Wellington bus bugbears

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#2058530 19-Jul-2018 00:15

I can't believe they have painted the new double decker buses that horrible line green, and then the front is yellow. At least have them yellow and black like the old ones, being Wellington colours. Or maybe even red, going back to the previous colour scheme. Anything is better than the current one.

mikebails

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#2058590 19-Jul-2018 08:31

mattwnz:

I can't believe they have painted the new double decker buses that horrible line green, and then the front is yellow. At least have them yellow and black like the old ones, being Wellington colours. Or maybe even red, going back to the previous colour scheme. Anything is better than the current one.

I remember reading that the new colour scheme was for safety/visibility rather than aesthetics.

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#2058604 19-Jul-2018 09:05

The green/blue are the Metlink corporate colours that have been in use for years. The yellow is there for safety reasons which is the same as the front of the trains being yellow.

I agree as well that they look ugly - I don't understand why the buses weren't silver like the trains with blue and green highlights and graphics.

andrew027

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#2058670 19-Jul-2018 10:04

My wife was telling me this morning that a friend of hers from work, a young lady who's very tall (I've met her once - got to be close to 7'), can't stand up on the double decker buses, either upstairs or down. She arrives at work with a sore upper back/neck every day from travelling in a hunched position.

I guess, being that tall, she would experience a number of inconveniences, but she never had this particular problem on the older bus fleet, which seemed to have enough headroom for taller passengers.

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#2058700 19-Jul-2018 10:37

andrew027:

My wife was telling me this morning that a friend of hers from work, a young lady who's very tall (I've met her once - got to be close to 7'), can't stand up on the double decker buses, either upstairs or down. She arrives at work with a sore upper back/neck every day from travelling in a hunched position.

I guess, being that tall, she would experience a number of inconveniences, but she never had this particular problem on the older bus fleet, which seemed to have enough headroom for taller passengers.

You're not allowed to stand on the upper deck, but you have to be careful when walking through the aisle because the roof is very low. I am moderately tall and the lower deck is fine, but I can bang my head on the upper deck roof if I'm not careful. I can see how very tall people could have that problem on both the upper and lower decks.

wellygary

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#2058709 19-Jul-2018 10:57

alasta:

andrew027:

My wife was telling me this morning that a friend of hers from work, a young lady who's very tall (I've met her once - got to be close to 7'), can't stand up on the double decker buses, either upstairs or down. She arrives at work with a sore upper back/neck every day from travelling in a hunched position.

I guess, being that tall, she would experience a number of inconveniences, but she never had this particular problem on the older bus fleet, which seemed to have enough headroom for taller passengers.

You're not allowed to stand on the upper deck, but you have to be careful when walking through the aisle because the roof is very low. I am moderately tall and the lower deck is fine, but I can bang my head on the upper deck roof if I'm not careful. I can see how very tall people could have that problem on both the upper and lower decks.

Speaking of the Double Deckers, has anyone seen the Electric ones in Service yet... we were promised 10, but I am told their arrival is now being drip fed, but I'm yet to see any in regular service... although I did see one in the yard, with a Heath Robinson looking charging pantograph)

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MikeAqua

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#2058739 19-Jul-2018 12:01

Smelly people. This guy with rancid BO sat next to me on a crowded bus yesterday on the way back from a meeting in Lower Hutt. He stunk so bad, the smell rubbed off onto my clothes. Absolutely revolting. I went home and changed.

I'm glad it didn't happen on the way to the meeting.

Mike

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#2058783 19-Jul-2018 12:23

wellygary:

Speaking of the Double Deckers, has anyone seen the Electric ones in Service yet... we were promised 10, but I am told their arrival is now being drip fed, but I'm yet to see any in regular service... although I did see one in the yard, with a Heath Robinson looking charging pantograph)

At the last Island Bay Residents' Association meeting a few weeks ago Tranzit brought one over to show us, and they took us for a brief ride on it. I was quite impressed with it at the time but, like you, I haven't seen any in active service this week. Given the number of new diesels that entered service on Monday you would have to think it's going to be a long time before we see a significant proportion of the fleet going electric.

lchiu7

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#2059420 20-Jul-2018 16:17

Just a few observations based on my 4 days of riding the 24 (Jville) route.

- the new buses have fancier Snapper card readers which show you what stop you're at (useful :-) )

- Seat squabs seem thinner than the previous ones

- Most of the time the buses are on time but I had one cancelled on me and then replaced by on 30 minutes later

- Once the Snapper reader had failed so there was a bus conductor (aka passenger host) telling us our ride was free

- twice the driver did not know where to stop and even worse, at the Railway Station junction!

If I miss my bus (44) i used to be able to catch the 43 instead which went via Ngaio but went back via Khandallah. It now terminates at Khandallah so missing my bus now can mean an hour's wait for the next one.

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autechre

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#2059606 20-Jul-2018 19:26

For the most part its been good this week. Thankfully it has been school holidays to start off the changeover.

What I do like:

- the new buses are much quieter and the ride seems smoother

- snapper is a welcome upgrade over the old Newlands/Mana bus cards - no more waiting for the driver to mess around with tickets if the machine runs out of paper or fails to print a ticket properly

- the double deckers look cool, but sadly none on my route

What I don't like:

- the drivers seem to have had 0 training on how to open the back doors, or how to deal with people paying cash, or paying for more than one person on a snapper

- the buses on the Newlands route have less seats than before - none over the front wheel arches, and 6 side facing seats instead of the usual rows of 2.

I haven't had a blue-light bus yet, but some look to have light-blue and some have the real intense blue.

Can the blue & white be mixed/tuned by the driver?

lchiu7

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#2061344 23-Jul-2018 21:12

Was really frustrated today. Both my bus to work and my bus home were 5-8 minutes early(!) so I missed them both. In the morning the following one was cancelled which meant I waited almost 40 minutes for a bus. On the way home waited 20 instead of the 5 I had planned when leaving the office to today that's 60 minutes of my life I am not getting back.

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#2061387 23-Jul-2018 21:25

Bus this morning was 30 minutes late. In the meantime two Not in Service buses we through - and this is a suburb stop not a main road so there is no explanation for this happening.

Another passenger called Metlink, and obviously they had no idea where our bus was.

Just a shambles.

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#2061445 24-Jul-2018 07:53

I don't understand why buses seem to be doubling up all the time, I.e I frequently see multiples of the same bus on a row and then a big gap until the next.

Also I don't get why the main bus route to eastern suburbs goes to Seatoun rather than Miramar north where I'd expect there are more passengers. For Miramar people on flat, if they don't get a express they have to change buses at Miramar shops and Kilbirnie.

jonherries

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#2061447 24-Jul-2018 07:59

Probably not possible, but would love to see the model they built for this. Couple of thoughts re this:

- Has the model remained static - ie. approach, as this type of compute has got lots more accessible over the years, and there are some cool tools like simul8 which might be interesting
- How often do they refresh the model data - wonder if the user flows and traffic are the same.
- Wonder if the model includes the stop time variability, ie. the time will change to stop depending on the flow of buses and therefore the number of people to load/unload at each stop (the bunching mentioned above). My observation was that the new Snapper readers take longer than the old ones and the false read rates(uncertain cause) seemed to run at about 20-40%.

Jon

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#2061451 24-Jul-2018 08:08

A question for regular peak time bus users (as while I catch the bus regularly it's normally from the CBD home to the Hutt and isn't during peak hours) - what percentage of users actually use Snapper? I always thought this was really high but I've seen a few comments lately suggesting that a significant percentage of people still pay cash even travelling every day.

Much of their modelling data is based solely off Snapper data as it's the only way to track where people go. I just wonder what percentage of overall users this captures. Obviously it excludes all Supergold holders as they're only tracking where they hop on, not where they hop off.

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