I understood that in recent years its become much more economic to refurbish older coaches than to buy new ones
New coaches apparently need hoists to get disabled folk in wheelchairs on, and these significantly add to the cost of a coach, rather than pay for this national express and others are preferring to refurb their current fleet and keep the older coaches going longer than they would have otherwise
Apparently the few newer coaches with such facilities for wheelchairs hardly ever have wheelchair passengers anyways
Sounds like another law pushing up costs totally out of balance to the benefit to the community
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When I spoke to soembody at Stagecoach I was told the opposite and that the service needs to have wheel chair enabled coaches or buses anyway. I know most the buses in Manchester are less than three years old and these are constantly being replaced, the buses then will get cascaded into other cities, Oxford is a dumping ground of the 3-5 year old Manchester buses.
I suspect is probably the much smaller companies which are reburbishing rather than buying new. A new coach costs around £200,000 but I can imagine by the time you buy a half decent second hand coach rebuild the engine etc the price is probably coming close to 100k.
Labour is just too expensive, its not like the old days of the routemaster were the engineers were not paid that much compared to today.
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I think I've carried about a dozen wheelchairs in the last three years. BUT what happened today? Had a bus with step entrance and two people in wheelchairs wanted on.
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yes i think these rules are for coaches and not buses
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Stagecoach do have a big coach operation, Megabus, most their buses are brand new or 55 reg at the oldest although they do have a few older ones.
It seems to be smaller companies that do the refurbs and then stick on a Northern Ireland plate to try and hide its true age.
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So what did you do not athletic ? You make it sound as though it was too much bother to load them.
I hope they were able to get on board and not ignored. The whole subject of discrimination against the disabled makes me so annoyed ( particularly the able bodied who park in disabled bays. and the lack of lifts and access on London underground)
Maybe your company should try the American way.
In Memphis with a disabled friend on crutches the trolley buses have a fascinating hydraulic lift at each stop....
Each lift is surrounded by a fence with gate access and exit so when he travelled with us the whole trolley system was stopped by a call to the control centre.
Driver then exits bus and operates lift with a valve key so friend is raised to the entrance by water power and then a walkway is produced from the trolley which slots across to the lift. Gate then opened by driver and friend walks on to trolley. Driver then puts ramp back and then lowers lift before then calling control to say he is proceeding . Same procedure in reverse when we offload two stops down the line .
Took about five minutes each time but done with a whole 'no problem ' attitude.
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Took about five minutes each time but done with a whole 'no problem ' attitude.
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We only have ourselvs to blame for the poor service we recieve in the UK, The Americans would not accept it. One of the few things I like about the USA is the standard of service.
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some would be shocked at how much weight can be put in the boot ( unless its rear engined!)
when I drove for Greenline & NE years ago when we used to do the conti trips 100 crates of beer weighed approx a ton! 53 people on a coach & each buy 10 crates you have a problem!
(A) the coach hits the deck comming off the ferry & (B) once a boot floor fell out on a motorway ,passengers were then restricted to a couple of crates each! ah the good old days, no speed restrictions & we could use any lane of a motorway
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A wonderful system I'm sure. Please don't take this the wrong way, helicopter,I'm as much in favour of equal acess for the disabled as anyone else, but can you imagine the Sheffield tram system, for instance, being stopped dead for five minutes every time a disabled passenger embarked using that method ? Laudable though it is, it'd cause chaos on a tightly-timetabled British system.
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Short answer Harleyman - Yes I can
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The point I was making was that it seems something of a backwards solution. Far better to have the lift system on the vehicle itself (as is done on modern buses) which can be lowered, passenger on, lift up, drive away. No need for the driver to leave the cab (a risky procedure on inner-city routes) so stoppage time is considerably reduced, and I suspect more cost-effective.
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No need for the driver to leave the cab (a risky procedure on inner-city routes)
Where are the police in riot gear when you need them, or the judges to jail those who make it risky. Police officers have told me that they rarely talk to Mr Average, they have their regular "customers", pity these "regulars" aren't in jail.
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No they weren't ignored. We only have two step buses that might be used in service as opposed to school runs only. I knew that wheelchair accessible buses were just behind me and explained that to them and they were happy with that (and with knowing that nearly every other bus has an easy to use ramp).
The DDA will ensure that all service buses from 2012 will be wheelchair accessible.
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