the team or has their been turmoil considering Carousel and Arriva were big rivals.
Given that some will have moved between companies already I can't see a tribal issue. If there had been head to head competition like the bus wars in Preston or South Manchester there could have been some animosity but it is not as if Carousel ran Arriva off the road.
Even where there appears to be quite hot competition it rarely really affects most drivers in that manner, if it manifests in real animosity it tends to be between management because they are the ones making the decisions. Drivers are always moving between local operators so this won't have been anything special in that sense. In my experience it was more difficult to get drivers to treat competition as something to be aware of and act accordingly (getting on to stand early to load to prevent the other operator sneaking in front and boarding all the passengers) though as so of the incidents in Preston showed if you go too hard it can get a little out of control so management will tend to try and avoid creating animosity between operators in the drivers and just concentrate on professional reasons for concentrating on certain actions.