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First Group: General Discussion

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route101

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GaryMcEwan said:
It's the Gemini's that have been put onto the 7/7A and not the Trident's. I've rarely seen a Trident on a 5. It makes sense for the deckers to be put on the 7s seeing as it's constantly busy. I've never seen the 31 busy even the in peak journeys.
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5 is a mixture of singles and doubles at the mo , caley have a few 51 volvos at the moment .
The 31 that gets into town at 830 is full by Croftfoot a lot of Holyrood pupils get on it even when its decker it has a few standees . The 1647 and the 1717 departures from town are busy and can fill the decker right up . A lot of people who live in Castlemilk will make beeline for the 31 .
 
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RailUK Forums

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mancnq

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12 Jun 2011
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First cut another two major routes in Southampton this Sunday: the 12, which is immediately taken over by competitor Bluestar as an extension to their route 7, and the City Red 2 is chopped in half, surrendering the eastern half (city centre to Thornhill) to Bluestar 18 which First had been competing head on with.

This is after they cut route 1 back in October.

The comments on this page suggest they're not done with reducing services in Southampton. Looks to me like another Northampton could be on the cards.
 
B

Blackpudding

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5 Feb 2016
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394
mancnq said:
First cut another two major routes in Southampton this Sunday: the 12, which is immediately taken over by competitor Bluestar as an extension to their route 7, and the City Red 2 is chopped in half, surrendering the eastern half (city centre to Thornhill) to Bluestar 18 which First had been competing head on with.

This is after they cut route 1 back in October.

The comments on this page suggest they're not done with reducing services in Southampton. Looks to me like another Northampton could be on the cards.
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See from post #6513 onwards for the detail
 
F Great Eastern

F Great Eastern

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Aircoach Accounts to 25 March 2017 (from a better due diligence site)
Profit of €6.18m before tax down from profit of €8.08m last year with a dividend of €6m paid to First.

Revenue was €25.18m, down from €25.26m with operational costs rising from €15.3m to €17.86m - not exactly sure why there was such a sharp rise in these.

Administrative expenses reduced from €1.89m to €1.14m whilst staff numbers reduced from 194 to 191 but the wage bill increased from €6.84m to €7.12m.

It's likely that trading since March 2017 has been affected by intense competition on the Belfast route which has reduced in fairly decent price reductions and a small amount of customer bleed which I would expect to impact profits in the year to March 2018.
 
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Jordan Adam

Jordan Adam

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Aberdeen
Something i've said before and many people disagree with. But people forget a bus operator like First or Stagecoach etc are a company not a charity, therefor is something is not making them enough money it has to go. Aberdeen's Airyhall and Kingswells areas are good cases of this were services have been cut, people have complained so they've been somewhat restored but people still don't use them. You can't ask for a service if you're never going to use it. Airyhalls evening service has been deemed nonviable by both First and Stagecoach (Who have both tried services). The current service (15A) is operated by First as a variant of the day service 15 and is funded by the council. In reality it's just a dumping pit for the tax payer.
 
O

overthewater

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16 Apr 2012
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9,088
Jordan Adam said:
Something i've said before and many people disagree with. But people forget a bus operator like First or Stagecoach etc are a company not a charity, therefor is something is not making them enough money it has to go. Aberdeen's Airyhall and Kingswells areas are good cases of this were services have been cut, people have complained so they've been somewhat restored but people still don't use them. You can't ask for a service if you're never going to use it. Airyhalls evening service has been deemed nonviable by both First and Stagecoach (Who have both tried services). The current service (15A) is operated by First as a variant of the day service 15 and is funded by the council. In reality it's just a dumping pit for the tax payer.
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Do there still have that council service to Kingswell from the Crem?
 
V

Volvodart

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At the moment there is a tender supposed to be coming out for a service from city centre to Kingswells from April, but I am unsure what is happening to the Crem service after March. That is, if it will still run from ARI to the Crem or if it will stop altogether with the Council stopping funding it. Because of the change made to incorporate a service to Kingswells they made it unusable as a service for the Crem as it is only of use one way to the Crem with the return going all the way to Kingswells before the return to Aberdeen.
 
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Jordan Adam

Jordan Adam

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Not many Euro 2 B10BLEs have went up in flames (Only 1 as far as i'm aware, although a number of Euro 1 examples have). sad to see nonetheless
 
R

route101

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GaryMcEwan said:
One of Lanarkshire's (what appears to be) B10BLE's has went up in flames in Motherwell roughly two hours ago. Can't make out the fleet number is though from the video STV News has posted...

Video here...
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Went past it a few hours ago on the 904 coach . They are pretty good buses , dont see them as often in Glasgow City Centre and seen a lot nippier than the noew retired R to X scanias . I think caley have a few.
 
G

GaryMcEwan

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Bridgeton, Glasgow
route101 said:
Went past it a few hours ago on the 904 coach . They are pretty good buses , dont see them as often in Glasgow City Centre and seen a lot nippier than the noew retired R to X scanias . I think caley have a few.
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They are always in Glasgow City Centre as the majority of the Blantrye ones can be found on the 263.
 
Jordan Adam

Jordan Adam

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overthewater said:
I was going to look up the old online route maps from the old first website, However http://www.firstgroup.com has now been excluded from the Wayback Machine why?
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They were taken off around last May. Luckily i had already downloaded a number of old maps but sadly can't find any access to timetables etc. It's quite a shame as there were some real gems on there dating all the way back to the 90s.
 
vicbury

vicbury

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17 Mar 2012
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Lydney
I see in the latest edition of Bus and Coach Professional that First is working with a developer called Future Platforms to improve its apps
James Timperley, director of retail development, First Bus adds:
“The use of our mTickets app is exceeding expectations and continues to grow daily and so we are looking to evolve this app, with Future Platforms, as part of our ongoing commitment to make bus travel a convenient, simple and attractive experience for our customers.”
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Hopefully this spells the end of the abysmal mTicket app with something usable and reliable! Future Platforms seems to have developed apps for Dominos and the Premier League in the past so I'll be quietly optimistic for now.
 
O

overthewater

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Jordan Adam said:
They were taken off around last May. Luckily i had already downloaded a number of old maps but sadly can't find any access to timetables etc. It's quite a shame as there were some real gems on there dating all the way back to the 90s.
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Thats a shame, I wonder what there trying to hide?
 
N

nesw

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5 Jan 2013
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London
How odd that the url is now excluded. The archive content is hosted by Wayback Machine so it wouldn’t be affected by First creating space.

From Wayback Machine. ‘
How can I have my site's pages excluded from the Wayback Machine?

You can send an email request for us to review to info@archive.org with the URL (web address) in the text of your message.
 
D

Dentonian

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4 Dec 2017
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Apologies if I've missed them, but have First Manchester's figures been posted on here yet? Also, more generally, is there a breakdown of operational profits for individual services publicly available?
 
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