Well someone sat down and came up with the route and timetable, updated timetable cases on route, got a bus repainted, and got lots of leaflets printed, that were then worthless from day 1!
Welcome to the forum Matt.
Its a tendered Derbyshire service replacing the old Stagecoach 80 with significant changes.
It’s quite resource heavy requiring 3 vehicles with a 2 minute layover at one end and 5 minutes at the other on a cross-town route taking circa 80 minutes one way ….what could possibly go wrong!
Indeed - standard Hulleys style! They have lost the 48 and 49 to Stagecoach which was two vehicles so not such a huge increase in resources required.
It removes the Sheffield to Killamarsh bus service link & it also came in handy around the Beighton area as the TM Travel 30 regularly drops journeys. Now to get to Killamarsh passengers have to change at Crystal Peaks. The Hady & Spital section is run by a revised 55.
last ditch attempt to improve the cash flow? the cancellations list on the facebook seems extremely long compared to normal...
The cancellations are probably because of left over snow and ice.
I highly doubt any of these companies would unless they wanted to operate at a loss continuously. The multitude of posts I've seen all hint that Hulleys are barely scraping enough money to keep the place going. Go Coach seems like a very obvious attempt to have another company to back Hulleys up with.
This makes 0 sense to me. I highly doubt a tiny bit of snow is going to cause 31 cancellations, on routes with 2/3hr gaps as it is, all of which are contracted. Hopefully Derbyshire County Council grow a backbone & impose a fine for missing runs on contracted services but running commercial routes.
www.facebook.com
And if they don't, scale down!!
To be fair there's a multitude of reasons to block social media comments - spammers and spurious complaints amongst them. Those tactics don't work with the traffic commissioner's office though. So I expect we shall see them visiting for a public inquiry in due course.
Hulleys are right to switch off comments on their social media - it isn't a channel they advertise as a way for customers to contact them, it is purely a means to get information and updates out to passengers.
TM Travel have cut back on their contracts and other operators have stepped in though like Vectare on the 81 (including purely to give an example). Nothing stops Hulleys throwing back ab outlier tender (ones which don't tend to interwork and can work standalone) like the 110/111 and an operator with staff can take on the contract.
TM have part suspended a number of tendered services they have contracts for with some simply not running on Saturdays, basically telling passengers they can only travel on weekdays, they are also seeing cancellations on other scheduled services that should be running. Meanwhile they are still taking on contracts such as event shuttles, school swimming trips etc that local coach companies could easily do.
I fail to understand the business model at TM Travel. Having undercut other operators for multiple SYMCA tenders, they cannot and do not provide the provision to run the routes. However, as you said yourself, TM are happy to take on additional contracts for shuttles etc. and will prioritise providing the staff and vehicles for those contracts over running the tendered mileage.
Actually to be fair I do recall TM had a pool of zero hours contract drivers to call upon for one off pieces off work such as event shuttles and rail replacement, not sure if that is still the case.
I suppose that makes sense, although I have seen one or two drivers who do service work working the contracted routes (I suppose could be overtime?)
