Messages

Also add to the fact that the 97 is every 5 mins anyway so there's nowhere near as much of a wait for the next one.

That's not the case, either in theory or in practice!

M42 works chaos. 105 minutes Meriden - Yardley (75 minutes Birmingham Airport - old terminal) yesterday, which was nice... 

WMPTE didn't bring in agency drivers, couldn't be bothered with things like that, much easier to delete hundreds of hours of mileage. I could literally walk into any WMPTE garage any day and have my choice of what route I wanted to drive and what time I would work it was that bad. One week in 1985 when I was off from my wages job I did 80 hours overtime. As for timetables most bus stops in PTE days didn't have any timetable information on them, let alone up to date ones.

As for contracting routes out to opertors who couldn't run them properly remember Mid-Warwickshire motors?

MWM were a major operator???

Have you made a complaint to tfwm and stagecoach or just whinging on here

Both. 

As they are tendered journies would it be any different under Manchester's Franchised version?

No driver = no buses, whether they are regulated or deregulated. I paid for a large deposit on my house from driving uncovered duties in WMPTE days. In the 1980s WMPTE was deleting as many miles as private operators are now.

Dunno. All I can say Is I'm not aware of the PTE relying unsuccessfully on agency Drivers from miles away. Nor did the PTE STILL fail to provide correct bus stop timetable information 4 months into a service. Nor did they outsource services to a major third party depot with woeful staff shortages & abysmal FTO figures in the first place.

Not that it was Stagecoach who were solely to blame. Finding the last two Kingshurst going AWOL made me all nostalgic about AG's operation of the 58...

I abandoned all hope of catching the last one back from Yardley when I saw that it was tracking on the A45 near Allesley heading back to Rugby. 

In another stunning endorsement for deregulation this afternoon, the last two A9 services to Kingshurst (& thus the return trips) failed to operate...

Former Yellow bus Gemini 3's have started to enter service at Burton. These being:
40612 BF15 KFE
40613 BF15 KFD

40613 on Burton depot on 8/4:


ROT 40613 080423 | OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA | Pennard Postman | Flickr

Solus Travel are to run 2 new routes commencing from Monday morning:
25 Erdington to Hodge Hill.
600 Erdington to Brookvale Park.

[Checks the O.C.) Oh bloody hell...

Someone needs to ask unions what hardship their leaders are encountering on full pay.

Yawn. Someone needs to ask nx bosses, such as MD David Bradford (He of the cringeworthy 'open letter'), exactly what hardship they're encountering on their 'meagre' salary...

Are they taking action in the best interests of everyone?. As Simon has stated at Rotala not one route is currently in profit without financial support. It is similar at NX with very few routes that could stand up on their own. Drive more passengers away and more routes will go out to tender to the lowest bidder. Lowest bidder normally means the one with the lowest operating costs, so drivers turning down the current £16+ offer could easily find themselves on a much lower rate.

Fresh in my thoughts are the routes I use most (mainly for work), & have mental scars from: the 97, x1 & Outer Circle (ironically, the A9 is currently the most reliable, despite being the least financially tenable?). But that's as a passenger. Service provision & staff conditions are abysmal at present, regardless of company or individual route profitability.

Hope them and the members realise the long lasting effect this will have on their industry (and subsequently, their incomes!)

It's almost as if service provision, & staff recompense / morale, is at an all time high before there's been a single minute of strike action... Seriously, we've played by their rules for too long, yet using public transport  gets worse by the day.

 Support & solidarity to the staff who are legally (for the time being, until the nazis ban that as well) taking action in the best interests of EVERYONE involved.

As expected largely to provide transport for essential hospital workers as most I think serve major hospitals including Heartlands, QE, Good Hope, City Hospital, New Cross, Russell's Hall etc

Bit of a Chocolate Teapot solution for those changing shifts at 10pm or 6am then?

I note the token 97 service. Needn't bother on my account, I'll be walking rather than deliberately breaking Industrial action.

Whatever you think about Stagecoach entering the West Midlands, it has raised concerns at higher levels at NX; I even understand that some of their more junior employees have been tasked with undertaking monitoring on their compliance and reporting findings to higher level management.

After (yet) another 45+ minute wait for a 97 yesterday evening & (yet) another FTO of my early morning 97 to work during the week, maybe some monitoring of their own service compliance might be more beneficial?

If they deliberately target same days as trains suspect public sympathy with diminish

Speak for yourself there. There is (much) blame to be laid, but not at the workers feet.

There's too much greed out there and it seems union bosses like Mike Lynch care more about causing disruption

Plenty of greed out there. Last I heard, the NX CEO was on £575k, but feel free to blame Mick & the Drivers.

You said you got a ONLY got a 2.5% increase. Ah, the politics of envy. Perhaps you should've joined a union with a decent leader?