Cannock Garage

[Bob]

For f###s sake they were transferred here specifically to go on Cannocks busiest route! But don't seem to spend much bloody time on it!

[Bob]

One of the two deckers allocated to the staffords yesterday broke down in penkridge and had to be towed off leaving passengers to wait another hour....

[646]

For f###s sake they were transferred here specifically to go on Cannocks busiest route! But don't seem to spend much bloody time on it!

In the interim period, the A5 duplicate has become Cannock's busiest route!

[Bob]

Tell that to standing passengers crammed in like sardines on peak time 74/5s! If thats the case cannock should receive a couple of older deckers as reserves for the b9tls and to use on amazons. And maybe a couple of buses refurbished as sapphire spares so when things go wrong they can maintain the standard instead of using darts

[Trident 4609]

One of the two deckers allocated to the staffords yesterday broke down in penkridge and had to be towed off leaving passengers to wait another hour....

Which routes have they appeared on so far apart from the 74/5 then?

[Bob]

Pye greens and now apparently amazon and other than that either broken down or sat in yard

[andy]

Bob, I do wish you'd worked for a bus company so you could put some consideration into some of the tantrumic, knee jerk spouting that you do whenever you clap eyes on something you disapprove of.

I am not here to defend Arriva Cannock or its methods but for a moment put yourself in the position of a workshop manager or operations supervisor.

It is the Monday of a service and schedule change, encompassing the launch of the Sapphire corridor and increased PVR on other routes.

You have icorporated brand new vehicles and internal transfers into your operation with all that entails, and deactivated those that were being replaced. They in turn have planned maintenance and movements within the fleet to adhere to.

One of your fitters 'disables' two of your new vehicles at the last minute. You have a planned maintenance programme for the vehicles that are left, some of which are mandatory safety checks and unavoidable work.

Some other vehicles that were booked out for duties today may have general day to day defects highlighted in the morning checks or topside checks overnight.

One of the internal transfers has an itermittent fault which you can't trust out on a Stafford duty all day but will probably manage a peak working so you can get it back in and work on it.

You would like to put an unbranded nearly new Pulsar out to replace a missing Sapphire but that vehicle is on safety check tomorrow and needs to go out on an early returning working today instead. So another will have to do.

You have negotiated with another depot to hang onto one of the vehicles they were due to have for an extra day but you want it back in for prep for the transfer this evening, so need to select an appropriate working.

It's been a tough morning but you're just relieved to have got a full service out today with all the issues you've faced. Now you can start planning the contingencies for tomorrow until you've got everything back where it should be.

Bob, I could go on and on but I fear you wouldn't be listening. The jigsaw puzzle that is operating a significant bus garage and fleet cannot always be all about the branding, the seats and the vehicle type when your back is up against the wall.

[Bob]

I accept some of your points there andy.

But compare cannock to say telford or maybe shrewsbury or even wednesfield for the purpose of refurbs.

Why does cannock lag so far behind them? For example almost every commander at other garages (52 plate) was refurbished years ago, cannocks have not been other than 3701 recently and even then it was a cheap one not even involving a repaint. The same with darts from other garages most were done. Of cannocks Sn53 esg has had the seats re trimmed with no repaint, sno3 lgc was refurbished before it moved here so doesnt count. The only one is bu51 kwn which was done recently.

Yes its good that theyre investing in some new buses even though three have been damaged and out of use before their first week is out, but the fact that things were left to get into the state they were is bad.

I would still say though that in comparison with other garages cannock suffers more breakdown issues, although maybe its more noticeable due to many routes not running on high frequencies.  id say that makes it even more important to have a reliable fleet

[Tony]

First two buses I saw yesterday on leaving the house were 25/26 branded 3796 on the 33. Then 2274 broken down on Lichfield Road

[Steveminor]

It's not the depots fault really (vehicle age wise).
The depot are allocated a budget and vehicles by head office & it is up to the manager to stick to that budget or answer some very awkward questions as to why he exceeded it. So cannock may not have the budget to afford all these costly refurbished.
The vehicles that are allocated to the depot are also down to head office & are "I believe" based on the net book value of the bus against the net revenue from the route/depot.
Having recently looked into cannock depots routes recently it's easy to see why they don't have a big budget, I spent 3 weeks looking for something profitable to compete on & couldn't find a thing worth while. From my calculations the only decent earning route (s) are the 74/75 & then you have to factor in that some of those passengers have bought day, week or monthly tickets from a stafford depots route/bus.
Am I surprised that other depots have better buses, NO
Am I surprised that there is no competition in Cannock, NO
Do I think Arriva cannock are doing a decent (ish) job given their circumstances YES.
Remember chase used to run around cannock & their fleet consisted of mainly elderly nationals with very little being spent on updating the fleet. The question you have to ask is WHY?  The answer is simple. Lack of revenue.

[Bob]

Not really a fair comparison with Chase there, their entire fleet bar about 4 buses consisted of Nationals! And very well maintained ones at that.  They only really ran on the 1 which they did for years so it must have turned a profit.  They did a short lived 60A in response to Arriva trying to kill them off on the 1 but that was about it. I dont ever remember Chase suffering the reliability issues there are now either

[Steveminor]

You are kidding right. Chase had plenty of breakdowns it was just less noticeable as they had fewer buses than Arriva.
I'm not a fan of Arriva at all but I have to say that comparatively they aren't doing too bad a job in Cannock. Or would you prefer to swap them for Diamond.

[PM]

You are kidding right. Chase had plenty of breakdowns it was just less noticeable as they had fewer buses than Arriva.
I'm not a fan of Arriva at all but I have to say that comparatively they aren't doing too bad a job in Cannock. Or would you prefer to swap them for Diamond.

Without wishing to ask the chicken/egg question, could it not be that it was exactly the supposed poor presentation/breakdowns that led to lower usage in the first place and thus to grow ridership, a depot should speculate to accumulate and spend some money even if initially this can seem unjustified.

Steve: out of interest (I've never been to Cannock) would you say that Redditch/Cannock are similar areas in terms of buses ie smaller towns with decent networks with 1/2 good earning routes?

[Bob]

If its so unprofitable why have they not just got rid and transferred the 74/5 to Stafford?  After all it isn't a public service run for the greater good its a profiteering private business

[Steveminor]

To Bob first the simple answer is transferring the routes to Stafford would cost more in the dead mileage for all the duties/routes starting in Cannock. Secondly I didn't say it was unprofitable just not very profitable & I can see Arriva is operating within their means & keeping costs down.
Diamond dart I would say Redditch is better bus territory than Cannock. I would put it more on a kin to Kidderminster.
Given that I think Diamond should be running Redditch a lot better than they are & unless they up their game it's only a matter of time before they get competition.
They were lucky with Cityline not starting or they could have been in for some serious competition by now IMO. But still that whole episode worked out well for Sunny as well as Diamond as they got a fleet of darts without having to spend any cash .