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t: 01454 300 400
May 2018
News
Bradley Stoke MetroBus operator announced but still no start date
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Bedminster-based social enterprise has been announced as the operator of services on the MetroBus route that will serve Bradley Stoke. Bristol Community Transport (BCT) will be operating the M1 MetroBus route under contract to First West of England, and is investing in a fleet of 21 biogas buses running on gas generated from food waste – creating up to 60 new driver and support positions at its Bedminster depot. BCT is Bristol’s largest community transport operator and a part of leading transport social enterprise HCT Group, which operates major transport contracts in London, Jersey, Guernsey and Leeds. As a social enterprise, they reinvest the profits from their commercial
work into further transport services or projects in the communities they serve. BCT already provides four regular bus routes in Bristol, operating under contract to Bristol City Council. The operators for all of the first three MetroBus routes have now been announced. In addition to the M1 service that will be operated by BCT, the other two routes, M2 (Long Ashton Park & Ride to city centre) and M3 (Emersons Green to city centre), will be operated directly by First West of England. The M2 route was initially planned to be the first to open, but has reportedly been beset by technical problems. Priority is now being given to getting the M3 service running, with MetroBus saying some months ago that it was expected to
start “immediately after the completion of the Bromley Heath viaduct work on the A4174 Ring Road”. The M3 start date has now been confirmed as 29th May, which will come a month after the lifting of the contraflow over the viaduct. As noted in our February magazine (and only recently picked up by the regional media), the previously advertised MetroBus route between Emersons Green and Parkway Station via UWE has been quietly shelved, with the route between Emersons Green and the city centre (now known as M3) being altered to take in UWE and use the new bus-only M32 junction on Stoke Lane. Consequently, there will be now be no MetroBus services accessing Parkway until the Cribbs Patchway MetroBus
Extension is completed in 2021. The biogas vehicles that BCT will operate on the M1 route will conform to stringent low emission standards. Indeed, all vehicles will conform to the emission standards that are laid down in the MetroBus Quality Partnership Scheme (QPS). First West of England will be operating on MetroBus routes using the very clean Euro VI emission diesel buses at launch, but these will be replaced by biogas buses within two years. In a manner that is already well established locally, each MetroBus route has a designated colour to make it easy for passengers to recognise the route they want. The colours are magenta for M1, orange for M2 and green for M3. There will be spare vehicles sporting red
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