Oliver Coppard Lays Out Case For Bus Franchising In South Yorkshire

[RollingJ 2,055]

Fair enough, @Planner1 - I can understand that. I apologise if I've upset anyone, but there are reasons why I'm a bit tetchy this morning.

[Andy C 86]

The charging facilities for the electric buses have only just been installed in Sheffield Interchange and I'm not sure if the contract to operate the service has been awarded to an operator yet. The vehicles are BYD/ADL Enviro200EV buses.

 

The other electric buses and charging infrastructure for South Yorkshire part funded by the ZEBRA scheme are for Stagecoach's Rawmarsh depot to be used on the Rotherham-Barnsley and Rotherham-Doncaster services, those vehicles are Yutong E12s.

 

There are bids in to ZEBRA2 from SYMCA to get electric double deckers for Stagecoach's Ecclesfield and Holbrook depots, also from Derbyshire County Council to get electric buses for Stagecoach's Stonegravels depot.

Edited March 6 by Andy C

[RollingJ 2,055]

1 minute ago, Andy C said:

The charging facilities for the electric buses have only just been installed in Sheffield Interchange and I'm not sure if the contract to operate the service has been awarded to an operator yet. The vehicles are BYD/ADL Enviro200EV buses.

 

The other electric buses and charging infrastructure for South Yorkshire part funded by the ZEBRA scheme are for Stagecoach's Rawmarsh depot to be used on the Rotherham-Barnsley and Rotherham-Doncaster services, those vehicles are Yutong E12s.

 

There are bids in to ZEBRA2 from SYMCA to get electric double deckers for Stagecoach's Ecclesfield and Holbrook depots, also from Derbyshire County Council to get electric buses for Stagecoach's Stonegravels depot.

Thanks for this. I understand the Interchange charging points have only just been installed - read it elsewhere just before it got a mention on here. I thought the Sheffield Connect service had been awarded to SPCT, or was that only until the ADLs were in operation?

 

The other info you have posted I am aware of from another source.

[Andy C 86]

1 minute ago, RollingJ said:

Thanks for this. I understand the Interchange charging points have only just been installed - read it elsewhere just before it got a mention on here. I thought the Sheffield Connect service had been awarded to SPCT, or was that only until the ADLs were in operation?

 

The other info you have posted I am aware of from another source.

The existing contract with South Pennine Community Transport ends when the new electric buses comes in, I'm not sure if it is them or someone else who has won the new contract - it may not be decided yet, the closing date for tenders was a couple of weeks ago. The vehicles themselves are owned by SYMCA.

[RollingJ 2,055]

2 minutes ago, Andy C said:

The existing contract with South Pennine Community Transport ends when the new electric buses comes in, I'm not sure if it is them or someone else who has won the new contract - it may not be decided yet, the closing date for tenders was a couple of weeks ago. The vehicles themselves are owned by SYMCA.

Thanks for confirming what I thought was the position with the current  SPCT contract. I doubt it really matters who wins the new one, as I still think they'll be ferrying fresh air. And I thought the vehicles were leased, but was obviously wrong. So they've been sat around gathering dust for at least 6 months, possibly longer?

[NERVY-OWL 197]

1 hour ago, Andy C said:

The existing contract with South Pennine Community Transport ends when the new electric buses comes in, I'm not sure if it is them or someone else who has won the new contract - it may not be decided yet, the closing date for tenders was a couple of weeks ago. The vehicles themselves are owned by SYMCA.

It has been decided and on course for April operations as far as I know. They can't leave it too late as drivers need to be trained on using the buses before they come onto operation. It will be interesting to see how it runs as I thought there would be one spare bus but sounding like all four will be in use.

[RollingJ 2,055]

9 minutes ago, NERVY-OWL said:

It has been decided and on course for April operations as far as I know. They can't leave it too late as drivers need to be trained on using the buses before they come onto operation. It will be interesting to see how it runs as I thought there would be one spare bus but sounding like all four will be in use.

So they'll spend all night charging at the Interchange - interesting.

[Planner1 438]

1 hour ago, RollingJ said:

So they've been sat around gathering dust for at least 6 months, possibly longer?

Manufacturers have significant lead-in times for building the vehicles. The MCA may have had to grab what production slots were on offer.

 

The government funding also has tight timescales for spending the money, so better to get it spent quickly and avoid any risk of having to give it back

[RollingJ 2,055]

12 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

Manufacturers have significant lead-in times for building the vehicles. The MCA may have had to grab what production slots were on offer.

 

The government funding also has tight timescales for spending the money, so better to get it spent quickly and avoid any risk of having to give it back

Speculation - as I freely admit some of my thoughts are.

[Resident 1,195]

15 hours ago, SheffieldForum said:

That is based on savings of 500m/year, which presumably you aren’t disputing?

 

So, even with your math (not knowing what kind of industry or bulk discounts they might be quoting), that is ~1000ev buses from the savings made, is it not?

 

Why is that bad?

 

Also — fossil fuel buses need fuelling too, so the cost of charging can be offset against that (which we know to be extremely volatile in terms of costs and potentially worse for the environment)?

Just to come back to this, to add why I have doubts about the claim half a billion pound saving. 

If there was half a billion pounds in savings to be had whilst still running the services, do you not think that the operators would have done so?

Ballpark figures it costs operators combined about  £1.5 million a day to run services (based on an estimated 800 vehicles across all operators, £90/hr average running costs & 20hrs a day service, 4am-midnight), a total for the year about 550 million. So given Coppard claims they can save 506 million, how does he propose to run a full year's service on just 44 million, which equates to £7.57 per bus per hour?

 

[SheffieldForum 947]

6 minutes ago, Resident said:

Just to come back to this, to add why I have doubts about the claim half a billion pound saving. 

If there was half a billion pounds in savings to be had whilst still running the services, do you not think that the operators would have done so?

Ballpark figures it costs operators combined about  £1.5 million a day to run services (based on an estimated 800 vehicles across all operators, £90/hr average running costs & 20hrs a day service, 4am-midnight), a total for the year about 550 million. So given Coppard claims they can save 506 million, how does he propose to run a full year's service on just 44 million, which equates to £7.57 per bus per hour?

 

Where’s the £44m figure from?

 

 

[Resident 1,195]

5 minutes ago, SheffieldForum said:

Where’s the £44m figure from?

 

 

Coppard's claim of being able to save 506 million taken from actual operational yearly cost of 550 million