Enviro 300 coming soon to a bus stop near you

Just when you thought the streets of Plymouth couldn't get more interesting, Citybus put yet another demonstrator on the road. SN08AAF is a new Enviro 300 and will be in Plymouth for a few weeks. It is planned to try it out on most of the routes so it could turn up just about anywhere. Thanks to Brian George for the photos.

Plymouth Citybus are also soon to unleash their brand new Enviro 200s onto the unsuspecting passengers of Plymouth. To show off to people just how posh they are two (136 and 137), will be on static display in the Civic Square Armada Way Plymouth this coming Friday and Saturday between 0900 and 1700. That's the side of Royal Parade nearest to the Civic Centre. If you are really lucky you might even meet Brian George himself.

Plymothian Transit Blog Map

I have now plotted most of my blog posts onto a Google Map so you can see specific posts from any of the locations shown. Most of them so far are camera icons where you can click on the camera and see a listing of posts with photos from that location. There is still plenty to add to the map, I am only up to the end of 2006 so far - 18 months to go! Use the zoom buttons top left and click and drag the map to the areas you are interested in. For a larger view click the blue text bottom left under the map which will take you to the Google Maps page. Eventually I will be adding a lot more than just photo links - but all this takes time!

View Larger Map

Going to waste

Plymouth City Council has made a massive investment in new refuse collection vehicles over the past year with a large number of brand new Mercedes Econics on the road.

But there are several other types out there too:

Isuzu NQR Refuse Compactor

Mitsubishi Canter

©Nick Rice

And I am glad to say, Dennis Elite2 - Its not all foreign imports!

South Devon Conundrum

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours taking photos at Marsh Mills so of course I was able to observe a number of X80's and X45s coming in.

Apart from One Trident seen leaving Plymouth all the X80s were Volvo B6BLE Wright bodied single deckers. Most like this one having a reasonable number of passengers, but certainly not full.

Stagecoach on the other hand had three different Dennis Trident double deckers pass through in the same time. Each one was almost full. One actually had a couple of standing passengers although I could see a few empty seats upstairs. Based on yesterdays evidence it would seem that Stagecoach are winning the battle.

So which company has just announced it is withdrawing from the route just as the summer season gets going?

First must think its Christmas!

I was in Town this morning with the intention of spending the day in town and maybe even tracking down the Scania demonstrator. In the end, as I have a miserable cold and was feeling rough I just spent 40 mins or so taking pictures and came home. I don't know if the Scania was out and about today but I will just have to make do with everyone else's photos of this beast. Sometimes even I don't feel up to bus spotting - I must be getting old!

I did get some more work on a major project of mine done though, which will soon be added to the Plymothian Transit blog site. Watch this space!

Viridor Waste Contract

Now that Chelson Meadow is full all our waste from Plymouth is being transported across the water into Cornwall, and its being taken there in a smart fleet of DAF CF Bulk Waste Trucks operated by Viridor. A couple of hours spent with my camera at Marsh Mills this morning so managed to get a few of them on camera for the first time.

Over 250 photos taken today so plenty to share over the next few days (dont worry I wont blog all of them!)

Plymouth Citybus Coach livery

©Brian George

A while back we featured the new livery for the contract fleet that used be operate under the Plymouth Citycoach banner. The livery has now been finished off with a new 'wrap' advert for coach tours.

It is an improvement and it should help to promote the tours, but I personally feel the banner could have been a bit larger? Apart from that though it does connect well with the rest of the Citybus fleet / brand and is very clean and tidy.

Good job - just looking forward to the rest of the coaches being repainted now

Have since been informed that this banner will only be used on the main tour fleet which will continue to feature the City Coach fleet name, which takes up more space, hence the smaller banner. It is still a trial run so may change slightly in full application - we will have to wait and see!

Plymouth Crossley

©Mike O'Sullivan

Thought you might like to see this photo of ex-Plymouth Crossley 335 (DJY 965). It was taken by me at the Barry Island Transport Rally on 8th June 2008

Thanks to Mike to allowing me to share this one. Its always nice to know that such fine buses are still out there being very well looked after!

Pipe Dream?

I almost chocked when I saw this on my BBC news feed on my homepage:

Network Rail is considering five new intercity routes across the UK because passenger numbers have increased by 40% in a decade. The Paddington-to-Penzance line is one of those to be included in a study by the company Link

Surely no one seriously expects this government to come up with anything this radical? Actually not just this government, but I dont expect the next one to either.

Then I explored a bit further:

The routes to be examined are likely to follow roughly a series of existing routes from London: the West Coast Line to Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, Great Western line to Bristol, East Coast line to Edinburgh, Midland line to Sheffield and Chiltern route to Birmingham FT

Now that is probably more likely - London to Bristol being made high speed , which would improve journey times a bit for the Westcountry, but not by that much.

The lines would run alongside the existing rail network, in a similar way to the French TGV network.

Sounds great but dont hold your breath:

Any proposals considered in the review would not come into effect until after 2014.

I am sure more will come out over the next day or two on this story. At the moment it all sounds a bit too good to be true.

Park and Ride Fare Hike

First & Plymouth City Council would like to advise customers that the Park & Ride fares from Coypool will be as follows from Monday 23rd June. More details on their web site

First & Plymouth City Council would like to advise customers that the Park & Ride fares from Milehouse will be as follows from Monday 23rd June. More details

First & Plymouth City Council would like to advise customers that the Park & Ride fares from The George Junction will be as follows from Monday 23rd June More details

Another Citybus Demo!

©Terry Partridge
I was hoping to get to town this weekend to have a go on this one, but it wasn't to be. This smart looking Scania three axle demonstrator is with Citybus until the end of this week and will be working mostly on the 43.
The length of this bus would make it ideal to bridge the gap between double decker's and single decker's but restricts the bus just just one or two routes so its unlikely that we will see any join the fleet permanently.
Still it makes a change and I still hope to get out and about this week as I have a few days off - so I may just get my ride yet!
As ever - click on the photo able to go straight to Terrys collection. Some great Malta shots have been uploaded today!

Its a wrap

Plymouth Citybus 67 has been repainted and has been wrapped in this very smart advert for The New China Garden. One of the best advert buses we have had in Plymouth for some time.
Not only are their buses smart - but the food is good too

From Ferrybus to Tamar Link

©Keith Till

Probably not fair to use this shot to illustrate Ferrybus in a previous incarnation but I just thinks its an interesting photo. Thanks to Keith Till for allowing me to use it. Just think, one day even these nice Tridents will end up the same way.

Evolution of TavyLinx

From Jeff Lloyds collection - photographer unknown

From Jeff Lloyds collection - photographer unknown

One of mine - taken this last weekend.

I know which ones I prefer!

Odds and Ends

Running a few major computer updates etc tonight so not much time to do much else.

Plymouth Citybus are expecting to have received all 11 of their new Enviros by the end of this week. Perhaps more exciting is the imminent arrival of yet another demonstrator in the form of a tri-axle Scania single decker bus - 13M long!

Should be on the road by the end of this week - on the 43 route.

Further afield the new Stagecoach Devon Enviro 400 double Decker buses are into service today with a few second-hand examples coming from Manchester shortly. I must get up there for a ride sometime - before the loss of the X45 makes it more difficult again!

Following on from my post yesterday Doddy has added another route profile for the Citybus 25/ 20 service CLICK HERE

Plymouth Bus Routes: 50

Something I have been wanting to do for some time is to look more closely at some of the bus routes across Plymouth. I have a good ides of what I want to do, and this map below is fairly close to what I want, or at least some features are there!

 

This is the main line of Plymouth Citybus 50 from Derriford Hospital to Royal Parade. It comes in at just over 9 miles and drops down from 400 feet to just above sea level and one point. I could see that Keswick Crescent is the steepest section (I live at the bottom of the dip at 2 miles so I have a right to feel knackered walking up that hill every day).

For a closer look at the map above click here

You can run your mouse along the elevation graph to show exactly where you are on the route which highlights where the hills are.

You may be able to view the map in Route Editor View (I am not sure if this is available to general view) where you can zoom in and out a bit better, or you can look at it in Google Earth. One little fact that I did pick up was that if I was to attempt to run the route I use up 2485 calories! Don't think I will bother with that!

 

I am still trying out other mapping sites, and even looking at creating my own once I work out how to create the elevation graphs myself

Fuel crisis for bus firm

 

PLYMOUTH’S biggest bus company says it is on course to lose £700,000 this year, as the city’s public transport links struggle to keep up with spiraling fuel prices. Plymouth Citybus has revealed their fuel costs have risen almost 70 per cent in less than a year – and bosses are desperate for help from the Government.

Fuel crisis for bus firm

Stagecoach also blame the current fuel prices as the main reason for stopping their popular X45 service.

Both Stagecoach and Citybus are saying that they have no plans to cut services further. We have already seen fare rises for the bus companies in Plymouth this year. Many areas across the country have seen fare rises with many companies suggesting there may be more fare rises to come if prices continue to increase. I am not sure how the free travel scheme remuneration fits in with all this but I dont suppose bus companies will be seeing decent increase in that income stream.

Meanwhile Stagecoach find a novel way of saving fuel - hitch a ride on the back of a lorry!

Thanks to Dave Boulter for the photo taken in Torquay - not strictly Plymouth but its such a great photo!

Demo one and Demo two

I did mange to get into town today to try and photograph the Optare demonstrators with Plymouth Citybus. I also managed to get a couple of photos of the buses along with a lot of other bus photos.

I then got home and this evening have been adding them to my Flickr account. It was soon apparent that someone else was also uploading photos of the two buses - and they had a lot more of them and most of the were better than mine!

Demo 1

YJ57EHD Optare Solo SR

©Bristolvrboy

Demo 2

YJ57YCF Optare Solo

©bristolvrboy (Via Flickr blog this)

To see all his other shots of these two buses visit his Flickr account here there really are some great shots both inside and outside of the buses. I just wished I had the time to have a ride and get some better shots myself.

Optare Demonstrator YJ57EHD

The second Optare demonstrator in Plymouth at the moment is this Solo SR which is the new version with the styling from the new Versa. Apparently there is a Versa around too!

Thanks again to Michael Dodd for the pic

Citybus on Flickr

©aecregent

While these days we get excited about new Enviros and maybe even Solos its good th be reminded that once upon a time Citybus bought buses like these!
A nice line up and most of them in the best Citybus livery ever.

These things happen

Plymouth Citybus 113 L113YOD is one of the latest repaints into the new livery complete with a rear end advert for ets. This morning though it was not having such a good day.

I caught it at Leigham on the 47 to Derriford. I was a bit annoyed that once I was on the bus the 52 came along 15 minutes late - and would have got me to Derriford nearly 10 minutes earlier than the 47, still these things happen.

All was going well until we stopped just above Keswick Crescent when an alarm went off. The driver stopped the engine and checked a few bits and then restarted. Alarm still on. At the bottom of Keswick Crescent the driver again stopped the engine and made a call back to base. A couple of mins on the phone while checking something at the back of the bus and then he boarded the bus and we started off again. As I was already late for work it was a bit annoying but its not the drivers fault - these things happen.

The alarm was still sounding as we continued on our way. As we pulled out from the Tamar Science Park bus stop I noticed that there was a lot of 'smoke' coming out of the back. As all the passengers left the bus at Derriford I mentioned this to the driver who then pulled in at the main bus stops to inspect what was going on.

I must admit at this point I was standing here watching with my camera thinking that if it did burst into flames it would make for some great photos for the blog!

While you cant really see any of the 'smoke' (or more likely 'steam?') you can just about make out a damp patch under the right hand side of the bus. Water was pouring out from the engine compartment. The driver can just be seen (or at least his arm can be seen) making another phone call back to base. It didnt catch fire (not while I was there anyway) so I ended up with a rather boring photo of the back end of a bus. Still - these things happen!

Incoming Citybus

David Harries has reported that new Citybus Dart / Enviro 137 was noted at Alexander-Dennis in Bristol and is on its way to Plymouth:

Plymouth Citybus 1x ALX-Dennis Enviro200 Dart, 10.9m | Registration: none, fleet-number 137 VIN: SFD373R27GY20579 Noted to have leather seating all-round. Arrived on delivery @ 4:40pm whilst I was on the yard. Off to Plymouth tomorrow (Thursday 12th June).

Flying Solo

Thanks to Michael Dodd I can now bring you photos of Optare Solo YJ57YCF which is currently on loan with Plymouth Citybus. The last few Mercedes Minibuses will be due to leave the fleet fairly soon so there is a need for a few smaller buses to replace them on certain routes. It remains to be seen if any other buses are due on trial with this in mind although Optare does have the market pretty well sown up. There is the new Plaxton Primo although opinion does seem mixed on these so far.

A Right Royal Do

An event in the South West which may be of interest to some coming up this month:

WHOTT / ROYAL BLUE RUN

Saturday / Sunday 14th / 15th June

Recreating Royal Blue routes in N. Devon and Cornwall

Sat : Taunton,  (dep 10.30) Wiveliscombe, Bampton, Barnstaple, Bideford, Westward Ho!, Hartland and Bude

Sun  Bude  (dep 09.30) - Camelford - Wadebridge - Polzeath Tintagel Delabole Launceston Exeter.

12 coaches booked:

LTA729 / OTT98 / OTT43 / 625DDV, 759MDV, 1RDV, EDV502D, EDV505D, OTA632G, SDD146R, AFH186T and KAD359V.

Please note that the vehicles will not be "in convoy".

Thanks to Terry Partridge for the notice.

Traffic Lights from Hell?

From Google Maps

The road across the bottom of this Google Maps view of Plymouth International Business Park is not that long. Less than 5 min walk from the mini roundabout bottom right to the main traffic light controlled junction on the left hand side of the image. It can get quite busy as there is a lot of hospital traffic leaving the site in the evenings. That said its not usually a major problem. Thanks to Northern Connect I now have a regular 'bus' service from my place of work at Derriford Business Park and can catch the bus from outside the red coloured inverted L shaped building top right. I have it pretty well worked out now as I see the bus or Taxibus drive past on the way to Crownhill and I know I have 10 minutes before it comes back on its way through Derriford Hospital and on the Estover. The last couple of days it has not worked like that. Yesterday it took about half an hour for the bus to make it down to Crownhill and back. Today it was just about 20 minutes. For some reason the traffic lights on the main Tavistock Road Junction were not letting traffic out properly. The driver said that it seemed as if only one or two vehicles at most were getting out onto Tavistock Road. Yesterday it was made worse as Crownhill itself was also choked up but today once he was out on Tavistock Road he sailed through to Crownhill, turned and returned. It was just the (nearly) 15 minutes it took him to get along the small little road from the roundabout to Tavistock Road. I cant think of any reason why the lights should have changed at this junction? Seems most odd - and plays havoc with the timetable.

The Target Travel element of Northern Connect has always seemed to manage pretty well to keep to timetable where the taxi buses have sometimes struggled. It does all show how difficult it must be trying to run a regular bus service in Plymouth ( or anywhere else I guess). One set of road works popping up, or a set of traffic lights changing their behaviour and your whole service is up the creek!

Some good news though, it seems that the long running bridge works through Leigham are coming to an end as this evening the traffic lights have been taken down and traffic was flowing through freely again. I suspect there may still be temporary restrictions from time to time as the sites are finished off but it should help improve the 50 and 52 services which pass through here which have suffered quite badly during the works.

FDC Incoming

Two 'new' additions to First Devon and Cornwall's National Express fleet are Volvo B12B with Caetano Levante bodywork which have been acquired from Swans Travel of Manchester.

FN06FLC and FN06FLD are the registrations although no fleet numbers are known just yet.

Both are sitting at Laira at the moment but they will join the Truronian fleet shortly releasing their two Volvos to join the FDC fleet.

The war is over?

PH1020951/139 STAGECOACH DEVON LTD, BELGRAVE RD, EXETER, EX12LB
Cancellation Accepted: Operating between Paignton Bus Station and
Plymouth Bus Station given service number X45 effective from 28-Jul-
2008.

The official notice that SCD are cancelling their seemingly popular X45 service next month. It does seem to have caught people by surprise (ok well it surprised me at least) as the service has always seemed to be popular offering a quicker run to Paignton than the competing X80 from First.

There has been plenty of suggestions as to why its been cancelled with the new free travel scheme being one such suggestion as the remuneration available to bus companies does not favour these long routes. The buses may have looked quite full on occasions but if the company wasnt getting enough money to carry them then its not a lot of good. The recent departure of Chris Hilditch may well have been a factor with the new team wanting to reduce the 'bus wars' between First and Stagecoach.

All in all its probably good news for First as it does help safeguard the X80 at least but its sad to see another bus link withdrawn.

The Engineer

Where would Plymouth be today if it wasn't for Brunel?

©Ian @ Plymouth (Flickr blog this)

Just one of over twenty great photos of Plymouth - click here for the others.

Unreal Time Info

I normally catch the same buses at roughly the same time each day on nice frequent bus routes so don't often need to use the new RTP Info system. However, yesterday evening I was at a friends house picking up my son who had stayed for tea. I was keen to get him home and we knew that the bus was due at 6:58 (47) and there wasn't going to be another one for an hour. If we missed it we would have to walk to the Ski Lodge and hope to catch a 50, assuming there was one. I was cutting it a bit fine to get to the bus stop on time but we would have seen it if we had just missed it.

At about 7:10 I thought we had missed it. I noticed that this was one of the new bus stops with the text code - great! Sure enough a few seconds later I had confirmation that the next bus was indeed due at 8pm - we had missed the bus. I was a bit cross it had seemingly been early but accepted the fact that we were not at the bus stop on time anyway so it was our fault. I then began to explain to my young son that we would have to walk a bit. He wasn't too happy and wanted to wait for a bit 'just in case' the next one was early! I managed to get him to agree to wait for 20 more cars to drive passed - and then we would start walking. Just 5 cars went by and then the 47 appeared - over ten minutes late!

I wasn't angry that the bus was late - this is Plymouth, traffic is bad, buses often run late. I was angry that if I had started walking I would probably have missed it as there is a section of the route where we would not have been able to flag it down.  I know that some of the older buses don't have the full RTP trackers fitted but this was one of last years Enviros having a break from the 34s. I thought the whole point of the RTP system was to show the next bus, and highlight if the buses are running late so you can make an informed choice on what to do. This was the first time I had used it at another bus stop other than my own local stops (mostly for testing!). As more of the new style bus stops spring up with the text code then more passengers will try the system. Misleading info is almost worse than no info at all.

Original photo by PowerUpMobile (Creative commons)

Quickie

Just a quickie really

First Devon and Cornwall Volvo B6BLE 40586 YJ51RJX adds to the variety of liveries found in Plymouth at the moment (that's if plain white can be described as 'a livery').

No doubt it is between liveries and will soon be painted into a proper livery - although quite what that will be remains to be seen.

Slightly further afield Stagecoach Devon are starting to take delivery of their new batch of Enviro 400 double deckers fleet numbers 19321-5 with registrations WA08NOF, NOH, NOU, NPC, NPD. The first of these has just arrived at Exeter this week.

Plymothian Bridges 041: Saltash Road

A few new photos of the new pedestrian footbridge over Saltash Road which replaced the one that got knocked over by a lorry a few years ago. I have not added this to the map yet as time is limited tonight (wife flies off to Florida in the morning!)

I was surprised to see that the old ramps up to the main footbridge have not been repainted which does rather take the shine off the smart new bridge. I assume that this is planned to be done in the near future as part of general maintenance.

Cross Country

I have seen a couple of these Arriva Cross Country trains in the new livery but this is the first time I have managed to get a decent shot of them. I was at Plymouth Station on Sunday waiting for the First Great Western from Paddington which was 40 mins late.

I must admit I think that the livery really suits these trains, although I prefer the HSTs as much better trains.

 

Gardner European

HTGardner is local haulage company with a very smart fleet. The distinctive livery with the red stripe on either white or yellow makes the fleet stand out from the crowd.