Messages

Thanks, Gareth.

If I recall correctly, the Merry Hill shuttle service was operated by white TMH Fleetlines the following Saturday, as usual!  I also have a vague memory of them on the Hagley School Special. Does anyone know when the white Fleetlines were finally withdrawn?

I always felt that Merry Hill Minibuses and Travel Merry Hill were a "Cinderella" operation, being much appreciated by passengers, and given far less recognition by enthusiasts than they deserved. Hopefully one day, preserved R598 YON, one of the Volvo B6LEs originally allocated to Merry Hill, will be repainted in its original TMH livery.

These buses should be shouting from the rooftops exactly what they are, with a head-turning, bright and dazzling new livery. To achieve anything like that with this as a base is going to take an awful lot of vynil.  :(

Not many buses from Broad Street to Handsworth, Bilston or Wednesbury

Will the extra revenue justify spending (initially) £169m? If someone had proposed extending the 74 to the Monument Road area increasing the PVR by three or four, it would probably have been deemed nonviable. Yes, the tram will not suffer congestion at Five Ways, but can the same be said for all the buses from all the other destinations which will have to wait at the traffic lights as the tram sails nonchalantly through?

Also, will Mr Platinum replace the iconic tones of Judy on the 1 since a few of those are out of date?

Judy? I always thought it was Kerry!

So when 5 buses, all with passengers on are stuck in a queue at some temporary traffic lights please explain what a controller is supposed to do?

The bus station Inspector at Walsall will always sort out bunching at the first opertunity, but there is the added complication here that an NX Inspector cannot alter a Diamond bus

If Walsall bus station was the first opportunity, then fair enough, but it seems to indicate that, despite the sophistication and cost of telemetry, the situation could not be managed any better than it could in past times prior to its adoption, and that contradicts a big selling point of the Init (and other telemetry enabled) ticket machine systems. Maybe this reflects the limited powers that controllers and inspectors are granted by higher management? I do not know the current situation, but I do know it has changed a lot over the years. I appreciate the problem of it being a joint service, especially if one operator tries to correct the service and the other doesn't. However, no bus enthusiast, not even one who is eleven years old, would expect a bus to fly over roadworks and traffic. Only passengers expect that!

What do you expect them to do? Fly over the roadworks and traffic

Maybe he expects inspectors or control staff to turn buses to maintain an even headway and restore the service. Over the last ten years, bus companies have spent a fortune on sophisticated ticket machines costing thousands of pounds each which include telemetry. Supervisors should know instantly the location of every bus. If this costly technology is not used for this purpose, why was it purchased?

As @Stu says, clear and simple. It looks a darn sight better and clearer than the horrible black ones!

One thing I miss from the past is the reflective strip on the WMPTE stops. This was highly effective, and useful to passengers and occasionally drivers in less familiar territory on a dark or dreary night.

How long has the 120 been the 120,

I don't know for certain, but there is a picture in the "Midland Red" volume 1 of REDD HA 8003 on the 120 taken in August 1938.

Let us not just consider the "where", but also the "how" before it is to late and another shipload of money is tipped into the insatiable tramway pit. It is now over a decade since TfWM and its ancestors should have supported local industry and got behind a low-cost Full Hybrid transport system produced by Parrys People Mover. For what has been spent so far on one line, a whole network of PPMs could have been completed by now, and would probably have made a significant profit.   

[is]

@midlandred2003. If you look at its ancestry, NXWM is Midland Red!

[and they took responsibility.]

To me, this all looks like typical Local Authority "look at what we're doing" grandstanding. Referring to the link Stu has posted, how do they reconcile "...we will have trains, trams, buses and cycles with one uniting identity...." with "Each has its own distinctive livery - orange for trains, blue for trams, red for buses, green for bikes...." ? Using a small and  unimpressive logo along with the words "West Midlands" will not unite the four, far more powerful, liveries. The logo is barely discernible in the photograph, which seems to be more about the three people than the transport. Also, how does a comprehensive and integrated system work with a deregulated bus industry? Are we to have London style franchising for the whole county? Is one body going to control all bus train and tram timetables? Is that body going to take responsibility when things go wrong, or simply pass the buck to the individual private companies? When this was last started by the WMPTA/WMPTE in 1968 (yes, 50 YEARS AGO!) they took control and they took responsibility.  Trams aside (a very costly yet small proportion of passenger miles), this just looks like a weak style-over-substance publicity exercise.   

Oh Holloway Circus is pretty much a car park at times!

It has been as far back as I remember (80s), even on Sundays.

This article appears to mix up two anniversaries. March 1978 may have been the end of conductors in Birmingham, but not WMPTE. I do not recall last dates, but Hartshill garage had conductors into 1979 (232 and 266 services), and I believe it was West Bromwich which had the last conductors of all.

We have all been conditioned over many years to repeat the media mantras about money. This is a good get-out clause to lower our expectations, and make us fight long and hard for small considerations which should be ours as a right. If a local or national government has the political will to do something, be it vanity project or for political advantage, it will do it, no matter what the initial cost or ongoing cost effectiveness. The money will always miraculously appear.

The Midland Metro is a major example. It is too susceptible to closure through incidents and repair compared to a reserved busway. Over its history, it has hardly made any money, let alone recouped costs, and the trams have now been replaced after a working life no longer than that of a typical West Midlands bus. As if to underline the attitude, the new fleet of trams is now being retrofitted with traction batteries (more money) so that the nice areas near the Birmingham council administration buildings don't have to look at those ugly overhead wires.

The result is that only one route into Birmingham gets direct access to the main part of Corporation Street, and all other routes have been pushed out. Each tram has the same number of seats as a 1960s single decker bus (about twenty less than a double decker). These seats are not comfortable, and everyone else has to stand.

This project could have been so much more at much less cost and far more practical. In a quiet moment at the time of test running, (1998?) I was casually chatting with a consultant who had worked on transport projects worldwide. In the dismay of witnessing councillors and management discussing how good it will be to see trams arriving in Birmingham one after another with 130 passengers on each (remembering there were only 54 seats), I provocatively suggested that it should have been a trolleybus route, using luxurious 15 metre electric coaches, possibly even double deckers if bridge clearance permitted. To my suprise, he agreed with me, saying it would have been what he would have done, being the ideal situation to showcase a step forward in public transport thinking. He also said don't tell anyone here I said that! Class is unfortunately in the British psyche. We will use a bus or a standee tram if we have to. We would have used a smooth, quiet, luxurious "Electrocoach" because we wanted to. The Trent Barton Red Arrow (Derby to Nottingham) is a good illustration. 

Sorry for the off-topic rant! My point is, no matter what you are told about money, it is political will that will decide the path, not cost, value for money, or cost effectiveness.