Bus Eireann - new coach on short runs, old coach on longer expressway

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime wrote: »

Those LD's and LF's and even new LC's are all the biggest load of **** boxes I've ever come across

In no other vehicles have I ever felt wipers moving causing vibrating in the accelerator pedal.

The LD and LF type are suffering breakdowns nearly everyday of the week, I'm surprised their not being compared to Dublin coach for breakdowns !

OP, I'm gonna say , for everyones sake, I hope VDL never make another bus for bus eireann / expressway again and those vehicles disappear.

I'm actually delighted we're losing a good batch of LDs to go ahead, I'd happily welcome them to all our LDs and LFs.

The problem is that is a public body, Bus Eireann must tender for new vehicles and the problem often with tendering for new vehicles is that it's not so simple to just order with what you want, you set out criteria, people make bids and whoever gives the best one on the criteria gets to provide the vehicles. The problem with the VDL stuff is that it's often built to a price to win a tender, which just encourages corners to be cut, since tenders are normally very much heavily weighted in favour of price.

VDL is a strange company, they bought a fair few other companies, Berkhof, Bova, Jonckheere etc and all of them existed in their own right for a good while under the VDL umbrella. Slowly the companies lost their identity and became just plain VDL and were all merged together. Bova and Berkhof had a reputation for building cheap but functional vehicles, normally intgrals, but nothing amazing. Jonckheere was always a name that was well known with good, solid reliable vehicles, normally based on Volvo Chassis and they had a rather good reputation and still do and are nice coaches.

The problem is that the vehicles that Bus Eireann have are pretty much all derivatives of the Berkhof vehicles that started with the LC and LD. Sure they've had a couple of facelifts and name changes through the years, but essentially they're the same vehicle with the same problems. A lot of the Bus Eireann ones have problems with corrosion as well and had to have repairs for these reason, they really are a poor coach. As stated earlier, the only VDL product worth buying is a Jonckheere.

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime wrote: »

I am very aware of their tendering for these vehicles and also like to point that the NTA actually tendered for these vehicles from 2015 onwards afaik

I am also aware of the rust issue on the older vehicles which were sorted out for the 2015+ fleet

However , the issues I've experienced with the VDL fleet from 2015+ is electronics failing, gearbox failures and engine overheating ,breakdowns and airbags bursting.

And most of those faults have left myself and collouges on the side of the road only for the vehicle to be recovered later by the low loader or tow truck.

These are what I mean by reliability and unfortunately these vehicles are not reliable mechanically and electronically. And unfortunately VDL have made a very bad name for themselves with bus eireann with the drivers, mechanics, procurement and management.

I do believe management have a disliking to these vehicles too and have also explained this to the NTA, because everytime a vehicle breakdown it goes towards lost milage, dropped services and they get reported back to the NTA and with the reason why

I also have however heard recently through the grapevine that the NTA have had a sort of falling out with VDL and they won't be ordering anymore coaches with them in future that appearently theyve gone to Volvo UK for PSO coaches. (Not to be confused with buses from Ballymena)

So hopefully something decent to come along !

Sure, I understand that but the NTA do not get to pick what vehicles are ordered or who builds them at the end of the day. They have to go with whoever wins a tender and since VDL have won a lot of tenders, it's pretty obvious that they are very good and putting forward a bid that ticks all the boxes as far as this is concerned for both BE and NTA issued tenders for double deck coaches.

So whether the NTA have had a falling out with VDL or not is really academic because if VDL win the tender and offer the best bid then they'll be ordering more of their vehicles, unless the NTA write the tender in a certain way to exclude VDL vehicles without explicitly saying that in the tender, whilst not excluding other vehicles from manufacturers that they do want to bid.

I agree they are poor vehicles and neither the NTA or Bus Eireann would order them if they could buy things on the open market. But the reality of being a public body is generally you will have to go via the tender route, whereas someone like Aircoach for instance, can just go and buy whatever it wants.