NSW/Sydney/Newcastle - Buses

[Raichase]

Random Photo of a Mercedes Bus in Sydney

The bus above, is probably about thirty years old? Perhaps a little younger. It's loud, doesn't have fabric seats, no airconditioning, the windows get jammed open and/or closed, it's rough riding, isn't wheelchair accessible, and generally looks outdated when you compare it to the rest of the fleet.

The Brookvale/Mona Vale depots that operate the buses I catch also have (among one or two others), the following:

Volvo B10BLE

Volgren, Low Floor

Now, when a timetable says "a", it means the bus is wheelchair accessible. That means it is one of the latter two buses. Even on non "a" timetabled services, you will often get one of the latter two.

I've had services cancelled, or run late, only on those two buses, always due to technical problems.

One morning, while waiting for my 6:53am service, it never showed up. Turns out it had major mechanical problems, and the service was cancelled (I wrote a page and a half complaint). Another morning, I got on, saw my usual driver, smiled, and he stopped me. Turned out that the back door was broken, and was prone to randomly opening. Sure enough, operating at speed down the hill of the main road, to the bridge, pop, open goes the back door, and the emergency breaks kick in. Happened again a few minutes later.

I was on one of the Volvo B10BLES, that was not going into gear properly. The driver would close the doors, and accellerate, and it would roar, then suddenly lurch forward. Wasn't the drivers fault, I'd seen her driving those buses before, with no incided.

I've had broken airconditioning, broken doors, broken ticket machines, you name it.

The old buses? No problems. They may be generally crap for commuters, but they get you there on time, without breaking down. I don't know why they can't build more buses like that.

Please note, this is not a commentary on Brookvale/Mona Vale depots, or their drivers. They run one of the most professional public transport operations in Sydney, always have the cleanest buses, friendliest drivers, most on time services, often-non overcrowded buses.

They do a top job. It's a pity the hardware lets them down so often*.

*Thats not to say it's a frequent occourance - once every two months or so would be a good guess. However, when you compare the reliability of the modern buses to the old ones, thats where it gets silly.

[beeb375]

Some interesting points, it's a dilemma for transport companies the world over I imagine, do we keep the reliable old buses and risk commuter backlash, or go with the new but unproven technology?

I don't use the buses around MY Newcastle at all (the Metro is quicker, more interesting, and free for me), but I'm pretty sure they must have one of the most modern fleets in the country. The majority of the Stagecoach buses are these things:



I was shocked when I went to Manchester and found things like this still driving around!:



As to the relevance of all this to the topic.... Erm, well I guess I failed there, I have no idea of their reliability since I never travel on them!

[Kevo00]

Lol, I remember when all the buses in Newcastle were in the same yellow and white colours as the Metro - much better.

Isn't Magic Bus part of Stagecoach? Perhaps its like Megabus but over short distances lol.

[beeb375]

I think it is yeah, I was on one on what someone told me is the busiest bus corridor in Europe, Manchester's Oxford Road, apparently the regular, non-packed to the brim shiny new Stagecoach buses cost A LOT more to ride, whereas Magic bus was very cheap. I assume it's just a budget Stagecoach targetted at students.

[Ameecher]

Undoubtley city bus travel is very good with buses being frequent and often reliable as well as cheap. London buses cost £1 (over 16, 50p for a child) for an unlimited distance, within the London zones which is a rather large area, about 25 to 30miles in Diameter (although the buses don't go all the way) so it's £1 a route basically. Where I used to live in London I could step out my front door and flag down a bus in under 5 minutes to where I wanted to go but then I moved to the country....

Admittedly I live fairly close to a railway station (which sees 1 train every 2 hours in each direction) but the bus service is quite frankly ridiculous. There are 5 buses a day to my village in each direction and they don't go to anywhere particularily useful at School times, when Sanders Coaches have a contract to run with the County Council to provide a school bus service the service is packed and extremely hot (Air con hasn't been heard of in Norfolk) because there are only 3 opening windows per bus. The company does have buses like this but they are used exclusively on routes to Norwich while us school kids are crammed onto these small and uncomfortable vehicles and pay £1.05 (child fare, adult = £2.10) to travel the 5 miles home, and even then I have to walk another mile and a bit to get to my part of the village.

Then there are the days when the driver sees the school with 700 odd pupils waiting for various buses and fails to stop....

[/rant]

[beeb375]

You have to pay for your school bus? That kinda sucks, if you lived more than 3 miles away you got free bus travel at my school, contracted out to private companies by the council like yours, just free.

[EirikhO]

Here we have free schoolbus if we live longer away than 4 kms from school, but then we need a Bus card, wich I dont have, and I live 5 KMs from school. So I have to pay. sucks.

[Ameecher]

You have to pay for your school bus? That kinda sucks, if you lived more than 3 miles away you got free bus travel at my school, contracted out to private companies by the council like yours, just free.

Yes, I live 6 miles away but outside the official catchment area for the school I go to, the catchment area runs down the middle of my street and I'm on the wrong side of the line so should go to the other school in another town but that is a really bad school full of drug addicted, smoking chavs. I want to do something with my life and that means paying £1.05, it's only for 9 more days anyway.

Edit: actually in September I'll have to pay an adult fare and go even further because my college is further away! Gah!

[Kevo00]

Why don't Stagecoach just make all their buses the same price then? I don't think there is any point premium pricing local buses as people will put up with discomfort for a short distance to save a few pence.

Economies of scale and buses - it is annoying that busses are so pricey in the countryside - in London its great that its £1 and in Edinburgh its £1 too, or £2.30 for all day. At my parent's house in Durham though its £1.60 or so single or £2.70 return for 3 miles. I drive much more there!

[Ameecher]

Economies of scale and buses - it is annoying that busses are so pricey in the countryside - in London its great that its £1 and in Edinburgh its £1 too, or £2.30 for all day. At my parent's house in Durham though its £1.60 or so single or £2.70 return for 3 miles. I drive much more there!

In London and other Large cities the services are heavily subsidised or so well used that prices can be that low.

[orudge]

The buses in St Andrews aren't bad, we have some nice shiny new Stagecoach buses serving the main 99 route (St Andrews -> Leuchars railway station -> Dundee). They're arguably a bit expensive, though.

As for school buses, the buses (and ferries, when I had to go to the mainland for S5/6) were free in Orkney, at least. During the summer on Sanday, I'd have to cycle (or walk) a mile to catch the bus, as the catchment area changed compared with the winter, but that wasn't too bad, and indeed could be rather nice when the weather was nice. (Not so much when it was raining...)

[LilDood]

I live about 2.5 Miles away from school and we have to get public buses which coast 70p for a child (used to eb 50p but now its 70p so OAPs can travel free) and I think the Buses are Volvo Eclipses (Firstbus).

[The Irish]

Aaah, I love those old Mercedes Buses.

We used to have 1 of these in my hometown. It was a off series special unit which somehow got integrated into the citybus network when a company was merged into the bus operator. Never had any problems with it.
We also had some old Saurer buses from the very early 80s. Saurer was a Swiss manufacturer for trucks and buses which went for reliability rather then fancy new technics. The swiss army still uses their trucks from the 60s.
Unfortunately, Saurer got bought up by Mercedes in the late 80s and shortly after was closed down.

We also have some new Volvo buses B10L or something, but they had nothing but troubles in the beginning. Bits of the chassis falling off, doors not opening/closing, engine overheating, breaks, lights, the lot.

[Raichase]

We also have some new Volvo buses B10L or something, but they had nothing but troubles in the beginning. Bits of the chassis falling off, doors not opening/closing, engine overheating, breaks, lights, the lot.

B10BLE?

Does it look similar to the bus I was talking about?

[The Irish]

no, it's not.

The new ones have Volvo chassis and engine and are called B7L for the solo buses and B7LA for the articulated.

Here is a pic of the articulated version:
http://www.bus-bild.de/name/einzelbild/ ... ausen.html


Edit:

I also finaly found a pic of one of the old Saurer buses. This one is an equal type of another swiss copany but we had the same ones.
Even the livery close, the only difference was the stripe being black and the top was silver instead of white.
http://www.ferrovie.ch/img/details.php?image_id=1823
Lovely machines.

[Nextra]

Look, you will generally find that the Mercedes buses (cars) will last forever because they are well built just not built on the basis of profit to be made.