johncrossley
Established Member
Can't they use an alternative site for hydrogen filling? What about the old Southdown depot?
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Brighton & Hove / Metrobus Discussion
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RailUK Forums
See post #107. Great minds etc!
The Copthorne site is small - Southdown operated around 24 buses. Metrobus have almost 100 hydrogen buses in place or on order. I don't think that they could all be housed there, but they could call in to be refuelled perhaps, either mid duty (without passengers!), or at the start or end of the day.
The Copthorne site does not appear to be close to a school or railway, but there is obviously a cost in relocating the kit from Crawley.
busesrusuk
Member
Not to mention the added dead mileage, duty costs to enable drivers/engineers to get to what may be a remote site from their route and impact on overall duty lengths and efficiency....
But buses terminating in East Grinstead already go past the Copthorne depot on their way to Crawley
Can i ask where you have heard that? Where is that rumour from? The current route 1 is a standard urban cross city route. An express version of that would not really make much sense at all.
dontteleport
Member
I can't speak for OP but have been following these rumours. From what I know, a (well-known and trusted) former managing director of B&H recently alluded to the 6 new 400s in the new standard livery (738-744) being ordered ahead of the rollout of a new 'city route'. These buses are fitted with different interiors to the coasters too, but are still single-door and fully diesel powered.
This information was from his blog post, and an unknown individual in the comments below stated this would be a '1x'. So definitely not a reliable source for what the route will be, but a new route of some kind does look plausible.
You're referring to Roger French, I take it.
busandtrainuser.com
38 new coasters for Brighton & Hove
Thursday 21st March 2024 Bus passengers travelling along the coast road between Brighton and Eastbourne are enjoying superb comfort from the brand new buses now entering service with Brighton &…
busandtrainuser.com
dontteleport
Member
Yes.
Short Scania Omnicity 6633 is currently operating the 410 ex Southdown service in full Fastway livery. Is this the first time a true Metrobus vehicle has operated a Southdown route (as opposed to the buses such as the Geminis which have transferred to Copthorne)?
Murray J
Member
No it's happened quite a few times. There's also been multiple instances of Brighton & Hove liveried Omnidekkas running on routes, particularly the 410 I think.
Also the Geminis are at Crawley, not Copthorne.
Seems to only be a substitute, as an available vehicle. The relevant 410 ran from Redhill about half an hour late for the 1735 departure, seemingly after LK55AEA was unavailable. However, that later managed to run the 1935 from Redhill. It was working 100s earlier in the day. I saw a Brighton & Hove Scania Omnidekka double decker on the 400 earlier in Redhill, but this was running on a spare ticket machine.
YN56FDP appears to be regularly working on Copthorne duties at present. SN12AAF had a day on the 409 today.
I actually saw the Omnicity in Oxted working on the 410 towards Redhill at around 19.10 on Saturday evening, with complete destination display. If the Dart LK55AEA was available for the 19.35 from Redhill, it looks as though the Scania ran one round trip.
How easy is it to reprogramme the destination displays, or do all Metrobus buses have a full set of Southdown displays?
Murray J
Member
Yes they all have the Southdown blinds, and vice versa with Southdown buses on Metrobus routes (although that's never happened yet).
It does seem a backward step having single door buses on the 1!
I see with the running of the new E400 MMCs that some additional B9s have moved over to Lewes Road?
The latest edition of the Brighton Bus Watch newsletter mentions this new route 1X service so it seems that it is indeed happening.
This is the website mentioned here:
index of Brighton Area Buswatch
Frequently Updated: We are Brighton Area Buswatch, which works in partnership with Bus Users (formally Bus Users UK). Our aim is to encourage better bus services and represent the needs of local bus users. Our area covers from Shoreham eastwards to Lewes/Seaford, and northwards to Haywards...
www.brightonbuswatch.org
It can be downloaded as a PDF here:
These are the only details it mentions:
Apparently it will be a Brighton Marina to Mile Oak service. This really makes no sense. This a cross city route with lots of passengers boarding and alighting at all stops. It is not the sort of route where you would expect a limited stop service. In fact i am not sure how they are going to choose which stops to serve. In the UK it is quite rare for local cross city services to have express or limited stop versions.
All of their other limited stop routes (11X 12X 13X 28 29 29A 29B 29X) are all long distance services so it kind of makes sense. The only other local city route that was limited stop was the 25X and that only lasted for a year or two. So it does seem an odd choice.
Ah yes i forgot about the 7X service. Considering that none of their other local city limited stop express routes have lasted long it does make me wonder why they are introducing the 1X service. I wonder how long the 1X will last. I seem to remember that they also introduced the i7 at the same time as the 7X and it lasted about six months too.
I remember they also had an 11X from the late 1990s to the early 2010s which ran between Brighton Town Hall and Hove Town Hall only. This was really pointless and a huge waste of money as these places always had an extremely frequent service with buses every couple minutes between the two. I think they had almost thirty buses an hour running on other services between these places. But i believe the 11X was a council contract and the council wanted a direct express bus that their employees could use to get between their two offices.
There was a significant driver shortage during the summer of the i7 and 7X, such that a large proportion of the journeys (on the latter at least) were provided by Compass.
Likewise, I wonder what the point is of this new service (not yet listed in N&P, via bustimes.org). If it's to be operated by just the 6 new Enviros, it's not going to be especially frequent. With the 1 & 7 already at every 6 minutes or so, I wonder who's going to tailor their journey around a slightly faster bus on a 15 or 20 minute headway.
Likewise, I wonder what the point is of this new service (not yet listed in N&P, via bustimes.org). If it's to be operated by just the 6 new Enviros, it's not going to be especially frequent. With the 1 & 7 already at every 6 minutes or so, I wonder who's going to tailor their journey around a slightly faster bus on a 15 or 20 minute headway.
Even if it's Marina, Hospital, Gala Bingo, Steine, North St, Churchill Sq, on the east side. That's basically no quicker than a 12X, from Marine Gate, nor is it going to be *that* much quicker than a 7 is there enough demand for that?
Slightly more logical use of extra PVR is the rumour of additions to the 5/5B...
Slightly more logical use of extra PVR is the rumour of additions to the 5/5B...
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brightonbususe
New Member
I did the Coaster today, so thought I'd share a few thoughts on the new buses. Extremely comfortable seats, pretty quite engine-wise and loved the huge windows. I also loved the super-vibrant colours used for the livery.
I was surprised how low the ceiling was on the upper deck (my head was skimming the ceiling) and already the lighter grey used for the glossy molded plastic was pretty scuffed and worn. Also couldn't quite work out if the engine was stop-start or not. It seemed to stop almost every time the doors opened but not always, and when we were in a queue in Cuckmere Valley, the engine was still running.
I was a bit surprised how many rattles there were for such new buses and there was a lot of creaking plastic noises too. I didn't like the location of the stop buttons at all (seatbacks on every other row rather than on poles). It caught a few people out and also someone hit one with their bag. The LCD screens with the stop information were quite poorly designed with an extremely small font which is a real backstep in terms of accessibility. I also found it quite stuffy because approx the first five rows upstairs don't really get any benefit of open windows.
Overall very nice buses, but I think the 10-year-old Geminis offer a better passenger experience and seem to be a bit more robust and built to a higher standard.
I was surprised how low the ceiling was on the upper deck (my head was skimming the ceiling) and already the lighter grey used for the glossy molded plastic was pretty scuffed and worn. Also couldn't quite work out if the engine was stop-start or not. It seemed to stop almost every time the doors opened but not always, and when we were in a queue in Cuckmere Valley, the engine was still running.
I was a bit surprised how many rattles there were for such new buses and there was a lot of creaking plastic noises too. I didn't like the location of the stop buttons at all (seatbacks on every other row rather than on poles). It caught a few people out and also someone hit one with their bag. The LCD screens with the stop information were quite poorly designed with an extremely small font which is a real backstep in terms of accessibility. I also found it quite stuffy because approx the first five rows upstairs don't really get any benefit of open windows.
Overall very nice buses, but I think the 10-year-old Geminis offer a better passenger experience and seem to be a bit more robust and built to a higher standard.