First South West (Kernow & Buses of Somerset)

[Goldfish62]

Indeed though that marginal cost is really derv plus perhaps a ppm for tyres and maintenance. You're probably looking at £6/7 per hour in terms of costs, as the fixed costs of the vehicle and driver and local/central overheads are already paid for.

That would depend on the pay structure, which I'm not familiar with. If only driving time is paid, as is the case with many operator, then you've got wage costs for the L1 journeys as well, and we all know staff costs make up by far the highest cost element of running buses.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

That would depend on the pay structure, which I'm not familiar with. If only driving time is paid, as is the case with many operator, then you've got wage costs for the L1 journeys as well, and we all know staff costs make up by far the highest cost element of running buses.

Fair point - I'm assuming that FK (being an established, unionised business) don't have the ability to have split shifts so that drivers would be paid all day so it's a bit of a sunk cost.

 

[richw]

Indeed though that marginal cost is really derv plus perhaps a ppm for tyres and maintenance. You're probably looking at £6/7 per hour in terms of costs, as the fixed costs of the vehicle and driver and local/central overheads are already paid for

Fuel varies Depending on the vehicle, but that’s pretty much it. The optares are considerably better than Gemini’s on fuel for example. Time the claim for BSOG and fuel vat And other reclaimables etc goes in it isn’t going to be a huge amount. Gemini’s (The only ones with mpg display on dash) do around 6mpg and I gather they are the juiciest buses we have.

Several of the college and school drivers sit spare being paid to do nothing much between college runs so their wage is being paid anyway

 

[richw]

That would depend on the pay structure, which I'm not familiar with. If only driving time is paid, as is the case with many operator, then you've got wage costs for the L1 journeys as well, and we all know staff costs make up by far the highest cost element of running buses.

Wage structure isn’t as you describe. There is a Maximum unpaid break per duty. If a break goes over that time we get paid the remainder of the break.
No split shifts except for a few semi retired chaps who come in and do a small number of the college runs and go home in between

 

[83G/84D]

Indeed though that marginal cost is really derv plus perhaps a ppm for tyres and maintenance. You're probably looking at £6/7 per hour in terms of costs, as the fixed costs of the vehicle and driver and local/central overheads are already paid for.



I've definitely seen folks holidaying getting the bus from Hayle, Lelant and Carbis Bay into St Ives. Also, on the A4, it's surprisingly popular from the Holiday Park near Gwithian into St Ives; after all, most people have now twigged that you don't take a car to St Ives. Going the other way.... Hayle ain't the greatest draw, granted.

Fair enough, I can understand people getting the bus at Lelant or Carbis Bay but Hayle does surprise me given the distance from the town to holiday accommodation. It's a nice walk from Philp's pasty shop up North Quay to the Towans if you are reasonably fit and the weather is decent.

One thing in Hayle's favour - some decent pasty shops, much nicer than the offerings in St Ives.

 

[Goldfish62]

Wage structure isn’t as you describe. There is a Maximum unpaid break per duty. If a break goes over that time we get paid the remainder of the break.
No split shifts except for a few semi retired chaps who come in and do a small number of the college runs and go home in between

Thanks - that's why I qualified my post as all companies differ. Plenty do have a structure as described though!

 

[Goldfish62]

Fair point - I'm assuming that FK (being an established, unionised business) don't have the ability to have split shifts so that drivers would be paid all day so it's a bit of a sunk cost.

You should see the wage structure of some of the highly unionised London operators! Almost the case of if you're not moving the vehicle you don't get paid!

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Fuel varies Depending on the vehicle, but that’s pretty much it. The optares are considerably better than Gemini’s on fuel for example. Time the claim for BSOG and fuel vat And other reclaimables etc goes in it isn’t going to be a huge amount. Gemini’s (The only ones with mpg display on dash) do around 6mpg and I gather they are the juiciest buses we have.

Several of the college and school drivers sit spare being paid to do nothing much between college runs so their wage is being paid anyway

I was thinking a B7TL would be 5-6 mpg and that they would be the likely vehicles between schools. It's a low marginal cost with the drivers being paid anyway; I suspected it would be a max x minutes break unpaid break (if that) and few if any split shifts. The vehicle and overhead are already paid for it's not a big additional cost to run some L1s between schools.

Fair enough, I can understand people getting the bus at Lelant or Carbis Bay but Hayle does surprise me given the distance from the town to holiday accommodation. It's a nice walk from Philp's pasty shop up North Quay to the Towans if you are reasonably fit and the weather is decent.

One thing in Hayle's favour - some decent pasty shops, much nicer than the offerings in St Ives.

You're probably right in that respect. It does support my view that the Tinners are much more a locals service than a tourist orientated one (as opposed to the AC)

 

[83G/84D]

Seems to be a shortage of open top's for the Atlantic Coaster services. The A5 today is two closed top Trident's (33176 & 33181) whilst the west circuit has Gemini 32554 on it. I also see that Trident 33111 is on the A17 whilst 32761 worked on it briefly this morning.

The B9TL is still VOR at Camborne.

Are the U1 & U2 no longer inter-worked? It seems from bustimes tracking that buses are staying on one service rather than switching.

 

[MB162435]

Seems to be a shortage of open top's for the Atlantic Coaster services. The A5 today is two closed top Trident's (33176 & 33181) whilst the west circuit has Gemini 32554 on it. I also see that Trident 33111 is on the A17 whilst 32761 worked on it briefly this morning.

The B9TL is still VOR at Camborne.

Are the U1 & U2 no longer inter-worked? It seems from bustimes tracking that buses are staying on one service rather than switching.

Believe the U1/U2 and U4 no longer inter work Monday- Saturday they seem to stick to one route only all day, but they still do on Sundays

Although that could change when the Uni returns along with the U3

 

[83G/84D]

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[richw]

I was thinking a B7TL would be 5-6 mpg and that they would be the likely vehicles between schools

L1 and connected college/school runs I imagine may utilise the lizard painted Tridents/Solos depending on required capacity. The solos are pretty decent on fuel. When we were carrying fresh air At height of covid solos were sent out As much as possible due to fuel savings being considerable

 

[Busaholic]

Is there really a number of holidaymakers between Hayle & St Ives? Any that are staying at Gwithian or Hayle Towans aren't going to walk to the nearest bus stop to go to St Ives or anywhere else, they'll get in the car. Same for people staying in St Ives or Carbis Bay area, why would they get the bus to Hayle to go to the town or beach?

The A4 is useful but infrequent.

I thought St Ives was closed off for car traffic at present. St Erth station has the hugely costly (to local ratepayers) Park and Ride car park/white elephant supposedly attracting all the holidaymakers on to those lossmaking, perennially empty branch line trains. or, when they can't get on, maybe consider the bus.

 

[83G/84D]

I thought St Ives was closed off for car traffic at present. St Erth station has the hugely costly (to local ratepayers) Park and Ride car park/white elephant supposedly attracting all the holidaymakers on to those lossmaking, perennially empty branch line trains. or, when they can't get on, maybe consider the bus.

There are a few decent size car parks outside St Ives centre, one has a shuttle bus into the centre which is very well used and popular with vistors.

 

[83G/84D]

Maroon coloured Volvo B7TL / ALX400 32014 (NTL 655) in Camborne ex Bath.

 

[Whiteway215]

QUOTE="83G/84D, post: 4715830, member: 12589"]
Maroon coloured Volvo B7TL / ALX400 32014 (NTL 655) in Camborne ex Bath.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for that report. Well that one wasn’t among those suggested to be moving down to Kernow.

 

[83G/84D]

QUOTE="83G/84D, post: 4715830, member: 12589"]
Maroon coloured Volvo B7TL / ALX400 32014 (NTL 655) in Camborne ex Bath.

Thanks for that report. Well that one wasn’t among those suggested to be moving down to Kernow.
[/QUOTE]


No I didn't think it was mentioned either.

 

[Whiteway215]

Wild guess. The Gov website recently showed the blue Bath ALX400s 32069/70/75/76/83/96 and surprisingly the maroon (some say purple) 32014/15 were all shown as taxed. As 32014 has turned up at Camborne my wild guess is Kernow may be getting all these taxed ones.

 

[Cesarcollie]

Yes, but the revenue still needs to exceed the marginal costs and I'd have thought that was a pretty tall order for a new speculative commercial route competing with other services in the current circumstances.

It is a slippery slope to assume marginal costs are ‘only’ fuel. Maintenance is generally time based, but parts do wear out faster when the wheels are turning, so an element in not marginal. Breakdowns and associated costs only happen when in use. Insurance costs in a self-insured environment are largely a function of accidents, and they happen when a bus is racking up mileage, not when it’s parked in the depot. So whilst there are certain ‘peak vehicle’ costs incurred even if a bus is standing still, there are various other costs which do need to realistically be attributed to extra miles run. There are many failed operators who never quite learned that lesson......!!

 

[Whiteway215]

Do we know how many of these older buses Kernow require as temporary cover?

 

[fgwrich]

I thought St Ives was closed off for car traffic at present. St Erth station has the hugely costly (to local ratepayers) Park and Ride car park/white elephant supposedly attracting all the holidaymakers on to those lossmaking, perennially empty branch line trains. or, when they can't get on, maybe consider the bus.

I did see a tweet yesterday shared by GWR about this, involving FKs Open Top Oly being used on services into St Ives. Has GWR hired FK to run some additional St Ives shuttles I wonder?

Edit, looking at the tweet again it looks like they have.

https://twitter.com/GWRHelp/status/1292764476773666817?s=20

 

[83G/84D]

I did see a tweet yesterday shared by GWR about this, involving FKs Open Top Oly being used on services into St Ives. Has GWR hired FK to run some additional St Ives shuttles I wonder?

Edit, looking at the tweet again it looks like they have.

https://twitter.com/GWRHelp/status/1292764476773666817?s=20

Olympian 34137 is helping out on the St Ives line as and when required.

 

[Goldfish62]

It is a slippery slope to assume marginal costs are ‘only’ fuel. Maintenance is generally time based, but parts do wear out faster when the wheels are turning, so an element in not marginal. Breakdowns and associated costs only happen when in use. Insurance costs in a self-insured environment are largely a function of accidents, and they happen when a bus is racking up mileage, not when it’s parked in the depot. So whilst there are certain ‘peak vehicle’ costs incurred even if a bus is standing still, there are various other costs which do need to realistically be attributed to extra miles run. There are many failed operators who never quite learned that lesson......!!

Yes, I'm completely with you on this! If it were as straightforward as some are suggesting I'm sure there'd be a lot more commercial services running around utilising peak vehicles that are otherwise parked up interpeak.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Yes, I'm completely with you on this! If it were as straightforward as some are suggesting I'm sure there'd be a lot more commercial services running around utilising peak vehicles that are otherwise parked up interpeak.

Hence why I said

Indeed though that marginal cost is really derv plus perhaps a ppm for tyres and maintenance. You're probably looking at £6/7 per hour in terms of costs, as the fixed costs of the vehicle and driver and local/central overheads are already paid for.

As I said, the fixed cost of the vehicle (e.g. MOT, tax, depreciation etc) and the driver is already paid for, as is the contribution to central overhead (the First tax to pay for Giles et al) and the local overhead (paying for AC/MMH, contribution to back office staff, depot overheads etc). The use of "perhaps" might suggest that's an optional thing; it's not but that ppm (pence per mile) might be how you calculate those running costs so sorry if that was confusing.

It isn't so straightforward in that you can't merely marginally cost everything AND your "spare staff" are also used to enable driver breaks anyway. Just in this case, FK believe there is sufficient spare capacity to allow it to happen.

 

[MB162435]

33471 is now the 4th Uni MMC to return to it's stomping ground after 33470, 1st day back out today

 

[TechDan2002]

33471 is now the 4th Uni MMC to return to it's stomping ground after 33470, 1st day back out today

I saw it entering Truro Bus station on the 5th August not in service...

 

[MB162435]

I saw it entering Truro Bus station on the 5th August not in service...

Wonder what's it been up to for a week then, unless it hasn't been tracking?

 

[83G/84D]

Wonder what's it been up to for a week then, unless it hasn't been tracking?

Some of the MMC's returning from SPS are having a period in engineering workshops at Camborne before re-entering service.

 

[Goldfish62]

Following on from our debate on the L1 I see that the government has announced an indefinite extension of the emergency funding. However, eligibility is dependent on returning commercial service levels to 100% of pre-Lockdown from September.

So, it looks like we'll be seeing the T1/T2 and U routes frequencies restored shortly..

 

[richw]

Some of the MMC's returning from SPS are having a period in engineering workshops at Camborne before re-entering service.

The engineer responsible for MOT prep said last week there was 6 MOTs for him to prep for. Not sure which vehicles