Ex London Buses in Huddersfield/West Yorkshire

[snowman]

Sept 17, 2018 23:34:24 GMT YY13VKP said:

Do First run any other uni bus services around the UK and what do they use for them?

I think First run services to Bath University (routes U1 and U2)
From memory they are MMCs, might even be bendys at busy peak times (if they still run)

They also run services to Stirling University (and these are hybrids), again, think they are MMCs

They also run services to York University (again with hybrids)

Where new buses have been introduced, there is usually a 5 year (or longer) contract providing baseline funding and these routes inevitably link the campus with city centres and train stations (and sometimes a student village if separate location). I'm pretty sure all are public routes that are available to any passenger.

Also operate services in Bristol, Swansea, Norwich (UEA), Essex, Glasgow, Leeds, and probably others that I can't think of at moment.

Don't think First have replaced many buses since it finished its DDA compliance conversion couple of years ago, orders have tailed off since those huge orders for the park and ride Olympic services.

[redexpress]

Sept 17, 2018 23:34:24 GMT YY13VKP said:

Yorkshire Tiger also have a few ex RATP East Lancs Olympuses based at Waterloo, any idea why RATP disposed of those Olympuses so early? They were fairly non standard in London though since they had full leather seats while RATP had them so could they have been on trial perhaps?

The Transdev Olympuses were among the first EuroIV Scanias to be built to TfL spec (along with Metrobus 947-952 and Metroline SEL739-764).  All three batches failed their tilt test on account of being too top-heavy.  In order to be certified they had to have their capacity reduced, which meant they no longer met TfL's capacity requirements.

Metrobus and Metroline eventually had their Scanias modified to meet TfL requirements (although TfL had to drop the capacity requirement from 90 to 87 to facilitate this).  Transdev, on the other hand, got Scania to agree to supply integral OmniCities in their place.  As Transdev were short of buses they accepted the Olympuses on a short-term basis; the idea was to send them back to Scania once the SPs entered service in 2008, although they ended up staying in the fleet for an extra year to cover various short-term requirements.