03 November 2015

Devon Transit 022

Welcome to Devon Transit 022

Its all still very quiet

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Last Two Weeks

All activity on VOSA from the last two weeks. Well it would be if there was any. I did say it was very quiet

Coming Up

Previously announced changes due to take place in the next two weeks: 

Dart Pleasure Craft 100 [PH0007205.043] Totnes Paignton Torquay

VOSA (DT019)

  • PH0007025/43 - 
  • DART PLEASURE CRAFT LTD 
  • T/A RAIL RIVER LINK BUSES, STEAMER QUAY ROAD, TOTNES, TQ9 5AL 
  • Variation Accepted: 
  • Operating between Totnes and Paignton Bus Station/ Torquay Strand 
  • given service number 100 
  • effective from 02-Nov-2015. 
  • To amend Timetable

 

Stagecoach 319 [PH1020951.178] Bude Clovelly

VOSA (DT019)

  • PH1020951/178 - 
  • STAGECOACH DEVON LTD T/A Stagecoach South West, BELGRAVE ROAD, EXETER, EX1 2LB 
  • Variation Accepted: 
  • Operating between Hartland and Bude 
  • given service number 319 
  • effective from 02-Nov-2015. 
  • To amend Route and Timetable.

 

Stagecoach 319 2015 11 02.jpg

Coming Up

Previously un-announced changes coming up in the next two weeks:

Plymouth Citybus 5 5A [PH0000135.094] Plymouth – Elburton

From Sunday 1st November we will be changing the timetable for service 5/5A Plymstock to City Centre Monday to Saturday. Sunday service remains unchanged.
There will be no change to route or frequency of the buses.
We have decided to implement this at short notice as from our real time monitoring, we can see that the buses on the service are finding it hard to run to time, making them late. This has come from the increased amount of mileage we are running on the service since 31st August 2015 covering more of the area and giving a bus to more people.
To make the service reliable we have decided to invest in additional resources by increasing the number of vehicles on the service, giving each vehicle more time to complete the journey. Hence the change in the timetable.
We would like to thank all our passengers who have given us valuable feedback on the service, all of which we have listened to and now implementing the change.

This has not yet appeared on VOSA (as at 31 Oct 2015)

New timetable

Plymouth Citybus 425 Y828TGH

In The News

EXETER Sunday market traders have spoken of their surprise and shock at the impending closure of the Marsh Barton site. The city council took the decision and has blamed Stagecoach for “unexpectedly” bringing forward the start date for work on the new bus depot at Matford, meaning a temporary closure of the sale with a re-opening, on a smaller site, on Sunday, January 3. However, Stagecoach denied being to blame.
Read more: http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Shock-council-forced-shut-Exeter-car-boot-sale/story-28096763-detail/story.html#ixzz3qNTRyKjD
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6 comments:

  1. io citybus breaking the law are there change time table and not on vosa jet
    but start new time table and run buses on new times

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They wont be breaking the law. They state that they applied to get a short notice change. It is not that unusual for changes to take a while to appear on the public web site. It is not unknown for them to go missing from the site either.

      Delete
    2. Quite right Graham.
      Unseen by the public (i.e. us!) there is also a letter from the TC's office to the operator (copy to the local authority) which says, basically, "yes you may operate from [date] and it is an offence to start before that date", but in the case of a short notice registration it could say "you may not operate until [56 days notice]". Very rare, but they do get sent out; one passed over my desk (not in Plymouth, but still in the Western Traffic Area) a month or so back.

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    3. Technically actually Citybus are risking the displeasure of the TC (defining it as breaking the law is a little more complicated) in starting the change before approval and the approval will normally appear on the website before it arrives via the post. The TCs are tightening up on what they will allow to go through on short-notice (which also has the consequence of increasing how long a lot of short-notice changes take to go through - the longest I have experienced was 7-weeks by which point we gave up and just told them to approve it under standard 8-week notice) which means that more are being refused, if it is done at the request of the council and has council funding attached they tend to sail through but if it is a completely commercial service it very much relies on your reasons and the quality of your explanation as to whether or not it will be accepted and how long it will take. My employers have received communications from the TC warning over the assumption of approval and threatening a PI if it was done repeatedly, the short-notice was approved for the requested date but we still were told we shouldn't have started until we received the approval (so you can't make the change until approval is received but they will back date the approval to the requested date - so you are in breach if you start on the requested date and technically you are in breach if you wait until approval and they back-date to the originally requested start date - a Catch 22 if ever you saw one)

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    4. Any short notice application made by an operator has to be sent by Leeds to the relevant TC for agreement. Leeds have very limited powers to authorise them. I recall one such set of registrations where they took so long to approve them (we'd sent well within the 56 days) that they had to be treated as short notice applications. I queried this and as we send them special delivery (to arrive 1pm the following day) we know when they've been signed for and thus served.
      The delay on a short notice occurs when the TC takes their time in approving the application. As a responsible operator you try to avoid submitting them but with the best will in the world there are occasions where you need to do so.
      The operator I work for had to submit one such short notice application to commence in March as the County Council's highways department had closed a busy road on one of our services and forced us to use a diversionary route. We had little time from receiving the closure notice to actual commencement, probably around 10 days at the most.
      In that instance we had to operate without the authorisation letter, as we had no choice but to run a different route.
      It is all very good for the TC to bleat 'you must not operate before you are authorised to do so' but when they themselves are the cause for the delay then what exactly does the proactive operator do in the situation?
      As dwarfer1979 says a catch 22 if ever you saw one.


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    5. spotted on various bus shelters around Plymouth alterations for the 10k run service 5/5a from Plympton will be diverted by Charles cross mayflower street, is this another short notice change or do city bus not know where they buses run, it would explain why the 5/5a was running so late in september

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