Badger
Member
The excels here were great until they just stopped maintaining them properly. It's only been in recent years that they've become well, awful to be honest. They were under capacity though, and therefore I'd say the shortest excels used on the Wolverhampton 503/W route (now withdrawn, replaced a couple of weeks ago with brand new long buses). A very busy route that only ran every 12 minutes, going through Oxley (which, without meaning to sound too discriminating, is full of a particular type of people and hence has a LOT of pushchairs heading from there to town). Pushchairs were BANNED from these buses because of the lack of room (even though there was a pushchair space); they had to be folded with some scribbled signs saying so. Anyway, couple that with the fact that a couple of regular wheelchair users also use the route, and it was pretty dreadful, and like that for a couple of years.
I dunno why. We started off with brand new buses on the route in 1999 - the longest type of Optare Excel with the new style of bus seats that were actually comfortable. But as time went on they were withdrawn from the route and replaced with the tinier and older Excels with the old style seats, severely reducing capacity on the route.
Eventually of course they stopped the 503/W going into the bus station and lengthened it's route so people stopped using it, allowing them to introduce a 15 minute timetable and turn it into the cross city 3 service. At least they introduced brand new buses (centros I think?).
But it won't be long before those "new" buses become the new "old" buses, given what happened to the Excels over the years.
A couple of times they even substituted a couple of solos on the route when the excels broke down - that was painful to see. Always left people behind at the stops.
I mean there are also severe cases where the buses used were so inappropriate that people just stopped using the service (and so became appropriate):
NX:WM used to run the 544 and 545 services from Wolverhampton to Bilston to Dudley; these services were withdrawn, replaced with Banga buses. The difference was massive - went from a.. a... one of these http://www.staffordbuscentre.com/images/N612-TEES-VALLEY-(1).jpg to one of these http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5133/5575553610_51a86a0a10.jpg
People just stopped using it.
...and used the 530 instead, which, in exactly the same way, was withdrawn by NX:WM and given to Banga buses...
... so people used the 526 instead. Which used the aforementioned tiny excels.
Sorry for giving a brief history of buses it seems, but hey, it's interesting how they instantly killed Wolverhampton to Bilston bus travel. (Of course it's a moot point because everyone who needs to now uses the Metro, if they can.)
Still, I think the withdrawal of big buses to become banga buses is, even if ultimately acceptable due to people moving to other modes, still inappropriate.
Poor residents of The Lunt, stuck with these monstrocities.
/wall of text
I dunno why. We started off with brand new buses on the route in 1999 - the longest type of Optare Excel with the new style of bus seats that were actually comfortable. But as time went on they were withdrawn from the route and replaced with the tinier and older Excels with the old style seats, severely reducing capacity on the route.
Eventually of course they stopped the 503/W going into the bus station and lengthened it's route so people stopped using it, allowing them to introduce a 15 minute timetable and turn it into the cross city 3 service. At least they introduced brand new buses (centros I think?).
But it won't be long before those "new" buses become the new "old" buses, given what happened to the Excels over the years.
A couple of times they even substituted a couple of solos on the route when the excels broke down - that was painful to see. Always left people behind at the stops.
I mean there are also severe cases where the buses used were so inappropriate that people just stopped using the service (and so became appropriate):
NX:WM used to run the 544 and 545 services from Wolverhampton to Bilston to Dudley; these services were withdrawn, replaced with Banga buses. The difference was massive - went from a.. a... one of these http://www.staffordbuscentre.com/images/N612-TEES-VALLEY-(1).jpg to one of these http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5133/5575553610_51a86a0a10.jpg
People just stopped using it.
...and used the 530 instead, which, in exactly the same way, was withdrawn by NX:WM and given to Banga buses...
... so people used the 526 instead. Which used the aforementioned tiny excels.
Sorry for giving a brief history of buses it seems, but hey, it's interesting how they instantly killed Wolverhampton to Bilston bus travel. (Of course it's a moot point because everyone who needs to now uses the Metro, if they can.)
Still, I think the withdrawal of big buses to become banga buses is, even if ultimately acceptable due to people moving to other modes, still inappropriate.
Poor residents of The Lunt, stuck with these monstrocities.
/wall of text
