Transdev Melbourne news January - July 2015

[Craig]

A new year and a new thread.

Kind Regards


Craig

[Alstom 888M]

#374 (Scania L94UB / Volgren CR222L) has been returned from Fitzroy to Footscray.
#964 (Scania K230UB / Custom Coaches CB60 Evo II) has been returned from Doncaster to Fitzroy.

A Doncaster bus was off the road for the last month or so. #964 was sent there to cover the loss while Fitzroy had yet another ex-MBL bus to cover #964. Fitzroy uses a portable Kenwood radio to contact ex-MBL buses. These radios do not work beyond about Elgar Road, hence why we are yet to see one on the Red Orbital.

I haven't seen #369 in awhile. Not sure if it's off the road for any reason or if it has been returned to Footscray.

#368, #370, and #371 are still at Fitzroy and in everyday service.

[MAN 16.242]

I haven't seen #369 in awhile. Not sure if it's off the road for any reason or if it has been returned to Footscray.

#369 is still yet to be returned to Footscray.
As for ex MBL buses and Red Oribital, in the first few months after Transdev had taken over, some did make it on to the Red Orbiral but only made it as far as Heidelberg.

[National Link]

I haven't seen #369 in awhile. Not sure if it's off the road for any reason or if it has been returned to Footscray.

#369 is still yet to be returned to Footscray.
As for ex MBL buses and Red Oribital, in the first few months after Transdev had taken over, some did make it on to the Red Orbiral but only made it as far as Heidelberg.

This photo was taken on July 30th, 2014. Transdev 353 would eventually start another 903 service from Mordialloc all the way to Altona.

[nonscenic]

Saw either 368 or 369 last week on a 908 about to enter the park and ride.
Pretty much anything is being used on these smartbus routes. I was on a 908 to the city yesterday on mk 2 bus 299. The engine sounded fine but pity that the driver couldn't open the rear doors when people alighted in the city.

[krustyklo]

I was on a 908 to the city yesterday on mk 2 bus 299. The engine sounded fine but pity that the driver couldn't open the rear doors when people alighted in the city.

Sadly that's not unique to Mk IIs at the present time, much newer buses have the same issues. I have been on a number of the Smartbus Volvos with this issue, as well as other types of bus.

[man mk1]

299s backdoor been like that for a couple of months now not sure if they will fix it or not

[man mk1]

on the vicroads website 592 rego is back to current it was suspended

[Craig]

ALTERATIONS TO SOME MORNING SCHOOL BUS ROUTES
January 29, 2015

With public transport being considerably cheaper due to the January 1 fare changes, patronage is expected to rise significantly by March 2015. To cope with the increase, we will be introducing additional services on our popular freeway routes to the CBD.

These additional services require Transdev buses to remain on standby to perform extra non-timetabled trips into the city when there is overcrowding so no passengers are left behind.

Public Transport Victoria (PTV) has agreed to purchase new buses to help deal with the patronage increase; however delivery of these buses is not expected until July/August.

In the short term we will be sub-contracting Crown Coaches to help perform certain school trips while we wait for our new buses to be delivered. The list of routes is shown below.

Ticketing
When travelling on the Crown Coaches, students will need to touch on and touch off with their myki using a handheld myki device which will be operated by drivers.

Seating
These coaches are seatbelt equipped and by law, can only carry seated passengers. This means standing is not permitted.

It is anticipated that this arrangement will continue late into Term 2. We will notify schools in advance and publish the information on our website once an end-date has been finalised.

From 30 January 2015, the following AM school services will be performed by Crown Coaches:

Route No. Time Origin - Destination
8025 7.55am - 8.10am Heidelberg Station - Marcellin College
8025 8.05am - 8.20am Heidelberg Station - Marcellin College
8028 7.14am - 8.07am Box Hill Station - Marcellin College
8061 7.55am - 8.25am The Pines - Whitefriars College
8060 8.26am - 8.36am Mitcham Station - Whitefriars College
155a 7.12am - 8.25am Warrandyte Bridge - Kew
155a 6.50am - 8.04am Warrandyte Bridge - Kew
160a 7.10am - 8.15am Park Orchards - Kew
8000 7.37am - 8.35am Warrandyte Bridge - Balwyn High School

Could these stand-by trips explain some of the occasional appearances of M.A.N. SL200 Mk2s on DART runs over January?

Kind Regards


Craig

[miclementson]

Why is it that Transdev have not ordered any new buses since the five (5) that arrived last year. Meanwhile new buses have been added to many of the other fleets such as Dysons and Ventura.

[Alstom 888M]

The six Gemilang buses have had issues that resulted in modifications needing to be carried out. Most notably the bus would bottom out and rupture the fuel tank when going over speed humps. Might have been a deal breaker.

[scott]

Serves themselves right for going with cheap imports rather than a true blue Aussie Volgren or Custom. They might cost more and take longer, but are well made for our conditions.

[Alstom 888M]

Aren't most Volgrens built in Malaysia these days? I've noticed the Melbourne Bus Link CR228L's are a hell of a lot sturdier and feels more solid than those that came from Ventura.

[scott]

The current Volgren deliveries to Ventura and CDC are all Dandenong built, but some of the B7RLE's built for the Smartbus routes were built in Malaysia, most likely due to Dandenong being full up at the time.

[jamesadams7]

Will be interesting to see how the coaches deal with school runs. School services can typically be very full, with many standees. The overall capacity will be much less on a coach if no standees are allowed.

[Alstom 888M]

Depends how big the coaches are. If they use 57 seat coaches the capacity isn't much less. Last time I did a Heidelberg - Marcellin I managed to cram 60 on before I said no more (not having any over the line). Schoolbags take up a lot of room.

[jarf]

I'm sure Transdev has done enough research to pick out individual services that aren't completely crammed. They'll have either 53 or 57 seats.

[jamesadams7]

Fair enough. My read into it was that the current buses are licensed to carry about 70 passengers (although, if the driver isn't counting, I'd daresay school runs can sometimes carry more). If two inbound services are being cut on some of the Marcellin or Kew High routes, and the replacement coaches only carry 53, then that's a net reduction of capacity of 34, or about half the capacity of a typical bus. But I'm sure forward-thinking Transdev know what they're doing.....

[Alstom 888M]

School kid capacity is actually less than adult capacity. Kids typically don't take their bags off and they often take more area than the passengers themselves.

[Mercedes]

Sigh one thing you don't want to do is cut capacity on Marcellin routes from Heidelberg. I cannot see that patronage on these services would have drastically changed in 2 years. 12.220s were banned under Ventura on them due to low capacity (just 54), Whitefriars weren't quite as bad with patronage dropping a bit over the last few years.

[Craig]

Sigh one thing you don't want to do is cut capacity on Marcellin routes from Heidelberg. I cannot see that patronage on these services would have drastically changed in 2 years. 12.220s were banned under Ventura on them due to low capacity (just 54), Whitefriars weren't quite as bad with patronage dropping a bit over the last few years.

Agreed - despite 6 specials to/from Heidelberg, the school has been chartering a bus from Midland Tours in recent years to provide further capacity from the station, with DoT and PTV apparently denying requests for extra trips.

If Crown provided non-seatbelted buses on the trips, you could in theory load 3 junior boys to a seat depending on their age, however I don't see any boys complying with that suggestion.

Kind Regards


Craig

[jamesadams7]

School kids love bundling on to each other. That's usually how they all fit onto the few available buses currently anyway.

[Craig]

More information about the extra stand-by peak buses running on freeway routes...

February 6, 2015
EXTRA SERVICES A WIN FOR CUSTOMERS

Working together with PTV, Transdev Melbourne (TDM) is providing extra services for customers.

Ticketing changes that came into effect on 1 January mean customers can now travel across Zones 1 and 2 for the price of a Zone 1 ticket. With public transport now more affordable, more people are expected to use public transport services.

TDM is providing extra buses on a number of its busy Eastern Freeway routes to get people where they need to go, with these buses duplicating existing services in the AM and PM.

In addition to DART services, customers are encouraged to try Routes 303, 305 or 309. All of these services run via the Eastern Freeway and the journey to and from the city takes the same time.

The 303 goes to Ringwood North and will be re-routed via Doncaster Park & Ride from Monday 9 February
The 305 goes to Doncaster Shoppingtown and The Pines Shopping Centre
The 309 goes to Donvale via Park & Ride and The Pines Shopping Centre

To support TDM’s extra services in the longer term, eight new buses have been purchased, with these expected to be in service later this year.

Until the new buses arrive, TDM has sub-contracted Crown Coaches to cover its nine stand-alone school services to free up some of its route buses for the extra services. Crown Coaches will continue to provide these services until the new buses arrive. The coaches are equipped with hand-held myki readers so students can touch on and off as usual and will otherwise operate the same school routes using the same stops as usual.

According to TDM MD Harry Wijers the main benefit of the extra services is that they can be utilised flexibly to meet demand at the busiest times.

“With these buses on standby we will be able to ensure more people can travel at peak times where we know demand is high,” he said.

School kids love bundling on to each other. That's usually how they all fit onto the few available buses currently anyway.

This certainly was not my experience travelling on heavily loaded buses serving Parkdale Secondary College not that long ago - many times buses would be forced to leave students behind despite not reaching the actual capacity, as students failed to walk to the rear of the bus, either as they wanted to stand near seated friends, couldn't reach hand-holds in the perimeter seating area at the rear, didn't want to go near the senior students, wanted personal space or simply didn't want to get close to fellow students.

Kind Regards


Craig

[burrumbus]

Thanks Craig for the info.
Be interesting to see what in the way of new buses Transdev actually purchase.Hopefully quality vehicles.
Perhaps thought could have been given to permanently subcontracting the school runs.A professional charter operator could perhaps utilise the vehicles much better.That is school runs AM and PM.School and other charter around this.Given they are short runs better utilisation may be a key.

[krustyklo]

Thanks Craig for the info.
Be interesting to see what in the way of new buses Transdev actually purchase.Hopefully quality vehicles.
Perhaps thought could have been given to permanently subcontracting the school runs.A professional charter operator could perhaps utilise the vehicles much better.That is school runs AM and PM.School and other charter around this.Given they are short runs better utilisation may be a key.

I gather from info on here from some time back that Transdev's order for Gemilangs was a lot more than the 6 they have received? You would like to think that if all the problem was was too soft suspension that that should be a fixable problem for Gemilang without Transdev needing to follow thorough on tearing up the contract? You may draw your own conclusions about the quality or otherwise of Gemilang route buses.

As for the school runs, why would a professional charter operator be able to better utilise vehicles than a predominantly route operator? Either operator may well need to have vehicles and drivers around for just the school runs (ie, split shift drivers). Alternatively, either operator would need to have revenue services that operate before, after, or between school start and finish times in order to efficiently utilise vehicles and drivers. The main opportunity for charter operators to achieve this would be effectively school charters for sports days and the like - these are fairly infrequent (2 a year for most government schools - swimming sports and athletics) so are unlikely to utilise their fleet efficiently during weekdays. The other key charter operations are day tours - but these begin before completed school runs would be able to get to the city in time to take tourists to the penguins or whatever, and would finish well after 3pm when the buses and drivers are needed for school run pickups. Any large market I've missed for charter operators? In fact party bus operators may well be the best charter operators for school runs given their evening work, although morning school runs would be a problem. Even then, Dee Decker may be useful for a few runs here given they seem to have a lot of kinder and other business for their double deckers during the day...



In fact, it could be argued that route operators are in a better position to efficiently utilise their fleet given peak hour starts just after afternoon school runs finish, although it sort of coincides in the morning. I am sure I've posted it here before, but a Transdev driver I casually spoke to who was doing an afternoon school run was going from Doncaster to Warrandyte, back to the depot to swap vehicles, then out to Mitcham followed by a run to Ringwood, Croydon, Ringwood, Box Hill, Greensborough then back to the depot. Second guessing the runs they were on would suggest that it would almost be a complete shift. That sounds pretty efficient to me., although the other Transdev driver for the school runs operated from that school worked split shifts (willingly I might add - he was previously on a morning shift but preferred a 2 hour later start and a split shift - but I digress).

Based on the above, I suspect it is less profitable and efficient for Transdev to subcontract school services and really is to cover a gap until new buses arrive. However, some might argue as I have before that if they had their maintenance in order, that they may have enough buses and spare drivers to get over the hump, even with the extra freeway services. The Mk IIs seem to be with us for some time yet despite their age and allegedly less than gentle treatment in everyday service and maintenance. Although their air conditioning seems to be still well up to the demands of hot days unlike some of their more recent fleet members.

The more interesting part of the whole issue is the fact that the reduction in price of fares is expected to gain significant extra custom for city route bus operators, along with the fact that the scheme (unsurprisingly) suffers from being a speedily implemented political scheme with minimal planning for catering for the extra patronage attracted by the lower fares...

Are the western suburbs routes doing something similar in having stand by buses? According to people on here, they were pretty busy too, although being mainly in Zone 1 they may not suffer the same effect?