The dreaded FIRST BUS!

[Leodian]

dervish99 wrote: Leodian wrote: tyke bhoy wrote: saw a 51 reg tonight and an 01 one in the orange livery one all white.I wonder how many of these buses meet the disabled access regs that are imminent and whether they are excluded due to size of operation. If it is size of operation presumably Arriva and First wouldn't be excluded but Geldards would. Geldards would need this to be the case because I don't think they have a bus in the fleet without a large entry step after stepping on. Not directly relevant to the thread but I've often wondered if the name Geldards was used because it is an anagram of Ledgards (of Samuel Ledgards buses fame). Geldards is simply named after the guy who owns the company Mr Geldard. Thanks dervish99.It is a bit amazing (or perhaps I'm easily amazed!) that the Ledgards and Geldards bus company names are anagrams.

[raveydavey]

Riponian wrote: "Services 98, 99 and X98 have a revised route in Wetherby, omitting Forth Avenue, Hallfield Lane and Sandbeck Way. Some peak journeys will be withdrawn."The run round Wetherby was never well patronised anyway, and rather a long way round. The huddling masses of Hallfield will have to walk!I am rather surprised that First still run to Wetherby, I would have thought that they would have either decided to go down the "high quality" path as per the "36" or just knobbled the service down a minimum and looked for a Metro handout. I know it's traditionally West Yorkshire territory and there may be an agreement stopping H&D encroaching. In my opinion would be a good thing, as First are not good at being a "rural" operator. I think Worst (or Yorkshire Rider, as was) inherited Wetherby when they bought out West Yorkshire Road Car Co and have kept hold of it ever since. I agree thought that it doesn't really seem to fit with their primarily urban based services.

[Riponian]

Hey, I've just had an email telling me the "Longer hop" fare is going up to £1.90, part of their long term aim of running "passenger-less buses" no doubt.Previously this landed folk with an increase, they stuffed up the Green Zone by a mere 20% and hey presto, another 12% increase from the 26th September.I wonder what sort of economics work in their offices? I wonder what massive bonuses their directors are awarding themselves?Oh yeah, you can soon buy your weekly tickets from Paypoint... just catching up with Arriva then?

[Crazy Jane]

I was quite shocked to discover the other week that while the fare from Kirkstall Road Nettos to Kirkstall Lights is £1.20, if you have some reason to get on a stop earlier you pay an extra 50p for the distance from the Cinema Complex/McDonalds to Nettos.Guess they have to break it down somehow, but that is a big hike for a small distance.

[Riponian]

It's the new 3 hop fares - it's to make us all hopping mad. Will it cost more to alter all the sides of the buses with the new "£1.90" than it raises?Guess it'll soon be the long walk up Kirkstall Road soon, when they fiddle the fares up again soon.

[raveydavey]

http://www.firstgroup.com/assets/pdfs/i ... ts.pdfThat might give you the answer you're looking for - they made a profit of £179.6 million last year, but read on and you'll see that they have debts of over £2,281,000,000. Or two and a quarter billion pounds, if I've read that correctly.You need a lot of £1.90 fares to service that amount of borrowing.Presumably that level of debt has been run up by buying out the competition and underpricing competitors where they still have them - as I've said before take a trip to Manchester where there is a lot of competition and see how low fares are there compared to West Yorkshire.

[Riponian]

Worst are that much in hock because they'd been on a buying spree on borrowed money. I mean they've bought Greyhound Lines in the US, so they've even knobbled themselves there.Maybe they think we're just poor cash cows here in Leeds, where they don't have much competition, but at least now there's Centrebus who's obviously beating them in the tendering process.I'm seriously thinking that a folding bike might be a good idea for my city end of the trip, or to use that cycle park thing at the station. We have cycle parking under cover here at work.They are pricing themselves out, even the 36 is now noticeably cheaper into Leeds from the Grammar School inwards, and I expect it to get busier.

[tyke bhoy]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leeds/poll/20 ... eeds-buses

[Crazy Jane]

for no particular reason, there seems to be an undue number of Not In Service busses on the Kirkstall Road run this week.

[raveydavey]

I'm told that if a number of buses are running late and bunched together, they sometimes switch the board to 'Not in service', or the pointless but annoying 'Sorry I'm not in service' and leapfrog a few stops to get back to time / spread them out a bit.Although that doesn't explain why I live under a mile from the number 4 terminus and regularly see them heading for town in twos and threes.