English subjects throughout the land may be reeling at the thought of articulated buses turning up unbidden in their urban environments. As someone commented on this blog yesterday, bendies are an unprecedented PR disaster for the bus industry. Connex’s Jersey Mybus operation, on the other hand, is said to be considering an alternative to the peak loading conundrum—the return after some 40 years of that most radical of designs, the double deck.
Peak loadings on the St Helier-Airport service 15 mean a stark choice for Connex, a trading name of Veolia: bigger buses or more buses, the later with the associated overhead, especially driver costs.
Like all unfamiliar designs, whether articulated or not, Connex plans to test a decker first, for clearances. There would follow “extra training” for drivers.
Connex began operating buses on Jersey in 2002, following the award of what amounts to a quality contract or franchise. This was initially for a seven-year term. Almost immediately, Connex revolutionised the island’s bus services by introducing new light blue-liveried low floor Dennis Darts with the Slimbus narrower variant of Caetano's Nimbus, specifically developed for Jersey’s narrower lanes. These became moderately popular with smaller English operators. The Connex operation hasn’t always been free of criticism, including its more recent school bus operation, though the contract is now within a mutually agreed three-year extension period, after which the States will retender.
Before Connex, there was Jersey Motor Transport, owned at one point by a holding company also running, among others, Trimdon Motor Services. It latterly operating under the Jersey Bus brand name, with a white livery and blue skirt though, as in times past, many vehicles were in all over advert liveries. The mainstay of the Jersey Bus fleet was the step entrance Dart, supplemented by Metroriders, Leyland Swifts and the remnant of the former JMT fleet of Wadham Stringer-bodied Ford R1014s. Before that, the operation was totally Ford operated, including the R192, two of which are seen above. They are of 1972 and 1973, with 44-seat Willowbrook bodies with attractive BET-style fronts, at the St Helier Weighbridge bus terminus in 1982.
In spite of what the BBC is saying on its Channel Islands website, double decks last operated local buses in Jersey in the 1960s, not 1970s. Operating them on the 15 would require six on a not particularly efficient timetable, with 27 minutes layover every 90. Whereas the current 15s may presumably be inter-worked to avoid such inefficiencies, double decks would render this impossible.
Given the narrow roads and the 40 mph maximum speed limit for all traffic, one wonders what the reaction on the island would be to Connex buying ex-London articulated Citaros instead. We understand some are available.
i BBC Chanel Islands news
Thursday, 18 February 2010
A Jersey Solution
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9 comments:
"Whereas the current 15s may presumably be inter-worked to avoid such inefficiencies, double decks would render this impossible."
Not necessarily! They could interwork onto other busy routes. And yes I remember (a) the well-loaded RTs on the long route 1 from Gorey in the east to Corbiere in the west, and (b) the strange fare system of lettered stages . . .
Sorry, the BBC is correct - double deckers were still running in at least 1970.
The BBC correct? That's something new for them, then!
Anonymous, 1970 was the last year of the sixties. The first of the seventies was 1971. We count 1 through to 10, not 0 to 9 : )
Didn't the deckers go in the early 70s after JMT was taken over by Trimdon Motor Services?
There are issues with the 15 - the major one being that it is both a commuter route and the route into town from the airport. People tend to have luggage if they fly: the Slimbuses don't have luggage space, so either the luggage doesn't go on or passengers down the road watch the buses sail past full. There are vague proposals for something like an X15 (calling at Airport, Red Houses, St Aubin and town), but nothing concrete.
It will be interesting to see what spec double deckers Connex trial: will they be high-capacity city buses or something more along the lines of Stagecoach's Oxford Tube coaches?
The argument about more buses v bigger buses is an interesting one in this case. Given the credit crunch and the fact that Jersey has a structural deficit, it's unlikely we will see more buses. This is a shame: the current hub and spoke arrangement and the radical difference between winter and summer timetables needs reviewing if the island is ever to tame its rampant car usage and prevent gridlock. But the responsible minister isn't going to bite that bullet as far as can be seen.
For reference, the old JMT livery (long before it was bought by the team that owned TMS) was green and cream. My wife remembers riding the 1 over Mount Bingham as a 10 year-old and being scared rigid as the top deck headed for the granite wall, missing it by a few inches as the bus went round the hairpin. I concur with the BBC: I am reasonably sure I have seen photographs of the last JMT double deckers being shipped off island in the early 1970s - and if I'm not mistaken they ended up running in Hong Kong.
I'd guess that the intention would be to acquire some of the early ex London low floor 'deckers which are now on the market - anything longer than about 9.5m would really cause a furore on the island's roads.
It did seem strange to me when all the Nimbus's arrived as they were smaller than the 40 seat step Darts which then predominated. Connex have acquired some larger SLF Darts since 2002, but presumably they cannot roster just the larger Darts on the 15 as their capacity is needed elsewhere on the network as well ??
My recollection is that deckers stayed on the island for a couple of years in the early 1970s but as school buss not 'ordinary' stage carriage buses the reason was it was expensive to shift them off.
An intriguing aside - the Jersey Evening Post has in its centre pages this evening an obituary for Bob Lewis, the owner of Trimdon Motor Services who bought JMT out in November 1970 and ran it until Connex took the bus contract over in 2002.
double deckers certainly ran in the early 70s.i worked as a coach driver then. i remember,coach drivers, service bus drivers,and decker drivers all required different badges
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