Transdev Blazefield

[Delenn]

Coastliner in total meltdown this morning. Missed 4 in a row between Malton and Leeds (and back) earlier as well as two consecutive Scarborough runs and a Thornton run, and now 2 consecutive Malton to Leeds and back agains. Probably the worst day since I moved here, and it is only 11!

 

[theblackwatch]

X98/X99 confirmed by Transdev on its Facebook page. Already someone (can't think who ) has asked about the resourcing given how many other cancellations there are...

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

X98/X99 confirmed by Transdev on its Facebook page. Already someone (can't think who ) has asked about the resourcing given how many other cancellations there are...

I guess that First are also struggling and so it's a logical cut for them? How Transdev are going to run it, who knows, but after 30 years, both Leeds to Wetherby routes come back to the same operator. Mind you, I remember when the 7 (then 760) was a Keighley to Wetherby service - imagine that now!!

As for "someone", I don't do FB but assume that it is a regular (and from this forum)?

 

[aswilliamsuk]

They're keeping the £1 evening fare in Lancashire, apparently it's financially viable to continue(!)

Seeing as in Lancashire, apparently evening ridership rose 72% thanks to the £1 fare (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-62722896), that certainly sounds like it makes it worthwhile.

 

[Bantamzen]

Transdev are extending the validity of the KDay to Team Pennine rather than just Keighley. However, with the Metro-sponsored reduction in Day Tickets, it will only be worth using if you leave West Yorkshire (towards Rochdale, Skipton or Colne).

The £1 evening fare promotion is also coming to an end - just in time for the return of Night buses from Manchester.

We're making changes to our prices from 4 September

New price caps are being introduced, along with changes to our ticket offering.

www.transdevbus.co.uk

Its a shame the evening fare is ending, it was pretty handy for me at evening game at Valley Parade as the A3 passes there and close to my house!! But I guess its logical given the overall fare reductions. It'll be interesting to see what effect those will have on passenger numbers.

 

[Andyh82]

The X98/X99 have been registered under the ‘Yorkshire Coastliner Limited’ licence, so will be being run from either York or Idle rather than Harrogate

 

[darloscott]

The X98/X99 have been registered under the ‘Yorkshire Coastliner Limited’ licence, so will be being run from either York or Idle rather than Harrogate

York are running it I believe.

 

[Ken H]

York are running it I believe.

Lots of dead running then....

 

[Seehof]

How? They have staff shortages now and some of the very local services have a cancellation or two every day.

 

[RustySpoons]

How? They have staff shortages now and some of the very local services have a cancellation or two every day.

Not off to a good start is it?

In Lancashire the late night buses back from Manchester are returning next week, yet they're still dropping a disappointing number of services daily. Granted there doesn't seem to be as many, but I think that focusing on what they can run across the entire network instead of taking on new services should be the priority.

Of course there's the redundant CityZaps that need new homes, hence the X98/X99 getting them. Surely it'd have made more sense to send them to Coastliner to run on known services where they could pay for themselves, which would displace the older B9's that don't owe the company anything which would be far suited to the relative unknown of the failing route they're taking on.

 

[Delenn]

Of course there's the redundant CityZaps that need new homes, hence the X98/X99 getting them. Surely it'd have made more sense to send them to Coastliner to run on known services where they could pay for themselves, which would displace the older B9's that don't owe the company anything which would be far suited to the relative unknown of the failing route they're taking on.

That's exactly what I thought. A good day on Coastliner at the moment is one where they only lose 8 to 10 journeys. Now the X43 is disappearing, that is at least another vehicle and driver back on the main routes.

As an aside, has anyone heard if the X43 experiment had yielded anything useful? What were the loadings like?

 

[SCH117X]

Lots of dead running then....

The York depot is relocating soon to Rawcliffe Bar which will reduce slightly the dead running. The existing First operation involves vehicles running dead the length of the route.

 

[Ken H]

The York depot is relocating soon to Rawcliffe Bar which will reduce slightly the dead running. The existing First operation involves vehicles running dead the length of the route.

Dont they outstation 2 in Tadcaster?

 

[Andyh82]

Not off to a good start is it?

In Lancashire the late night buses back from Manchester are returning next week, yet they're still dropping a disappointing number of services daily. Granted there doesn't seem to be as many, but I think that focusing on what they can run across the entire network instead of taking on new services should be the priority.

Of course there's the redundant CityZaps that need new homes, hence the X98/X99 getting them. Surely it'd have made more sense to send them to Coastliner to run on known services where they could pay for themselves, which would displace the older B9's that don't owe the company anything which would be far suited to the relative unknown of the failing route they're taking on.

By doing what they are doing they can advertise the X98/X99 as a Sky Class service, by just mixing them in with all the existing buses on Coastliner, they can’t, and therefore will have basically wasted the investment. Plus they’d have to repaint two sets of buses.

Regarding the dead running, it’s no different to how Connexions run buses dead from York, Harrogate, Leeds (for schools) to and from their depot in Tockwith

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The York depot is relocating soon to Rawcliffe Bar which will reduce slightly the dead running. The existing First operation involves vehicles running dead the length of the route.

Exactly - they’re running in to Wetherby from Leeds either not in service or as good as. From York, it’s virtually no different.

By doing what they are doing they can advertise the X98/X99 as a Sky Class service, by just mixing them in with all the existing buses on Coastliner, they can’t, and therefore will have basically wasted the investment. Plus they’d have to repaint two sets of buses.

Yeah, where’s the marketing angle to having a few Sky Class amongst a load of non-SC spec vehicles? It would be a waste of that opportunity, and a genuine opportunity to differentiate the new route.

Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised that had they cascaded B9s to the X98/99 from Coastliner, then the criticism would have been "look at Transdev - First had nearly new Streetdecks on there, and Transdev has turfed out a load of stuff that had been hammered up the A64".

I have no time for fanboys who will give a firm a free pass on a firm because they have lots of nice spin (over substance) and because there's lots of lovely Best Impressions leaflets that you can store in your nan's back bedroom. By the same token, continually taking pot shots and, even worse, "just asking questions" is rather tiresome.

 

[RELL6L]

The York depot is relocating soon to Rawcliffe Bar which will reduce slightly the dead running. The existing First operation involves vehicles running dead the length of the route.

OK so it’s no more dead running for the vehicles but First can do driver changes in Leeds whereas drivers based in York will need cars or vans to get to the route even if breaks are taken at Wetherby or Leeds. There clearly isn’t planned to be interworking if these are unique vehicles.

 

[SCH117X]

OK so it’s no more dead running for the vehicles but First can do driver changes in Leeds whereas drivers based in York will need cars or vans to get to the route even if breaks are taken at Wetherby or Leeds. There clearly isn’t planned to be interworking if these are unique vehicles.

which happen to be used on the CityZap - maybe not interworked but would allow for drivers to be ferried.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

OK so it’s no more dead running for the vehicles but First can do driver changes in Leeds whereas drivers based in York will need cars or vans to get to the route even if breaks are taken at Wetherby or Leeds. There clearly isn’t planned to be interworking if these are unique vehicles.

This will clearly be the trickiest bit. I would only guess how they could do it but car/van shuttle to/from Wetherby would perhaps be the most logical. Clearly not ideal but when First decides to pull out, it would seem odd to look a gift horse and all that.

 

[tbtc]

The X98/X99 always struck me as odd routes (back in the school days when a thoughtful relative would post me a generous handful of WY Metro timetable leaflets along with the family Christmas card), part of the Yorkshire Rider operations and therefore part of Leeds CityLink/ First Leeds/ First rather than Harrogate & District/ Yorkshire Coastliner who ran other routes from Leeds through open countryside to towns like Harrogate/ Tadcaster

What I hadn’t appreciated (until living in Leeds) was that, whilst the city boundaries are tightly drawn against Wakefield/ Bradford/ the Harrogate part of North Yorkshire (maybe half a dozen miles from central Leeds you are in another local authority), the city of Leeds stretches twice as far in the north east and includes Wetherby, a town that always looked/felt like it had more in common with Harrogate/ Tadcaster (to me as an outsider)

So it was always a bit of an unusual route in a Leeds operation that generally stuck to low speed urban services (the X84/784 to Skipton being another oddity, admittedly), maybe I should be surprised that First stuck with the Wetherby corridor as long as they did

But as they have, until just now, then it must be a relatively healthy pair of routes to run, given all of the services that First have ditched (or significantly scaled back) over the years

And whilst Blazefield will have to do some dead running too, at least their depot is closer to the Wetherby end of the route, given the nature of the “town of around ten thousand people about a dozen miles from the big city” demand, First’s first few trips to Wetherby in the morning (and final Leeds bound journeys later in the day) must have been fairly underwhelming in terms of demand

So I think Blazefield should do alright here, there’s an established passenger base, they’ll probably get a modicum of goodwill for “saving” the services, it’s not likely to see a parallel railway line open any time soon…

…the one fly in the ointment is that these services skirt the south eastern side of Roundhay in Leeds, and if I’ve learnt anything from Liz Truss’s reminiscences of growing up there, it’s an inner city hell hole, a British equivalent of Compton crossed with Baghdad on a bad day, so maybe the hoodlums will take their rocket launchers onto the streets if the driver doesn’t have change from a tenner (or Truss is a terrible liar who wanted to paint a picture of a tough upbringing, when in reality Roundhay was somewhere I’d have loved to afford to live when I was slumming it on the far side of Leeds!)

 

[jonesy3001]

I am surprised transdev haven't picked up on the ilkley to otley part of the X84 since its temporarily terminating at otley on the 2nd of oct or given first the run for there money and competed on the route.

 

[_toommm_]

I am surprised transdev haven't picked up on the ilkley to otley part of the X84 since its temporarily terminating at otley on the 2nd of oct or given first the run for there money and competed on the route.

Is that just for 02/10 or is it on a 'temporary' basis?

 

[jonesy3001]

Is that just for 02/10 or is it on a 'temporary' basis?

Temporary basis, wonder if it's something to do with the roadworks at dyneley arms junction in pool as that's supposed to start now until winter next year.

 

[Andyh82]

The X84 is another oddity, particularly when you’d have First Leeds buses running all the way to Skipton when barely anything else left the city boundaries.

I wonder if the fact it runs down the all important Headingley corridor may be a factor in not thinking about letting anyone else muscle in

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The X98/X99 always struck me as odd routes (back in the school days when a thoughtful relative would post me a generous handful of WY Metro timetable leaflets along with the family Christmas card), part of the Yorkshire Rider operations and therefore part of Leeds CityLink/ First Leeds/ First rather than Harrogate & District/ Yorkshire Coastliner who ran other routes from Leeds through open countryside to towns like Harrogate/ Tadcaster

What I hadn’t appreciated (until living in Leeds) was that, whilst the city boundaries are tightly drawn against Wakefield/ Bradford/ the Harrogate part of North Yorkshire (maybe half a dozen miles from central Leeds you are in another local authority), the city of Leeds stretches twice as far in the north east and includes Wetherby, a town that always looked/felt like it had more in common with Harrogate/ Tadcaster (to me as an outsider)

So it was always a bit of an unusual route in a Leeds operation that generally stuck to low speed urban services (the X84/784 to Skipton being another oddity, admittedly), maybe I should be surprised that First stuck with the Wetherby corridor as long as they did

The X84 is another oddity, particularly when you’d have First Leeds buses running all the way to Skipton when barely anything else left the city boundaries.

I wonder if the fact it runs down the all important Headingley corridor may be a factor in not thinking about letting anyone else muscle in

These are historic quirks from the break up and sale of West Yorkshire Road Car in 1990.

Yorkshire Rider purchased the Leeds, Bradford and Otley depots, primarily to get the more local routes. However, esp with Leeds depot, they had boards on a number of country routes. They had a 36 board and ran to Ripon, they had boards on the 843 to Scarborough and the 746 to Hull, whilst they also shared the X84 with Otley depot; Otley depot also shared the 653 from Bradford to Harrogate with Bradford depot and possibly Harrogate.

So with the sale, there was a need to tidy things up, partly as AJS Group (selling WYRCC) wanted to maximise the sale and not be left with routes they couldn't operate but also to establish primacy on other routes. So they moved a 36 board to Harrogate, and the 843 boards to Malton. The 741 (now 7) stayed with AJS but operated from Keighley as the 760.

The 796-799 became X98/99 and they stayed went to Yorkshire Rider.

 

[M60lad]

Maybe going off topic but whereabouts in Otley was the Depot?

 

[Ken H]

Maybe going off topic but whereabouts in Otley was the Depot?

Where Kwikfit is now. Same building. Originally Sammys.

 

[leedslad82]

Maybe going off topic but whereabouts in Otley was the Depot?

Where kiwk fit is now

 

[Deerfold]

I am surprised transdev haven't picked up on the ilkley to otley part of the X84 since its temporarily terminating at otley on the 2nd of oct or given first the run for there money and competed on the route.

First's application to change this route from 2nd October 2022 has been removed from the VOSA listings.

It's only since today that the 64 no longer runs its single journey to/from Otley (though they still run the slower 962 that doesn't run early, late or Sundays).

 

[jonesy3001]

First's application to change this route from 2nd October 2022 has been removed from the VOSA listings.

It's only since today that the 64 no longer runs its single journey to/from Otley (though they still run the slower 962 that doesn't run early, late or Sundays).

Been confirmed by the local mp as well the service is staying put

 

[NorthernSpirit]

OK so it’s no more dead running for the vehicles but First can do driver changes in Leeds whereas drivers based in York will need cars or vans to get to the route even if breaks are taken at Wetherby or Leeds. There clearly isn’t planned to be interworking if these are unique vehicles.

More likely the breaks at taken in Wetherby (Wetherby Whaler is only across the road from the bus station) but its possible that the drviers will have some fleet support van parked up nearby as this is what Keighley do/did in Otley.

Still suprised that First are dropping the route.