[ABC News] New buses too big for suburban streets

[Sir Pompously]

New buses too big for suburban streets

Updated 7 hours 18 minutes ago

A number of ACTION's new buses are too big for some Canberra roads.

ACTION has bought 26 new extra-long Steer-tag buses to replace ageing articulated 'bendy' buses.

But the new buses are having trouble turning around some narrow corners on suburban streets.

Tom Elliott from the Department of Territory and Municipal Services says ACTION is changing some routes and widening corners to accommodate the vehicles.

"There's a couple of places in the Territory where the buses don't safely run on the road," he said.

"We're either doing a diversion around those at the moment, or we're actually refitting the road. In most cases that's a pretty minor piece of construction work for a curb or a gutter, just where the turn of the bus is a bit unsafe."

Mr Elliott says they were not intending to use the buses for suburban routes.

"When we bought the Steer-tags we bought them primarily for the big frequent routes like Northbourne avenue," he said.

"We've run a few of them on other roads and this is where we're having issues with them. So all we're doing is redeploying standard buses on those routes.

"At the end of the day, the Steer-tags represent a very, very small proportion of the entire fleet. There's about 440 -450 buses and at it's maximum you're going to have 26 Steer-tags."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/07/3086716.htm

[Bus 400]

This was said on his morning interview on 666 ABC Canberra (before the cricket). He did same something about artics being in the next round of new buses.

The interview also discussed about buses not turning up & services just being cancelled.

[Barry Drive]

Audio can be found here: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/local/canberra/201012/r685474_5105464.mp3

He mentions that 20 articulated buses will be sought in the next bus order. Also, just to show how in touch he is with everything ACTION (i.e. not), he doesn't know the number of 14.5s currently in service.

Tom Elliot, may I suggest you visit this page: http://www.actbus.net/fleetwiki/index.php?title=ACTION_Fleet_Summary

[The Love Guru]

He also talks like ACTION has the power to redesign the roads it operates on. Love how he says they were to replace the artics in one sentence, then says they weren't for suburban work. Well, just take a look at the work the artics do. No school runs are 14.5m approved, yet those buses were purchased to replace buses whose main job is school runs, nice work!

Once again a great demonstration of people who are totally clueless when it comes to public transport, ordering and supplying vehicles to be used. They were touted as "the cheapest vehicle per seat ACTION can buy". At least they are consistent in policy and application, everything they do is on the cheap and results in dismal failure, ie Darts, Irisbuses and now the 14.5m shambles. The 14.5's will become a useful part of the ACTION fleet, however they will never serve the purpose for which they were bought. Just think, we could have had a fleet of 40 brand new low floor artics instead of the 14.5's and new artic order.

Once ACTION manangement begin it encompass the notion of "total life cost", they will understand that the purchase price of a vehicle is the thin end of the wedge when it comes to cost. Articulated buses have a much lower total life cost, provided they are used to capacity in peak times, than any other form of bus.

[Barry Drive]

They probably think that the artics are used on route 333.

Not joking.