Buses Bill

[Barney]

RE: Buses Bill

(09/12/2016 16:30)Dentonian Wrote:  I don't quite get your drift. Irrelevant of who wins the franchises, the idea is that all would adopt the livery. Also, inter depot swaps would be rare as services and depot allocations would be much more stable than they are now. This indeed, is one of the arguments for Franchising. I can't comment on Merseyside, but things are so bad in GM that about 30% of services change times EVERY Change Date (of which there are 6 a year).

Did you actually mean inter*company* transfers, which would be purely the Operators' choice?

My view is that IF franchising ever happens the LCR would need to adopt a standard livery for all operators. Arriva has depots in five of the six city regions and bus transfers - both short-term and permanent - occur frequently for a whole host of reasons. If a Pulsar or Enviro400 was to be transferred from a Liverpool depot to Wirral or St Helens it would be an unnecessary expense to repaint the bus into a former municipal livery. This actually happened when the county of Merseyside was expanded in 1974. In those days, the central works at Edge Lane painted buses in Liverpool green, St Helens red and white, Southport red and white and Wirral blue and cream. It took another two years before the standard livery of jonquil and verona green was adopted on Merseyside but Manchester was ahead of the game having decided on the orange and white as early as 1970, I believe.