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Southend turns spare capacity to good effect

4th September 1982
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Page 30, 4th September 1982 — Southend turns spare capacity to good effect
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

At Southend, the cost of transport operation has been reduced by extending the maintenance facilities to outside operators. Noel Millier reports on this enterprising local authority

AT a time when local authority spending is under close review, the high costs of running an urban bus operation are receiving severe scrutiny.

At Southend, a council which displays a real flair for transport, the cost of operation is lessened by having a transport engineering unit that as well as meeting the needs of the council also caters for a range of outside, interests.

Southend's present engineering department was set up in the fifties when Southend was a county borough. In those days, the vehicle fleet comprised about 700 vehicles, including refuse vehicles, buses, ambulances and police and fire brigade vehicles.

Local government reorganisations left the borough council with its engineering facility intact but diminished its fleet by transferring some vehicles to other bodies. Southend's police, fire and ambulance services were absorbed by the various county services.

More recently, the Southend fleet was further reduced when the borough became one of the first in Britain to assign its refuse collection and street cleaning services to a private contractor.

The private contractor, Exclusive, needed to establish satisfactory maintenance arrangements and chose to sub-contract this work back to the Council.

Today, the engineering department looks after the Southend bus and coach fleet, which consists of: about 70 Leyland Fleetline double-deckers and a number of Leopard and Tiger coaches; the remaining Southend District Council vehicles, including a large number of light vans and cars and highway maintainance lorries; a number of vehicles for Essex County Council; and a number of vehicles, including ambulances, belonging to the Area Health Authority.

Southend Transport Department provides all of the vehicles used by the council and operates as a cost centre in its own right with the transport costs allocated to the various user departments.

Similarly, the engineering department is its own cost centre and each individual job is costed and charged to the department or customer.

Chief Engineer Roger Mellor finds that having customers like Exclusive is an exacting discipline, for the company questions every job and checks that it receives all the warranty to which it is entitled for new vehicles. The engineering departments, he says, is well aware that it has to remain competitive to keep the Exclusive business.

The central works is equipped to carry out all aspects of vehicle maintenance, from the most minor repair to a virtual vehicle rebuild, and during my visit I was able to see some of the wide variety of jobs being done.

The bus undertaking has recently sold some redundant Daimler Fleetline double-deckers and these were being prepared for service with their new operators.

The works are able to meet most customer requirements and were repainting buses in their new operator's livery as well as converting one of the 13ft 8in Northern Counties-bodied vehicles from double to single-entrance specification.

A Southend bus that had suffered some major accident damage was being repaired, and body repairs were also being carried out to an electric pedestrian-operated dust cart run by Exclusive.

Running and maintaining a bus fleet means that a trim shop to keep bus seats in good condition is required. At the Southend trim shop, the ravages of vandals and general wear and tear on bus seats are only part of the work; the section also looks after office furniture from the civic centre and other council offices and even retrims seats from the local civic theatre is required.

The works has its own fuel-injection shop which is able to look after all types of equipment including DPA and Friedmann and Maier pumps. Virtually all of Southend's buses and coaches are fitted with full, automatically controlled gearboxes and the works has a shop where the solid-state gear change control boards can be maintained and repaired.

The gearbox and engine overhaul shops can cope with any major repair and reconditioning jobs for a wide variety of units, including self-changing gears pneumocyclic bus gearboxes right down to the small gear boxes fitted in light cars and vans.

The engine shop normally overhauls the following: Leyfuse collection fleet, and a land 680 bus engines; Perkins 06354 engines, Bedford 330, and CF diesel engines from the re variety of petrol engines from the cars and light vans in the fleet. dertakings bus depot looking after day-to-day aspects of bus has a staff of about 65. Of these,' maintenance.

I was impressed by the adaptstaff which copes with a diversity of crucially important vehicles. Even after paying a central administration charge to the borough council, the engineering function is able to break even and could, if allowed, operate at a profit.

The district council computer is used to ensure that each job is charged to the right department. Every job is given a number on the job card and this number is used to identify the department to which the charge is allocated.

At the beginning of the year, an in-house labour charge is arrived at to ensure a fair charge for the in-house user departments.

I gained the impression during my visit that the Southend Transport Engineering facility, with its wide variety of skills, would survive and prosper as a commercial enterprise in its own right. Value for money and relia bility are two of the main criteria by which public transport is judged, and on these grounds Southend cannot be faulted, for the municipal buses still operate without the benefit of rate support.

As the recession adds to the problems of the bus industry and the fleet sizes drop, many operators could find themselves with spare engineering capacity. In the municipal sector, operators already combine the maintenance facilities for buses with those for other vehicles in their fleets. Where there is spare capacity, it seems sensible that it should be used if a demand exists. If the demand is from the private sector, all well and good, provided it is met on fair, commercial lines.


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