(14 Sep 2022, 8:38 pm)TEN 6083 wrote


Not good for people who rely on buses to get to work


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(15 Sep 2022, 4:42 am)Dan wrote Presumably they’re running a Sunday service and none of their routes run on Sundays? I’d hazard a guess most are tendered too and it may be a decision that the local authority has made rather than the company.


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(15 Sep 2022, 5:05 am)streetdeckfan wrote If the decision is made by the LA, then fair enough (the LA is wrong though!), but if they're deciding to run a Sunday service, and the Sunday service happens to literally not exist. Then that is a stupid and ridiculous decision!

People on here seem to bang on about buses being a public service, and that is a primary example of not serving the public!

(15 Sep 2022, 4:42 am)Dan wrote Presumably they’re running a Sunday service and none of their routes run on Sundays? I’d hazard a guess most are tendered too and it may be a decision that the local authority has made rather than the company.


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(15 Sep 2022, 1:04 pm)wibblejunior wrote According to Bustimes the 64 in Leeds does run on a Sunday, but that seems to be the only one . https://bustimes.org/services/64-leeds-aberford-2?date=2022-09-18

#Cityzap zaps for the final time on 19 Nov.

We've carried 1m customers since we started, but sadly the effects of COVID and rising costs mean that #Cityzap is no longer sustainable.

We hope to see you on #Coastliner which will continue as usual.

? https://bityl.co/Ecdy

(22 Sep 2022, 9:52 am)Adrian wrote https://twitter.com/cityzapbus/status/1572589258908770304


More mythical 'desire' not working out then...?

1 million customers over 6 years isn't anything to shout home about. Working on a rough estimated average of 38 trips a day over 363 operating days per year, it's less than 13 customers per trip.

(22 Sep 2022, 9:52 am)Adrian wrote https://twitter.com/cityzapbus/status/1572589258908770304


More mythical 'desire' not working out then...?

1 million customers over 6 years isn't anything to shout home about. Working on a rough estimated average of 38 trips a day over 363 operating days per year, it's less than 13 customers per trip.

(22 Sep 2022, 11:29 am)Andreos1 wrote I thought Covid would get the blame. 

Even if you divide it up over the 4 and bit years prior to Covid, they're hardly earth shattering numbers.

(22 Sep 2022, 1:32 pm)Adrian wrote But we're constantly told that these are creating desire, so where are all these folk full of desire to get on board a bus crafted by everyone's favourite design agency?

Passenger numbers have been shrinking for years, as we both know, but covid remains the excuse of choice in the absence of any creativity to achieve growth.

(22 Sep 2022, 12:15 pm)wibblejunior wrote According to buslistsontheweb the Cityzap MMC's seating layouts are H41/27F, which would be 68 seats in total.

(22 Sep 2022, 5:12 pm)Jimmi wrote COVID was likely one of the final nail in the coffin for ZAP (and many other services) although from my experiences from using the service over the years it's never been particularly busy, always carried in the region of 20-30 pax max whenever I've caught it and at least 80% of those will have been concession pass holders, may as well have bought single deckers if they felt the need to buy new stock as I think I've only seen it remotely close to full once or twice. The post-COVID reduction in frequency from half hourly to hourly certainly won't have helped bring the passengers back either.

I've always thought of CITYZAP as more of a vanity project to Hornby than anything else, I feel some other companies would've binned off it ages ago and not bought specifically high spec new buses for it. I do wonder if ZAP would've continued for much longer had the opportunity to take over operation of the X98/X99 not come up especially as they can directly redeploy all the buses from ZAP onto it.

I still feel bus companies are relying too heavily on route branding, fancy timetable leaflets and gimmicks to try and and gain/retain passengers which do work to a point but it can only go so far and I see argubly little benefit to forking out for all these things like outside design agencies to design liveries and feel the money could be better utilised elsewhere.


Sounds right as it doesn't have anywhere near as many single seats as the B7TLs did.

(22 Sep 2022, 5:12 pm)Jimmi wrote I've always thought of CITYZAP as more of a vanity project to Hornby than anything else, I feel some other companies would've binned off it ages ago and not bought specifically high spec new buses for it. I do wonder if ZAP would've continued for much longer had the opportunity to take over operation of the X98/X99 not come up especially as they can directly redeploy all the buses from ZAP onto it.

I still feel bus companies are relying too heavily on route branding, fancy timetable leaflets and gimmicks to try and and gain/retain passengers which do work to a point but it can only go so far and I see argubly little benefit to forking out for all these things like outside design agencies to design liveries and feel the money could be better utilised elsewhere.

(22 Sep 2022, 6:51 pm)Storx wrote Personally I don't actually think Covid was here.

It was the reduction in some fares with Northern and the brand new Class 195 trains that put the nail in imo. You can use the York to Blackpool service which takes 32 minutes (twice as quick) for £1 more paying full price off peak and if you buy advance tickets, heck even buying a ticket for 7am tomorrow now or even in 15 minutes from now it's only £6 for a single which works out the same price.

There's no reason for anyone to use it quite literally unless you like sitting on buses for the hell of it especially considering it stops nowhere between York and Leeds and arguably the train station is more central than the bus station in Leeds anyway and the Class 195 have everything you get on any bus plus a toilet, better ride, no traffic, tables and so on.

It's very different to Newcastle to Stockton / Middlesbrough up here where it's Class 156 trains and they go for a merry jaunt around the world with capacity problems.

(22 Sep 2022, 7:11 pm)Unber43 wrote From the reactions I see on FB it seems that people prefer CityZap than the trains which are apparently "scruffy". However I don't know if that was aimed at the 195. 

For me I would probably pick the train as the CityZap doesn't run that late or early tbh. The train is probably more convenient I am not sure of the frequency but I am pretty sure there will be atleast 2-3x trains an hour which have plenty of carriages.

(22 Sep 2022, 8:01 pm)Storx wrote Believe it's just hourly the Blackpool to York train, there is other services but they're quite expensive the TPE / XC trains as it's more about long distance travel so they try to price local traffic off.

Probably people who haven't used them, believe it used to be Class 158 trains before hand which even then aren't too bad tbh.

(22 Sep 2022, 8:01 pm)Storx wrote Believe it's just hourly the Blackpool to York train, there is other services but they're quite expensive the TPE / XC trains as it's more about long distance travel so they try to price local traffic off.

Probably people who haven't used them, believe it used to be Class 158 trains before hand which even then aren't too bad tbh.

(22 Sep 2022, 9:50 pm)Jimmi wrote Historically the trains and reliability haven't been the greatest and many people still think Pacers are trundling on lines across the North of England.

Off peak, Northern has two near direct trains an hour between York and Leeds (plus two taking a longer route via Harrogate) and the off peak single fare at least is just £3 (even on the Harrogate services).

CityZap's main form of marketing was using how bad the train services in the area are by targeting "fed-up commuters" and other rail passengers, just looking around on Google and a lot of the marketing is geared towards making out the trains to be overcrowded and more expensive, they use seemingly the largest price of a day return ticket to drive the argument that they're expensive and using ZAP saves money and the recent strikes has seen them post on their socials suggesting to use them instead even when it's just been CrossCountry striking only losing one service an hour. On the short lived Leeds to Manchester CITYZAP they tried getting that market by occasionally offering Rail users to try the service including a week of allowing season ticket holders to use it in 2017. Hornby has made multiple comments about the Northern services to/from Harrogate as well and proceeds to big up the 36 as being the best thing since sliced bread.

(23 Sep 2022, 8:41 pm)Storx wrote So there is, always thought it was only 1 train per hour.

Let's be honest though people aren't stupid and can see through all that. All a massive failure of deregulation as there's absolutely no argument for the bus service existing at all for any reason at all really.

It's not as if buses can shout from the rooftops about their reliability with all the cancellations they have which I believe Transdev were seriously impacted by aswell down there.

(23 Sep 2022, 8:41 pm)Storx wrote So there is, always thought it was only 1 train per hour.

Let's be honest though people aren't stupid and can see through all that. All a massive failure of deregulation as there's absolutely no argument for the bus service existing at all for any reason at all really.

It's not as if buses can shout from the rooftops about their reliability with all the cancellations they have which I believe Transdev were seriously impacted by aswell down there.

(23 Sep 2022, 8:44 pm)Unber43 wrote Have they? I haven't seen anything about them, but does TransDev even made a profit. 

Wonder how Team Pennine are doing the most advertising I see for TransDev is when they have free/£1 ride on the harrogate electric buses.

(23 Sep 2022, 9:25 pm)Jimmi wrote I went off using the service after intending to catch it from Leeds to York one Sunday when they only operated half a service all day and had to sprint across Leeds to catch a train to meet a connection at York to continue to Darlington.

I've heard accounts that the York routes are (or at least have been) pretty bad for cancellations from driver shortages and its been an issue even before the global shortage and it was the more rural routes that seemed to get shafted, things quickly went to hell after they took on former Stephensons of Easingwold routes and drivers quickly jump ship and was always the 31X was always the casualty at the time with the section between Easingwold and Helmsley only operating every 2 hours so was frequently left with a 4 hour gap in service whilst ZAP would carry on without issue, I also suspected that during a time when a lot of ZAP B7TLs were off they nicked the B10BLE's off the 31X and instead allocated them to ZAP.

(24 Sep 2022, 9:14 am)wibblejunior wrote I think there was also a short lived Cityzap service between Leeds and Manchester that was binned after only a few months of operation.

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