Resident

The 60 mile thing was something I was told by a member of the station staff. There are 2 witness accounts that state that 2 buses left the interchange, one saying they'd seen them side by side on the parkway and another stating that they'd seen 2 of them near Crystal Peaks. I have a feeling that the incident is being downplayed by SYMCA/SPCT. IMO the most bizarre part of the story is that the theives alledgedly took the vehicles back to the bus station. Who in their right mind would cause such significant damage to a vehicle 10 miles away from where it was nicked then risk driving it back given the risk of being seen by plod and stopped. That bit of the story doesn't smell right to me.

Damaged one wasn't there around 9pm last night, though the others were. Haven't been to the bus station tonight so I can't say, There have been instances where buses have been left in bus stations/on the road till late at night but these are ones that usually require being towed back to the depot because they won't move under their own power.

Just to update on the stolen bus front. It wasn't one bus that was stolen, 2 were stolen. The 2nd was found 60miles away, undamaged. Both were seen together on the Parkway & Crystal Peaks prior to the one being crashed in Killamarsh.

It's the same with pretty much all resurfaced roads lately. A case of scrape up the old top layer then stick down a fresh layer without dealing with the issues that caused the surface to deteriorate.

18-19hrs is average. When First had the Volvo EV on loan it ran the 51 service for a full 19hr shift and had just over 20% left. Weather was variable that day and the bus was fully charged the next day ready for service.

I'm not 100% that they are being stored there but they were all there last week at 0330, plugged up to the chargers As for the tracking. Of the 52 services operated by South Pennine Community Transport, 13 operated in South Yorkshire, ZERO have live tracking data supplied to BODS, which has been a requirement since 31/12/2020

Images I've posted are from this morning (with the exception of the 3rd one from Streetview) The buses themselves appear to be left in the bus station overnight so the vehicles themselves are very easily accessed. I would hope that they have the usual battery cut out and "ignition" security of normal buses but if you're in the know, easy to start one up. Modern ADLs usually use a "key combination" to start them. I won't divulge further, for security reasons. As for replacement, I would assume one of the derv vans will come back. Interestingly there's no public tracking data available for these electric buses, which is a violation of The Public Service Vehicles (Open Data) (England) Regulations 2020.

Not going well for one of the EV buses. Rumour is that it was stolen from the bus station. If it has then there's a distinct lack of security both in the bus station and fitted to the vehicle. Crash site is High St, near Rectory Gardens in Killamarsh.

I find it quite ironic that a person that complains so much about other people's driving, particularly those driving on a dual carriageway near his home, has admited to his own extremely poor driving.

Yeah. I've two mates who have both done the SM conversion after being told by a mechanic that it'll be fine. Both cars had awful idle vibrations & within a year one had gearbox failure, both needed replacement engine/gearbox mounts amongst other peripheral parts. Ford used a DMF for a reason. Given that cost is one of the major build factors in car manufacturering, if they could have used cheaper SM flywheels then they would have.

You can fit them but expect the car to shake itself to bits afterwards. Gearboxes tend to fail within a year from my experience too.

Force. They're separate lanes not merge in turn. If you need DDW then you should be in the outer lane before 2 lanes split into 4 and then carry on in either L3 or L4. Carrying on towards PSRA then forcing your way over into the already queuing traffic, causing traffic heading into the city to stop is careless and inconsiderate driving, an offence under the law. (RTA 1988, Sec. 3)

Guessing one of the vehicles did what I see all the time, drive down lane 2 (see @The_DADDY's image) when Lane 3 & 4 are queuing then wack right indicator on and try to force their way into Lane 3 and took umbrage when the other vehicle blocked him from doing so.

These GIFs are fun.

If you need time to remember "Mirror, Signal, Maneuver", one of the core tenants of driving when using a new vehicle, you shouldn't be driving.