Secondhand bus famine looms
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A SECONDHAND bus taminc threatens to make it more difficult for new operators to challenge established operators as deregulation and competitive tendering takes effect.
Supplies of former National Bus Company and London Buses vehicles are likely to be swallowed up by two major export contracts, one just scaled, the other still under negotiation. That will leave few attractive vehicles for the independent sector.
In the deal just concluded, Ensign Bus Sales of Puttleer is to supply 800 vehicles a year for the next three years for use on pilgrim transport work to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.
Deliveries start next month, with 400 right-hand-drive and 4(X) left-hand-drive vehicles being supplied.
The right-hand-drive vehicles — double-deck and single-deck — will exhaust Ensign's remaining stock of ex-London Daimler Fleetlines, but also include Leyland AtLuitean AN68s and Volvo Aikis.
he left-hand-drive vehicles will all be single-deckers operated in Belgian and Dutch cities. These are to be prepared for service at Ensign's European premises in ()stend.
The order, the first major export order won by the joint National Bus Company/Ensign sales operation, will leave few attractive second-hand buses for operators which want to expand into local bus operation. Ex-NBC Bristol VRTs could be among the most plentiful.
This could have a particularly serious impact in London where independent companies have been bidding for London Regional Trimsport routes on the basis of using Ensign's stock of exLondon Fleetlines.
NBC, by contrast, can bypass the Ensign operation by selling older buses in its provincial fleets to London Country Bus Services. [CBS is buyim; older Atlanteans from NBC's Southdown and Northern General fleets.
The other source of attractive deregulation buses, London's ageing, but mechanically sound Rouremasters, could also be cut off.
London Buses is trying to negotiate a inulti-million pound contract to sell up to 1,300 Routemasters to China for operation in Peking and Canton; prototype and new vehicles manager Colin Curtis is in Peking providing technical support for the talks.
A Routemaster demonstrator has clocked up around 100,000 trouble-free kilometres in Canton.
It and another Chinese Routemasrer demonstrator have had their rear entrances and staircases moved to the offside to make them suitable for right-hand driving.