Talking of York, as we did on Monday, First’s controversial York FTRs are shortly to be replaced by conventional vehicles.
At least during evenings & at weekends, that is. This sensible move sees more appropriately costed vehicles operating at times when there are fewest passengers. We’d probably contend that the vehicle seating capacities are somewhat similar and this, no doubt, will add grist to the campaigners’ mill as it grinds away to try to make First York and the York council partnership rid the city of the Streetcars.
Campaigners will no doubt call First’s decision a U-turn and wonder, if the FTR is so good at encouraging modal shift, why it’s not available throughout the whole timetable rather during daylight hours only. Let them.
And all this just at the time First Swansea is readying itself for a 12-minute FTR on service 4, replacing a 10-minute conventional service. Swansea’s different, though. Much more work’s gone into the "track".
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
FTR Withdrawn
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6 comments:
But originally the frequency was to be every 10 minutes, only until recently has it now changed to every 12.
Of course, my post above refers to ftr in Swansea.
I'm not sure about how much future 'ftr' has. For example, South Essex Rapid Transit (SERT) was initially promoted using the 'ftr' idea, indeed a StreetCar was brought down for publicity purposes. Now however it is being marketed with an Optare Versa depicted in publicity (see http://www.sert.org.uk/) and the most recent use of an actual bus to promote the idea used a Wright-bodied Volvo B7RLE from the Fastrack system in Kent.
Possibly the future for the 'ftr' isn't as rosy as First might have liked us to think at one point?
A week ago you commented on TYB's use of Optare Tempos, and referred to the number of seats per hour on particular routes. Here again you are comparing the seating capacities, and I think you are right to highlight the numbers of seats. Artics achieve their (theoretical) capacities with a large proportion of standing passengers, and FTR is not really anything more than a type of artic (with a conductor!) despite the hype. I use the word 'theoretical' advisedly, having serious doubts that these capacities are really achieveable, taking proper account of passenger comfort and safety requirements.
Without so many standing passengers, an artic is a much less cost-effective tool, and I suspect the third anonymous contributor may well have a point about the future of FTR. Or perhaps the 'ftr' of FTR! Anyway, in the interests of saving the bus operating industry from over burdening itself with unnecessarily high operating costs, this breath of reality cannot come too soon!
I HAVE ALWAYS FELT THAT FTR IS ONLY A DEVICE TO OBTAIN BUS LANES.WHICH I AM ALL FOR.
Worth noting is that as in York, the Swansea FTR will only operate 0700-1900 Monday to Saturday. Operated by conventional vehicles off-peak.
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