Last week wasn’t a particularly good one for reports of injuries and deaths. Two people were left dead and two more seriously injured near Warwick on Tuesday, after what appears to have been a head-on collision between a Johnson’s of Henley-in-Arden service bus (carrying pupils) and car. Among the dead was the Johnson’s bus driver, no doubt after the bus subsequently hit a tree.
And yesterday, one of Stagecoach Western’s X77 Neoplan Skyliners is thought to have hit another vehicle on the M77 motorway. Whatever the cause, the driver is said to have received head injuries.
Stagecoach Express X77 is the successful half-hourly Glasgow-Prestwick-Airport-Ayr service that increases at peak times to six per hour. It covers the 36-mile journey in just under an hour and, even ignoring parking your car, is incredibly competitive with private motoring, the more so given the apparent luxury of a double deck coach.
We understand that some though by no means all of the former Oxford Tube Skyliners appear on the X77, replacing earlier MAN/Jonckheere Monaco tri-axles.
Stagecoach yesterday was at pains to point out that its vehicle had not toppled. Said a spokesman, “The coach remained upright following the incident and passengers were able to leave the vehicle through the normal entrance.”
That’s quite telling, isn’t it? Why should someone say that? Almost the first words uttered were to assure the media that the vehicle had remained on its wheels, all six of them. Rare though toppling incidents are, Stagecoach immediately countered the perception about the potential problem of using a double deck on an express services.
National Express, of course, has abandoned double deck coaches on its inter-city services, in large part following the deaths and injuries at the M4/M25 interchange, on a Skyliner bound for Scotland. Though some years ago now, sensitivities in Scotland are no doubt still high, with nebulous thoughts of when this happened before. This was totally a driver-fault incident and the consequences of a driver error at speed involving a laden double deck were felt by NatEx to be indefensible.
Stagecoach, meanwhile, continues to use deckers on Megabus and Oxford Tube-type duties. The remainder of those once used on the Tube are still with the leasing company. Shrewdly, Stagecoach indeed chose to lease, not buy, its Neoplans. This leaves the problem of dealing with hard-worked vehicles to Dawson Rentals, whose adverts now adorn the rears of both Coach & Bus Week and especially Bus & Coach Buyer. Dawson seems to have an uphill task in shifting these particular vehicles.
Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased Johnson’s driver and, for a swift recovery, with the Stagecoach X77 driver.
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Not a Good Week
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1 comments:
NX's official reasoning for the withdrawal of all Neoplan Skyliners is that they provided inadequate luggage provision for the work they were undertaking. On a few occasions during the summer of 2008, Transit vans were having to be hired at £500 a pop to follow coaches to Plymouth or Aberdeen, removing all profit in one fell swoop. This is an issue Stagecoach has acknowledged with similar examples working its Megabus services, though Stagecoach have chosen to adapt thanks to Ifor Williams providing trailers, though this throws up issues with finding qualified drivers (D+E required on licence, not just Cat. D).
And of course one toppling over didn't do NX's credentails any good, even, as you say, the issue was wholly driver error. Stagecoach has had Skyliners catch fire and be run off the road. A NX Scania PB overturned less than a year after the Skyliner/M25/M40 incident, too. Again, driver error here.
You could argue that perhaps drivers need to be better trained/picked for this type of work. While NX has improved the manner in which it allows its third party operators to use their own staff, they have no real short-term control if no one is available apart from a driver who has no familiarisation with the vehicle, route, timings etc. When faced with the costly recharge, the third party operator can, does and will send out this inexperienced driver. In the case of the PB overturning at Newport Pagnell, he was drunk. In the case of the Skyliner tipping over, he was experienced though reckless.
Iconic brands suffer more through incidents like this. Consequently, irrespective of the outcome of the Johnsons accident, to which your entry referred, their overall reputation will be relatively unscathed. So would Stagecoach's have been if it was a Megabus Skyliner that tipped over. NX, unfortunately, is exceptionally well-known by all throughout the country. Specifically those who've never travelled with them form the strongest opinions (journalists mostly).
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