Dear Mrs Greenwood, I was a keen observer of the Transport Select Committee debate on Community Transport, focused on the use of Section 19 and 22 permits, at which both sides of the debate – commercial operators and the CT operators – were represented. I was therefore shocked to read Hansard and to discover […]
This could have been anticipated but CTOs are in the care sector, not the transport sector, and should have been better advised by their supporting organisations. Instead, they were advised to do nothing, first of all on the basis that the DfT was prompted to act because of an ongoing DVSA action (which was not […]
I’m familiar with this issue; although our brilliant heating/cooling experts such as Eberspacher and Webasto have developed ingenious electric heating units, the fact is, providing heat is a pretty linear equation. No matter which way you cut it, if you need a defined amount of heat to fill a defined space, and have done all […]
As dusk fell on 20 March, many staff and enthusiasts watched on as the sole remaining Mercedes-Benz Citaro articulated bus in the National Express Coventry fleet returned to the depot for the last time, says David Cole. Its final day’s duty on service 4 brought an end to nearly 15 years of bendy bus operation […]
I see The Times appears to have fallen into the trap of inventing its own reasons for statistics, in this case the rise in NOx in central London. The Times has an understandable political zeal to bad-mouth Labour mayors. One of them introduced the Congestion Charge and Mayor Khan will be (eventually) charging extra for the […]
That must have been a tonic for the soul, because I perked up straight after my visit to Trafford Park, taking a two-hour ride while ‘Coach Stig’ toured the north-west’s motorways and A roads chipping in with his comments for the benefit of the review. Our driver is hugely experienced, not just driving the average […]
The tendency for unintended ignition was jumped upon and resolved very quickly, as you’d expect from Mercedes-Benz. But only a few weeks ago, a vehicle dismantler we spoke to said time-expired Citaros crumble to dust when faced with a cutting torch. So maybe they weren’t as durable as you may suppose. We can balance this […]
In this week’s issue, B&CB visits the community of bus dismantlers and recyclers just outside of Barnsley. It was, above all else, humbling. Carving buses apart with a cutting torch is a hard business. Even in snow, the work goes on; tough men working in the grime of smoke, grease, oil and mud to reduce […]