Diamond Bus - Discussion

[winston]

A plain white Primo (maybe 20812) seemed to be route training drivers for the 16 today. Not in service, had about 6 drivers in hi-viz's on it, went the 16 route from The Priory Queensway where I first saw it, down to the markets and back up The Priory Queensway again

It seems to me that long acre has a very high driver turnover as opposed to tividale, many of the drivers there have been there for many years at BCC or Petes or joined gwm. Long Acre often seem to be route training new drivers...

Long Acre is the operations that has shrunk the most with contract losses / commercial service withdrawals etc. Plus drivers finding out that Long Acre depot is for sale may not help either.

Exactly-guess morale can hardly be running very highly there. Though the signature drivers are a friendly, regular bunch. I would shut long acre as soon as possible and get overheads down. Offices to tividale, routes split between redditch and tividale.

Exactly.

Rotala should acquire the premises of the glass re-processing place next door to Tividale as a definite must, regardless of whether Long Acre is sold / sub let etc. It would give Tividale a decent yard extension past the end of the engineering bays & plenty of additional office space for future use

[bususer12]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

[PM]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

Clearly a WM network review of diamonds network is what is needed but they are already busy in redditch so we can't blame them for sort of keeping tividale and long acre ticking over at the moment while redditch and kidderminster are given some much needed attention. But with an hourly frequency its never going to be frequent enough to attract custom

[winston]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

The problem with hourly frequencies is that they are not very convenient for intending passengers, if there's a breakdown you'll have to wait another hour. NXWM X1 at an hourly frequency never really took off, and Diamond previously tried a 45min frequency on the 002 before for only a short time but I don't think it proved very reliable

[PM]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

The problem with hourly frequencies is that they are not very convenient for intending passengers, if there's a breakdown you'll have to wait another hour. NXWM X1 at an hourly frequency never really took off, and Diamond previously tried a 45min frequency on the 002 before for only a short time but I don't think it proved very reliable

002 reliability in general needs to be looked at but I think diamond should keep west midlands routes as they are for the moment and sort out worcestershire as there is real potential to increase custom there in my opinion with an improved approach.

[winston]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

The problem with hourly frequencies is that they are not very convenient for intending passengers, if there's a breakdown you'll have to wait another hour. NXWM X1 at an hourly frequency never really took off, and Diamond previously tried a 45min frequency on the 002 before for only a short time but I don't think it proved very reliable

002 reliability in general needs to be looked at but I think diamond should keep west midlands routes as they are for the moment and sort out worcestershire as there is real potential to increase custom there in my opinion with an improved approach.

With the recent comments on here, it sounds as though KR is doing pretty well under Rotala ownership, RH still seems to be having problems though

[nitromatt1]

Good to see that they are making use of some of the most expensive assets at tividale-this used to be the case with 002 centros on other routes on sundays but think diamond have realised these buses are very hardworked on the 002. I would still like to see a sunday/evening service though

I certainly would like an evening/Sunday service on the 002. However, in my opinion the more important section of the route is the unique link it provides between Halesowen and south Birmingham. I would operate it half hourly between Weoley Castle and Halesowen with every other journey i.e. hourly continuing to Merry Hill.

I'd discuss it with centro if i was in charge of diamond and see if they could fund an initial trial of every 15 mins on the whole route as splitting it up with different frequencies gets rid of the most important thing in buses for me:simplicity!!

I'd have thought that a half hourly evening & Sunday daytime frequency would be more realistic for starters.....

I would go as far to say an Hourly frequency to test the water to start with. Sometimes the Sunday demand can be totally different. 255 from 4bph in Tridents to 1 B7RLE ph on Sunday

It is now 1 Trident per hour on Sundays on the 255/256.

[nitromatt1]

MPD 20519 and Solo 20542 on the 243 tonight. It looks like there is just a 45 minute layover in Dudley, rather than any interworking.

[the trainbasher]

20852 is leaking fuel on the 282

[Nathan4775]

30826 - has lost the 56 on its display heading to Brownhills for some reason

[winston]

Rotala sold the following to Ensign during Oct

Taken from Ensign's Oct log:

From Rotala : Tridents V857 / 882 / 887HBY  T885KLF   Darts P403MLA    R610YCR

[Trident 4609]

Is the 71 operated by Tividale or Long Acre? I thought Long Acre operated it but a 002 Centro was on there last night

[nitromatt1]

Is the 71 operated by Tividale or Long Acre? I thought Long Acre operated it but a 002 Centro was on there last night

I saw the Nana Centro in the distance leaving Sutton about 9:50pm on the 71.

[Nathan4775]

30952 been re-painted or not? if not then the bus I seen was 30000, looks cleaner than before

[Bob]

Just out of interest did any of the 51 plate sb120s start life with arriva? On one at the moment on a 301 and apart from the red seats it has arriva style interior ie turquoise panels yellow handrails etc