(1) First Group
(2) Stagecoach
(3) Rotherham Community Transport
Minutes:
Michael Moore, First Group, reported that punctuality for Rotherham Town Centre services was good at 85-90% and the other services, which ran in and out of Sheffield and Doncaster, which had a lot of variability, was 78-92%.
Michael shared John’s comments with regard to the height of the vehicles and the challenges of some of the road network. First Group had first generation electric vehicles which had battery packs on the back of the bus but they were no longer manufactured. There had been various discussions with local authorities but it came back to the point of low bridges. The only real option was to lower the height of the road.
There had been some challenges in terms of the X3 service which ran from the Doncaster garage. First Group colleagues in Doncaster had been taking industrial action that was still progressing. Currently extended dialogue was taking place with the trade union with the strikes currently suspended. It was hoped it would soon be resolved.
In order to minimise some of that impact in terms of the uncertainty to the customer, First had taken the decision to move all the X2 services into Sheffield. The X2 from Sheffield to Maltby and Rotherham had been split between Sheffield and Doncaster but everything was now in Sheffield and added to that all the Rotherham work had been relaunched on a rota for Rotherham drivers. It was hoped that it would attract more staff from South Rotherham which had been a struggle to recruit since the closure of the Midland Road garage.
First was working with SYMCA in terms of protecting and maintaining the network. There would not be any fundamental changes to service patterns.
Councillor Fisher asked whether there was any appetite in South Yorkshire for a smaller fleet or whether it was the standard model and capacity of single and double decker buses?
Michael replied that First would continue running its fleet until franchising but understood that SYMCA was under consultation for fleet suggestions, model etc. Clearly one of the challenges was the number of authorities which were progressing with franchising plans, some more aggressive on fleet renewal/new fleet than others. However, that did create a challenge as there were only so many vehicle manufacturers and their capacity to create vehicle numbers in the space of a year.
Andrew stated that it may be that the anchor fleet would never fit the infrastructure; this was where the small-medium operators could possibly come in and it may be a consideration that they picked up the gaps. There were factors that needed to be taken into consideration e.g. commerciality, access, cost effectiveness of lowering the workload in relation to demand and realistically look at where the niche market could be and how the gaps could be filled.
Stagecoach
John Young, Stagecoach Rotherham, reported that service delivery continued to show strong performance. In the last period the operator mileage was 99.85%, lost mileage at 0.15% (290 miles) and punctuality was between 85-88%. These figures had been fairly representative for the last 6 months.
Stagecoach no longer made summer adjustments so there would be no summer timetable.
There would be some timetable changes in July as SYMCA had alluded to at Minute No. 61 However, these were very minor changes.
The Barnsley MiCard had been extremely successful. Stagecoach had had concerns initially with regard to possible anti-social behaviour etc. but it had not really materialised. The passenger numbers spoke for themselves and were really positive to see.
Stagecoach had had their electric vehicles for 2 years and still performing extremely well. The most benefit was seen was when a complete depot was converted to electric vehicle operation because you could really start to think about doing things differently and realising all the benefits that electric vehicles brought in every way. A single decker electric vehicle was higher than a single decker diesel engine vehicle which meant sometimes they could not be used on particular routes i.e. Chesterfield and Rotherham (Kilnhurst) so unless a network was changed or a supplier designed a vehicle that was sufficiently low that would be a challenge.
The mileage of an electric vehicle varied depending on the weather i.e. in cold/ wet weather with the use of heaters/demister/wipers and in very hot weather with the use of the air conditioning. Typically 2/3s of Stagecoach’s scheduled bus workings could be achieved without a vehicle having to recharge.
Out of the 20 scheduled bus workings 7 of them had to return to the depot around 6.30 p.m. and get a 45 minute boost in order for them to go back out. Obviously the future was unknown as the vehicles aged but currently the typical range was approximately 250 miles.
Stagecoach worked closely with SYMCA and protecting the network between now and the start of franchising.
Rotherham Community Transport
There was no-one in attendance from Rotherham Community Transport.