Good old days or bad new ones

[L80]

 Good old days or bad new ones
I left England many years ago. I went 25 yrs without travelling on a bus (with the exception of an occasional airport coach). The last buses I traveled on were a MPTE Bristol VR on a 26A to Upper Warwick St from outside the Kop and a Northwestern National on a 309 from Warrington to St. Helens.
I recently had the misfortune to be compelled to spend some time in Aberdeen and made use of Stagecoach and First. The vehicles were just as rattly shaky and noisy and in fact with the exception of low floor/easy access were no better than those in the 60's or 70s. So much for progress eh?

[Brickmill]

RE: Good old days or bad new ones

(07/02/2019 21:14)L80 Wrote:  I left England many years ago. I went 25 yrs without travelling on a bus (with the exception of an occasional airport coach). The last buses I traveled on were a MPTE Bristol VR on a 26A to Upper Warwick St from outside the Kop and a Northwestern National on a 309 from Warrington to St. Helens.
I recently had the misfortune to be compelled to spend some time in Aberdeen and made use of Stagecoach and First. The vehicles were just as rattly shaky and noisy and in fact with the exception of low floor/easy access were no better than those in the 60's or 70s. So much for progress eh?

Depending in where in the UK you are, I would think rattly buses would be the least of the problems for bus users/non motorists. Fare increases more than double inflation every year for a generation and service cuts/withdrawals would be further up the agenda for most. Ride quality itself has at least as much to do with whether you are sat on a proper cushion or a moulded plastic bum perch, and then there are drastic increases in journey times consistent with increased car ownership/use (for which the bus operators refuse to accept any portion of blame!) and then a whole host of local/regional issues.

[gilesbus1]

RE: Good old days or bad new ones

(07/02/2019 21:14)L80 Wrote:  I left England many years ago. I went 25 yrs without travelling on a bus (with the exception of an occasional airport coach). The last buses I traveled on were a MPTE Bristol VR on a 26A to Upper Warwick St from outside the Kop and a Northwestern National on a 309 from Warrington to St. Helens.
I recently had the misfortune to be compelled to spend some time in Aberdeen and made use of Stagecoach and First. The vehicles were just as rattly shaky and noisy and in fact with the exception of low floor/easy access were no better than those in the 60's or 70s. So much for progress eh?

Depends what your looking for, whether its leg room, engine noise or height or not to be shook

I have ridden on FirstGroup buses in Aberdeen before and I have to say they were a mixed bag, the Van Hool A330 Hydrogen and ADL Enviro200 MMC being the most comfortable. For Stagecoach's Aberdeen operations I cannot comment, though I could imagine the coaches used on longer bus routes to places like Inverness, Dundee, Elgin, Peterhead, Ballater and Braemar being reasonably comfortable, and the Van Hool A330's to be no different to those at First. One of the reasons buses in Aberdeen tend to rattle is because some major roads are still cobbled and others only have a thin layer of tar over the cobbles and I very much doub't the Grampian Atlanteans and Fleetlines of the 1970's or the Northern Scottish Alexander AYS Fords or Daimler Fleetlines with ECW bodies of the 1970's would have been much better if at all. Particularly as Ford chassis were lightweight and Daimler Fleetline's tended to be extremely good at rattling in any case. Riding on buses in Scotland is often effected by the Cobbles on what are quite main roads and I have ridden on buses in Inverness, Aberdeen, Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow.