The new school year

Prior to a decamp to my native home to spend time with Senior Management, the annual reshuffle of buses and coaches ready for September has taken place. 

From September 85 vehicles will be needed to operate our college and schools contracts. PSVAR is an issue when it comes to the college work, as we charge separate fares and accept county tickets (Somerset County's post 16 student travel scheme) on these routes. We retain the fares revenue and the network relies on that revenue for it's commercial viability. A de-minimis payment from SCC covers some of the other operational costs of the network so it's marginally commercial from our point of view. 

The schools contracts are different, in not falling under PSVAR (in our view, we're not bringing the passengers together nor do we charge separate fares, the council does) so we don't need to operate compliant stock on those contracts. Normally we'd be using older manual gearbox Volvo B10Ms on the bulk of this work, but the previous school year has seen the use of triaxle Irizar PB Scania's and other modern vehicles which ordinarily we'd use on private hire and tours work. 

There is still little incoming tour work taking place, and no prospect of it returning until 2022. We are very busy with rail replacement work and private hires now which has taken up some of the breach. 

In addition we have taken a slight risk as a business by investing in 15 new Irizar i6s to upgrade the coach fleet. The final trio of these has arrived now and are presently under preparation for service. We have also moved 8 older i6s that were brand new in 2017/8 off express work to general coach work. 

All these movements means 9/10 older triaxle PBs bought during 2018/9 can now be mothballed until things pick up. When purchased all were refurbished and have modern interiors and amenities found on our i6 coaches. We used the downtime last year to get these compliant with PSVAR so we've put some money into the vehicles. We therefore need them to repay that over a 5 to 7 year timeframe.

When we mothball a vehicle it is declared SORN, but still given a 21 day safety inspection and a road test. All that is then needed is for it to be presented for MOT, and then taxed after it passes. However vehicles generally like to be used, so having large numbers of them sitting around means we're storing up trouble when we want to reactivate them. 

A number of the older manual gearbox coaches were SORNed at the start of the covid crisis, and whilst we retested them, they've seen little use during the past year. So, we're now going to dispose of the ones we have no further use for. As the market for used vehicles has collapsed, especially when it comes to older manual box vehicles that people struggle to drive properly it will be a one way journey to Boulder Bridge Lane (the Barnsley scrapyards to the unintiated) and their ultimate demise. 

The other issue we now need to face is some of our events vehicles, normally operated for Glastonbury Festival have had a second year of no use. 

The money those buses generate, over 10 days of working covers their direct costs for the remainder of the year, so if they do other work after Glastonbury we're in profit.  Some of these are Bristol VRs, Leyland Atlanteans and MCW Metrobuses, for which spares have to be made as they're no longer commonly available. 

Whilst we can live with the odd 'fallow year' another year is too much and the time has come to send those vehicles onto a new life in preservation. 

So out of these 85 vehicles, 51 operate the schools contracts and 34 the college contracts. 

This can be further split by vehicle type as follows:

Schools:

53 seat coach - 21

59 seat (triaxle coach) - 3 (although, more triaxles operate some of the 53 seat contracts as their length isn't a problem. Currently that means a number of i6s working contracts, longer term this will be PB triaxles)

Double Deck -  4

Minibus (11 to 16 seat) - 8 (with the new minibuses coming, this means all are Mercedes Sprinters)

Minibus (25 to 29 seat) - 1 (though we have 3 of these, two Mercedes Vario, one Mercedes 709 one hired out permanently to Dark Star for a schools contract whilst a Vario is prepared for service)

Dart (step entrance, 43 seats with seatbelts) -   14

College:

Single Deck Bus - 14 (combination of Scania/Volvo single decks, and low floor Dennis Darts)

Double Deck Bus - 12

Minibus (Dart MPD/Optare Solo) - 8

Many of these contract vehicles are outstationed with some service buses - so can be found across Somerset. College services go to two sites, Bridgwater and Taunton, and to Strode College in Street. Once morning journeys are completed some of the buses work in service to the 'home' depot and either are refuelled, used (either the driver and/or the bus) on meal break cover for service bus workings. 

Alternatively vehicles are simply parked up to await the afternoon return - some of our drivers return back to their outstations on one vehicle as a passenger. It depends on the employment contract of the driver, we employ full and part time staff so a full time driver will have infill work between contract journeys, a part timer will simply return home. 

It might be the vehicle is due a safety inspection, or there is a minor issue which means we need to change the bus over for a spare one, so the working into a home depot is important to ensure reliability. We have more engineering vans than a typical bus/coach operation due the fact many vehicles are outstationed each day so we need a mechanic on site at the outstations each morning to attend to minor issues (such as a bus needing more oil/water or a minor fault that can be repaired immediately).