Promenade - Megathread

[Bobbie Bobster]

1 hour ago, Max Power said:

...double deckers with hardly anyone on them at all.

Ridership v coverage.  Who knew public transport planning was so complicated?

https://humantransit.org/2009/12/yet-another-transit-isnt-green-because-of-empty-buses-story.html

If public transit agencies were charged exclusively with maximizing their ridership, and all the green benefits that follow from that, they could move their empty buses to run in places where they’d be full.  Every competent transit planner knows how to do this.  Just abandon all service in low-density areas, typically outer suburbs, and shift all these resources to run even more frequent and attractive service where densities are high, such as inner cities.  In lower-density areas, you’d run only narrowly tailored services for brief surges of demand, such as trips to schools at bell-times and commuter express runs from suburban Park-and-Rides to downtown.  If you do such a massive shift of resources, I promise your productivity (ridership per unit of cost) will soar, and you won’t have as many empty buses.

The outcry would be tremendous, the politics toxic, the prospects for implementation zero.  I would never propose it.  But there’s no question that such a service change would dramatically increase ridership, dramatically reduce the number of empty buses, and thus improve how transit scores on the kind of tally that Cox and his allies propose.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, transit agencies have to balance contradictory demands to (a) maximize ridership and (b) provide a little bit of service everywhere regardless of ridership, both to meet demands for ‘equity’ and to serve the needs of transit-dependent persons.

[John Wright]

@thesultanofsheight & @The Dog's Dangly Bits

Red Cross had a contract, they provided the vehicles, fuel, training and drivers, for patient transport picking up outpatients and delivering to/from RCH or Nobles or day centres. I don’t know if the Red Cross drivers and attendants were all volunteers or paid. Having the vehicles meant they were available out of hours for other transport of elderly/infirm activities.

Now the Red Cross haven’t the minibuses or drivers that’s a capacity that’s much reduced. They no longer need their big shiny HQ on the business park, which had training facilities and equipment loan, etc.

Once bus Vannin had the transport contract they then went for the patient transfer, to and from Ronaldsway for off island treatment, contract, held up until then by taxi operators.

Of course both those have peak bulges between 5 and 8 am and 6 and 10pm for Ronaldsway and 8 to 12 and 4 to 6 for hospitals.

As the minibuses weren’t full to capacity en route to Ronaldsway they started offering airport runs, initially in the North, to fare paying passengers, and then the village connect service. After all they had the capacity.

Mini bus feeder routes, around the villages, connecting with main services on TT course and the Douglas to South, make sense. Also around douglas and Onchan, if they are frequent.

But the issue is having sufficient capacity for peak demand, patients and school and commuters, morning and late afternoon, and what to do outside those hours.

Bit like Steam Packet and TT. 
 

However the solutions are different. One has capacity for peak demand and over capacity the rest of the time, the fares are fixed and subsidised, the other has capacity for most of the time and under capacity at peak times, which they ration by pricing.

The minibuses still look, to me, to be empire building, buying the buses, then finding jobs to justify them. I’ve no idea how the patient transport contract was tendered, and how BV included capital costings. My bet is that it didn’t. It undercut the Red Cross, which had to cost those things.

[thesultanofsheight]

1 hour ago, John Wright said:

@thesultanofsheight & @The Dog's Dangly Bits

Red Cross had a contract, they provided the vehicles, fuel, training and drivers, for patient transport picking up outpatients and delivering to/from RCH or Nobles or day centres. I don’t know if the Red Cross drivers and attendants were all volunteers or paid. Having the vehicles meant they were available out of hours for other transport of elderly/infirm activities.

Now the Red Cross haven’t the minibuses or drivers that’s a capacity that’s much reduced. They no longer need their big shiny HQ on the business park, which had training facilities and equipment loan, etc.

Once bus Vannin had the transport contract they then went for the patient transfer, to and from Ronaldsway for off island treatment, contract, held up until then by taxi operators.

There’s now a story online which says that Bus Vannin operates a fleet of 67 minibuses. Drivers are paid £11.21 or £11.10 an hour, including rolled up holiday pay, depending on their start date. Eight Sprinters were bought in 2018-19 at a cost of £345,528 on top of the 12 acquired in 2017-18 at a total of £732,516.

So if 8 Sprinters were £354k last year and they actually own 67 that’s nearly £3M spent just on fixed assets to make them a claimed £3,000 a month (£36k a year, or a 1.2% return on their capital investment) in fares. That’s without depreciation on the fleet, paying drivers, maintenance, diesel etc. Longworth really is a financial genius. Add that to the loss making horse trams (which have had millions on new sheds and rails spent on them in the last 12 months and held up the whole prom project), the steam trains, and the trams and we could probably give another £15M a year to the hospital if we could just get rid of one small part of the DOI and the way it pisses money up the wall on vanity projects. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[Amadeus]

Church Road Marina is now closed and Finch Road one way direction has been reversed. Thinking of leaving the house early tomorrow and watching how many people didn't know and get stuck

 

[Dave Hedgehog]

Chester Street car park should be fun tomorrow around 5.30 as everyone leaving gets stuck going up Christian Road. 

[Ham_N_Eggs]

3 hours ago, thesultanofsheight said:

if we could just get rid of one small part

One person you mean.

[thesultanofsheight]

4 minutes ago, Ham_N_Eggs said:

One person you mean.

Not especially as the problem and the bad culture is more widespread than that. But yes especially there does seem to be one big log in the pan that is proving impossible to flush. 

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

Where is the £3000 a month fare taking, coming from? That's £100 a day (say about £7 an hour) across the fleet?

 

 

[Non-Believer]

4 minutes ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

Where is the £3000 a month fare taking, coming from? That's £100 a day (say about £7 an hour) across the fleet?

 

 

Stated in the iomtoday article as posted earlier. 2 pages back, Max Power's post/link. Monthly fare takes for the last 3 odd months. Slight fall for November.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Non-Believer
Correction

[finlo]

8 minutes ago, The Dog's Dangly Bits said:

Where is the £3000 a month fare taking, coming from? That's £100 a day (say about £7 an hour) across the fleet?

 

 

Don't knock it you just know it's financial genius!

[thesultanofsheight]

7 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Stated in the iomtoday article as posted earlier. 2 pages back, Max Power's post/link. Monthly fare takes for the last 3 odd months. Slight fall for November.

Yes it’s in that article. I really remain surprised at all the attention the hospital (which at the end of the day saves lives) gets when these fuckers are consistently pissing away millions on nothing. Sixty seven mini buses worth close to £3M which are just sitting around in school playgrounds half the time depreciating every week to earn a claimed few grand a week (ignoring the cost of wages, fuel, insurance, maintenance, benefits etc etc). 

Edited January 5, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

15 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Stated in the iomtoday article as posted earlier. 2 pages back, Max Power's post/link. Monthly fare takes for the last 3 odd months. Slight fall for November.

Which is why I questioned it.

I dont think they have 67 minibuses specifically bought and dedicated to the dial a ride numbers quoted?

Assuming the dont then Sultans numbers are misleading.

Edited January 5, 2020 by The Dog's Dangly Bits

[Non-Believer]

They've easily got 67 though. Apart from the numbers posted on here as being scattered around various Govt properties and carparks, there's lines of them parked up at Banks Circus (where you'd expect them to be, obviously).

Duty-wise, some are dedicated to the collection and transport of special needs kids for their school runs, others for hospital patient transfers.

I suppose the questions would need to be, is it cheaper than the Govt catching the private hire taxi bills for the above (which used to be the case), how many are dedicated to the Connect Villages scheme and what are the respective costs?

Also given that they've reinstated some of the regular bus routes northside following an outcry that the minibus scheme was allegedly proving to be difficult to access for some and unreliable.

[thesultanofsheight]

51 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

They've easily got 67 though. Apart from the numbers posted on here as being scattered around various Govt properties and carparks, there's lines of them parked up at Banks Circus (where you'd expect them to be, obviously).

Duty-wise, some are dedicated to the collection and transport of special needs kids for their school runs, others for hospital patient transfers.

I suppose the questions would need to be, is it cheaper than the Govt catching the private hire taxi bills for the above (which used to be the case), how many are dedicated to the Connect Villages scheme and what are the respective costs?

When is it ever cheaper to employ people to work for government than to work for private sector firms doing the same thing? Also  capital spend to put them in vehicles to perform the contracts is simply ignored. If you’ve spent £3M on (depreciating) fleet you’d expect a good yield off that investment.

[Non-Believer]

I do know that there were some inordinate private taxi contract costs involved with patient transfer (eg early morning airport runs and evening returns) and regular daily school transport for those needing and entitled to it. Early airport runs from say, Ramsey, £50+. School runs £10 a day, per kid. All done individually. Rich pickings for cabbies on contracts with DHSC and Dept of Ed. 

The minibus for example does a pre-arranged doorstep pickup service of a number of patients for @ £5 each way.

Lob in a few of those taxi fares and costs to the Govt soon mount up?

Edited January 5, 2020 by Non-Believer
Typo