Crossrail Class 345

The first Class 345s for MTR Crossrail, the operator of the Crossrail/Elizabeth line service, have entered customer service operating off peak trips between Liverpool Street and Shenfield.  These are the initial application of the new Bombardier Aventra platform, and were expected in service in mid-May, but it took another six weeks or so before the public could get on board.  However once they could, it seemed rude not to go for a ride!

Initially just one train a day operated, at 10:35.  This was additional to the timetable...if it failed it didn't count towards Charter!

And this is what they replace, the humble Class 315.

One of the more unusual features of the '345, at least far as the public can see, is 26m long carriages (a first for the UK although the IEP will also have 26m vehicles) and three sets of doors per carriage. 

Class 345s made grown men and women take selfies.  With a train! 

The 'SFE' (sexy front end) might be the attraction, and looks rather sleek compared to the '315.  Also of note is these are first trains of recent times (since steam trains?) to not have yellow ends.  New regs mean sufficient brightness (luminoscity? lux?) from lights rule out the need for the yellow visible ends.

Until the end of 2018 the '345s will be operating as seven-car trains between Liverpool St and Shenfield.  Once operations commence through the Crossrail tunnel the final two vehicles will be added.

Designed for standing!  The interior of the 345 has plenty of standing room, tip up seats and longitudinal seating.  These will no doubt be extremely busy once running through central London, but like Underground S8 and Thameslink '700s they are both metro and commuter trains beyond zone 6 so some degree of compromise has been taken with the interior layout and availability of seating.  The bare metal grab rails are quite unusual, certainly unlike any other train in use in the south east, but will be familiar to MTRers who have transferred from Hong Kong operations.

Four bays of four seats are in each vehicle, two each between the three sets of doors.

There are modern flat screen customer information displays, although not as visually appealing as those on the Thameslink Class 700s. I found it surprising the service was mot described as the 'TfL Rail service to Shenfield'.  Indeed the driver made a manual announcement calling it an 'MTR Crossrail service to Shenfield'.  Announcing MTR Crossrail (or for that matter, Keolis Amey Docklands or Arriva Rail London) will only serve to confuse customers.

The automated system then decided we were skipping Stratford and our next stop is Maryland.  The driver's announcement confirmed we would be stopping at Startford.

People like shiney new air conditioned things, though these trains will be real crowd movers before too long.  They seem well built (I tried to break everything I could).  Clearly there's some teething problems which delayed entry to service and the very cautious single daily trip in customer service. Best to sort before out on all day diagrams, and as Roger Ford often says, nothing ever works out of the box!

Leigh Guided Busway - not playing to its adVantage!

Back in late-May 2017 I found myself with some time to kill in the north-west of the Greater Manchester conurbation.  What better idea than to go and ride on the newest kerb guided busway in the UK, from the town of Leigh, opened just over a year ago.  There are two services currently operating on the busway, branded Vantage by First Manchester, with route V1operating from Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) to Leigh and the V2 from MRI to Atherton.

1. INFRASTRUCTURE

The Leigh terminus is the bus station, which seems to be one of the more recently modernised bus stations in the Greater Manchester conurbation.  All ticketing is done on-vehicle and is normal First Manchester fares.

V1 service loading at Leigh bus station.

Park and ride site on the outskirt of Leigh town centre.  All the stops on the kerb guided section follow this model of being more akin to a rail/tram stop with larger shelters, a platform type kerb and a supposed real-time information display (more later).

The two services come together at Astley Street.  The V2 from Atherton does not run on any guided sections between Astley Street and Atherton.  Astley Street has another park and ride facility, and is also served as an interchange by non-guided bus routes.

Cars encroaching on to guided busways has been something of an issue in recent years, with cars driving on to Manchester Metrolink also something of a trend following the substantial expansion of the Metrolink network in recent years.  Therefore plenty of signage is provided on the entry to guided sections.  Unlike the Luton-Dunstable guided busway there are no speed limit signs on entry.

Car traps are provided at the entry to the guided sections too.

The Busway does seem unduly hilly and twisty when a much straighter alignment looks achievable.  On the Sunday of my visit the adjacent footpath was busy with walkers/runners/cyclists etc.

Another typical stop on the Busway.

Less than halfway from Leigh to Manchester the Busway ends, at the junction with Newearth Road.

The one stop on Newearth Road is more conventional in design.  There has not been an 'end to end' approach to passenger facilities for the Vantage service.

However there has been some attempt at creating bus priority measures end-to-end.  This is the East Lancashire Road.

However when the space (or money) runs out the Vantage service rejoins the main carriageway on the East Lancashire Road.  in the morning peak I expect this is extremely busy.

As the Vantage routes approach Salford they are subject to numerous speed bumps.  Again a full end-to-end approach has not been adopted.  Putting speed bumps in bus lanes on busy radial routes is both crazy and loses a lot of the attempt at creating a higher quality, smoother service.  This road is used by many bus routes,  I think if traffic calming must be installed a speed cushion , which a bus can straddle, would be more appropriate.

2. SERVICE

A fleet of  Wright bodied Volvo B5LH buses have been branded for the Vantage service.

Interiors featuire large comfortable leather seats with branding for Vantage.  Downstairs the seats are more conventional bus seats, although still in purple leather.

Smart wood effect floors are provided, and the corporate purple of First Group slips through in the chair legs!

The Vantage route from Tyldesley in to Manchester.

3. IN OPERATION

At-stop timetable information produced by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) from Astley Street to Manchester is rather unhelpful listing the V1 and V2 separately when they operate an identical route and combine to a higher frequency.

The timetable format used by First Manchester is much more user friendly in both layout of the timetable and presentation.

The timetable on a Sunday is half hourly to both Leigh and Atherton, resulting in a quarter hourly service over the common section.  Therefore the sight of two vehicles running together westbound suggests major delays.....

Especially when it happened again!

The information screen at the westbound stop was not working, so no ability to pass any information on to customers....

Not that the working screen eastbound was much use.  Every bus appeared with Chorlton Upon Medlock as its destination before later changing to the MRI.  Chorlton Upon Medlock does not feature on any timetable or map produced by either TfGM or First Manchester!  Each V2 bus arrived three minutes before it was expected, whilst the 12:15 V1 service counted down 3 3ins...1 min....bus approaching....and then disappeared off the screen, with no bus.  Therefore these are not real time, and who knows where the data on them is coming from.

So the next departure on the V2 was bursting at the seams.

Passengers who were jammed in standing downstairs certainly were not being treated to a VIP experience.

Loadings were such that the bus drove past this girl (who's expression I love).....

And straight past these people......

And stopped short of these people.....

And these, who somewhat expectantly started walking towards the bus.

4. CONCLUSION

I left the Leigh Guided Busway feeling somewhat disappointed.  There are people who want to use it: every bus stop had a queue, and there were plenty of cash fares going over the cab door, so it can only be a profitable operation (there have been frequency increases on weekdays post-launch).  But I also saw too many people walking away when buses didn't turn up, when there was no information when they might turn up, and many intending passengers passed by an already full bus.

The infrastructure does not provide an end-to-end rapid transit experience. with the journey time and reliability benefits that should bring.  It relies on running with regular traffic, which on a weekday will be a detriment to reliability, and the Salford area inexplicably is speed bumped.  TfGM/Salford City Council need to address these ridiculous pieces of infrastructure for the benefit of all bus passengers.

The at-stop electronic displays are neither use nor ornament.  Where they work they are not providing accurate or real time information; many did not work.  The provision of accurate real time information for a 2-route bus network should not be expensive or rocket science, and TfGM and First Manchester need to get this working.

I think First have the right idea by taking this beyond a conventional bus service.  Premium bus products appear to be doing well:  Stagecoach Gold, Arriva Sapphire and West Midlands Platinum all seem to be expanding to more and more routes.  Vantage has by far the nicest interiors of any, with USB charging and wifi provided.  Drivers were consistently well presented and friendly.  But then it's let down by TfGM applying its conventional bus information standards which are stuck in the 1980s.  I don't know how the guided busway is accessed, i..e if First Manchester have any kind of sole access rights, but it seems that applying more Vantage and less GMPTE style branding would be a good thing.

And finally reliability. Whoever told the guv'nor "yes sir we're ready for marathon day" was plain lying.  Half hour gaps in what already looks like an inadequate frequency combined with buses being not just full, but standing throughout the lower deck, does not provide a remotely tolerable experience for the new users to public transport that guided busways and Vantage should be attracting, let alone the promised 'VIP experience'.  Add to that the forty-or-so people left behind on one trip.  Am I being harsh?  The day I visited was five days after the bombing of the Manchester Arena, and on the day of the Manchester Marathon/Half Marathon.  Both should surely justify more resource?  It seems that a quarter hourly frequency on Sundays in inadequate in any case. 

#WeLoveMCR but not enough to get you there.

Breadvans back in vogue: Citymapper starts a bus service

For two days only some green minibuses are appearing on the streets of central London......Citymapper, the website and app preferred by many a Londoner for their directional and travel needs, is running a free bus service numbered CMX1 between the Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges.  It operates on Tuesday 9 and Wednesday 10 May 2017 and is free.

A one way loop is operated.

Vehicle of choice is the Mercedes Sprinter.

So, needing to travel from Southwark to Victoria at lunchtime I decided to take the free Citymapper bus.  The buses (three of them) were visible on the Citymapper website, but despite a lot of hype about better routing and responding to consumer demand, there was no 'on demand' element: rather I went to one of the conventional TfL bus stops the special service was running from.

The bus arrives.  First thing I did was to work out the legalities of operation.  Thankfully an O-disc and legals were carried for Impact Group, who are a large operator of corporate/school contract services in west London.  I don't know much more about Impact but that seems a good place to start.  The chap nearest the camera stood in the bus stop was wearing an Impact jacket: instantly knew what I was doing, being a stones throw from Transport for London offices etc.....BT66UAS is fleet number CMS02.

Inside it looks like a minibus with a large screen displaying the route.....

....next stop, expected journey time, and some marketing gumph.

This Sprinter has standard bus seats, in corporate Citymapper green, and were equipped with USB charging points.  This seemed to garner a lot of favour with passengers, although these are available on pretty much any new bus should the operator specify them.  A number of passengers asked about wifi, and were surprised Citymapper didn't have it. This actually says a lot about expectations of a tech company.  And again wifi is available on any bus if the operator asks for it. 

 

Citymapper employees were gathering user feedback.  There was more feedback about the Citymapper app rather than buses in particular,  The Citymapper employee (in green if course) was a lawyer by trade.

I left the bus initially at stop R at Somerset House, shown above.  When I later tried to continue my journey it turns out the service doesn't actually stop there.  Important lesson for Citymapper: make sure drivers know the stops.  After making my way to the correct stop I was admonished by the driver for not signalling clearly enough I wanted the bus - yet my previous driver had stopped at every stop and opened the doors irrespective.  Further there is still a long way to go in getting a consistent customer service ethic amongst bus drivers.

A short piece to camera.  Not sure who this is but sure it will appear on the Londonist or somesuch tonight!

Citymapper have generated an amazing amount of publicity for themselves with this exercise.  It features on many London and tech blogs as well as mainstream press such as the Evening Standard, the Telegraph, Time Out, and City AM. 

The driver is the hero!  When he's not instructing me on how to hail a bus that is!

On my return from Somerset House to Southwark our bus was regulated on Westminster Bridge.  Seems Citymapper have probably learnt it's not that easy to run a reliable bus service despite choosing a nice simple loop!

And then everything that's bad about conventional bus regulation gets repeated!

Because at the end of the day any attempt to 'reinvent' the bus is still running on the same roads as every other bus!

The route CMX1, a 'pop up' bus route is not a bus route that anyone will ever operate: everywhere it goes is walkable, and there are plenty of conventional buses for the busy bits.  They are talking about technology: the driver is equipped with an Ipad in lieu of a ticket machine, and they talk about regulating headway by speeding up or slowing down.  I think this is a red herring: in London you either drive or you don't!  This project apparently has Transport for London's blessing so it [probably] isn't about starting new bus routes. 


It probably isn't about demand responsive bus routes either - the smaller vehicle may be more nimble but not that much more nimble.  I think an attempt at demand-responsive buses in London would get to a point where it becomes more efficient to operate larger vehicles to a fixed route on a high frequency - i.e. the London bus network!

Some of the marketing and reporting linked above talks about reinventing the bus.  This sort of talk will probably grab the attention of millenials, and a good proportion of older frustrated bus users too.  But what is 'reinventing the bus'?  If we can't go any quicker, and we can't go any cheaper (London bus fares are the lowest in the country) what do we mean by reinvent?  A bus is a bus is a bus.  Occasionally new ones appear with a shiney coat of red paint and a new style of headlight cluster, but before long it's a grubby red bus and that new body style is common.

Citymapper must have quickly learnt that any attempt to change those things which annoy passengers needs more than an internal flat screen and funky green paint.  Traffic, congestion, and bunching affected Citymapper as much as it affects any one of the other 8,000 buses on the road in London.  On one trip our American lawyer host told us we were waiting because of a phenomenon called 'bus bunching'.  When a young girl from a tech start up tells you this is strangely more acceptable than a middle aged male driving a red double decker!  The upshot of this is 'reinventing the bus' is getting back to basics: the bus turns up when the timetable, website, journey planner, app, etc, tells you it will, and the journey time is whatever that medium has told you it will be.  Next stage is to reduce journey time, making buses - and public transport as a concept - more attractive.  That takes a lot of political will to deliver!

So, what are Citymapper up to?  Well, whatever it is they have invested in three brand new buses for it. I think they are on a data collection exercise.  I think they have an open ended project (with a few hundred K budget) to go and generate data on whatever they feel would help them evolve.  And that is understanding the constituent parts of a bus journey in more detail than they do now.  What affects journey speeds - traffic, signals, road design, driver behaviour, customer behaviour.

Or, maybe they do want to be the new urban transit option.  Tech companies that do transit (Uber, etc) are increasingly part of the mainstream transport network, working with and sharing data with local authorities rather than working against them.  May, just maybe, Citymapper wants a bit of that?

More main stream bus operators are also trying to reinvent the bus, or at least the minibus.

Another demand responsive operation with 66-plate Sprinters is Stagecoach Little & Often, which started this year in Ashford, Kent.

Arriva are trialling demand responsive buses in Sittingbourne, branded Arriva Click.  These Mercedes Sprinters are notable for their single leaf entry and rear tail lift for mobility impaired customers.  They also have a gorgeous leather interior!

Demand responsive minibuses gather en-masse at Chisinau bus station!

Any opinions expressed are mine and mine only and NOT those of any of the excellent organisations I work for!