Spare buses (split from [PR] Ryder Cup)

Victor

This post was copied and split from the other thread to allow discussion on the specific ponts made.

Aquavid

You may have read (or even wondered about yourself) some of the stories concerning the 120 buses that Dublin Bus have provided for the Ryder Cup P&R operation. Critics have complained that the company obviously does not need the extra buses it keeps asking for if it can service such an event, and some people have wondered if the normal city services were down 120 vehicles during the week as a result.

As a person with a detailed knowledge of the company's fleet disposition, and no axe to grind either way, I thought I'd clarify here:

Firstly, where do the 120 buses come from:

Basically the majority of these (100) come from this year's delivery of buses for fleet replacement. This is an order for 100 new doubledecks which have been delivered and put into service over the last 6 months, replacing older double and single-decks on a one for one basis.

The buses being replaced were stored at Broadstone over the last few months, both to provide a reserve fleet for the Ryder Cup, and to ensure that if the fleet expansion plans were approved by government, the extra services would be capable of starting immediatly, without having to wait for the approved extra buses to actually be delivered.

For the week of the Ryder Cup, these old buses have gone back into service from their former garages, releasing all of the new buses for the Ryder Cup Shuttle.

The other 20 buses, came from temporary rescheduling of planned heavy maintainence and the refurbishment programme - normally each garage would have between 2 and 5 buses off the road going through a 3-year heavy body refurb, interior retrim and repaint cycle, and this has been suspended for Ryder week.

As regards drivers, leave cancelled, drivers schedules altered so that rest days fell in such a way as to allow them to work maximum overtime legally during this period - much as the company would do for a busy Christmas etc. It would not be possible to keep up this level of driver rostering for more than a few days without running into legal issues, and seriously over-stressing drivers.

Now the big question that you could ask from all of this is: why can't the company use the stored buses for the fleet expansion that they want? If they can do it for the Ryder Cup, why not for the public?

The answer to that is that the government will not let them. For each new vehicle that arrives, a bus has to be removed from service, and is not allowed to be used - unless of course, it is for some big public event/occasion, that the government wishes to go smoothly . . . !!!

The real question to ask is: why does the government allow a temporary expansion of the DB fleet by 100 for the Ryder Cup, and not for general public service?

And the answer to that is: "Sssssh! Don't be asking questions like that."

Dublin Bus unfortunately are a bit of a pawn in all of this.

The one question you could legitimately ask the company is why the public on normal service had to make do with the old, non-accessible buses, while the Ryder Cup got all the new ones.

While on the topic of fleet expansion, there is one other fact that is not generally known, or at least has not made it into the mainstream media.

The 100 extra buses that Dublin Bus want were actually ordered long ago in anticipation of government approval, are currently on the production line in Scotland, and will commence delivery within the next couple of weeks. This is basically another identical order for 100 doubledecks following on from the replacement ones, so in total 200 new 'deckers will have been delivered by year end.

If approval for the expansion is not granted, these new buses will either go into store, or more likely replace the 100 oldest buses in the fleet, thus putting the company ahead of itself in its fleet replacement programme.

And of course, if approval is given at some stage, Mr. Cullen can click his fingers, and the extra buses will magically appear in a puff of smoke, gee, look how quickly he can get things done!

Aquavid

Victor

My, my, how cynical.

Red Alert

A number of RH's popped up again (for the paying taxpayer) leaving the AX's to ferry people who never paid a cent into the DB coffers to an exclusive event.

Victor

Do buses used for commerical services (mostly tour buses) get counted against the limit?

Aquavid

I believe they don't count, as the company seem to have increased their number slightly during the freeze (we now have two GhostBuses rather than one, for example).

The RHs which were put back into service for Ryder Cup week (or 91, 92, 93 reg double-decks for those who don't know the different types) will be gone pretty sharpish - they were put up for sale via e-tenders some time ago, but the company who have been purchasing these vehicles each year (Ensign Bus - a UK dealership) knew that they wouldn't have access to them until October.

Deliveries of the new buses were up to number 542 by last week, and AX548 marks the last of the replacements, 549 onwards being the start of the 100 "extra" buses.

Mind you, they have just lost another bus to fire, so at least one of those disputed buses can now be simply a replacement.

Aquavid

Wishbone Ash

Aquavid - What's the average milage of a DB due for replacement? I've heard that some have 2 million on them!