The other night out in St Kilda I saw an interesting looking bus – painted all black with a massive ‘Addikted To Ink’ logo on the side, it looked like one of the buses that Transdev Melbourne used to operate in Melbourne. But was it?
Looking up the company name, I found the bus featured on the ‘Ride with Addikted’ Facebook page – their game being “Premium bus transport service: Birthdays, Hens, Bucks, Corporate events, Weddings & more!”.
The bus has national heavy vehicle plate number “XV22LW”, so my next step was to look up the registration plate on the VicRoads website.
Registration number:
XV22LWRegistration status & expiry date:
Current – 04/06/2024Vehicle:
2005 BLACK M.A.N. BUSVIN/Chassis:
WMAA66ZZ05C005571Engine number:
19510105291015Registration serial number:
7499449Compliance plate / RAV entry date:
06/2005
I then searched online for the VIN of “WMAA66ZZ05C005571” – and found this expired auction listing on the machines4u website.
Showing a bus with a mismatched livery of white, blue and orange – a common sight for buses originally delivered to the National Bus Company, and then rebranded for Public Transport Victoria after their takeover by Transdev Melbourne in 2013.
With the full story becoming clear when I put the VIN into the search at the Australian Bus Fleet Lists site, which brought this up.
Operator
Transdev MelbourneDepot
North FitzroyFleet Number
#544Registration
5840AOChassis Type
MAN 15.220Chassis No
WMAA66ZZ05C005571Body Manufacturer
Custom Coaches “CB30”Body No
04-133Body Date
6.2005Withdrawn
15/10/2019
And with registration plate 5840AO on hand, I then searched my collection of photos, and what did I get – a photo of the bus in service with Transdev Melbourne back in June 2015.
And a parting shot from 2012, with the bus in the National Bus Company blue livery.
Quite the journey indeed!
Footnote – another ex-Transdev bus
I spotted another ex-Transdev CB30 bus in the back blocks of Ballarat earlier this year – where the wet weather and lack of shelter have not been kind to it.
Interesting! And great detective work.
But it’s also revealing to see the age of the bus — 18! I find some of the heaviest polluting heavy vehicles on the road are buses going about their daily business, spewing out clouds of grey-black diesel exhaust in residential areas that makes us all sicker. So many of them need to be scrapped.
18 years is younger than some route buses still in service – normally they stay in frontline service until 15 years old, then a few years demoted to peak use only, before their initial owner sells them around age 20 years, and they get sold to charter or rail replacement bus operators.
Your research is impeccable. The sister bus in Ballarat looks rather sad.
Off topic but as we sat in the gutter as we brunched in Commercial Road, Prahran yesterday, two of the four Alfred Hospital bound buses were electric. They were just so quiet and we weren’t gassed by diesel fumes. I’m loving these electric buses.
Kinetic is up to 24 electric buses and 30 hybrid buses in their fleet – but that’s in a fleet of almost 600!
https://fleetlists.busaustralia.com/vic.php?search=KIM
The bus list link is informative. I had no idea Kinetic had so many buses.
Say thanks to the bus spotters who keep the lists up to date.
With buses, Transit System has a couple of hydrogen buses, and I haven’t been on a hydrogen bus, but I have been on a hybrid (operated by CDC Melbourne) and electric (a couple operated by Transit System and a couple operated by Kinetic), and they are very quiet, so quite enjoyable. As I live in Delahey, I could see the hydrogen buses on route 420 along Kings Road very soon.
You’ve gotta love the Victorian Government – we first trialled hybrid buses way back in 2009 but only started buying them en masse a decade later:
https://wongm.com/2019/09/new-melbourne-hybrid-buses-cdc-melbourne-transdev/
And now we’re decided to be stragglers in trialling hydrogen buses, just in time for other operators to say battery electric buses are cheaper.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/real-world-figures-hydrogen-buses-cost-2-3-times-more-to-run-per-km-than-battery-electric-ones-says-italian-study/2-1-1511785
A postscript to my post. I have just found an article on Australasian Bus and Coach, and an expert from Cambridge has warned that the trials of hydrogen buses in Melbourne is destined to fail. Apparently, many cities has tried this and it backfired because it is dependent on fossil fuels and costs more than electric buses (which various operators including Transit Systems, Sunbury Bus Lines, Ventura Buslines and Kinetic Melbourne use). It also noted that the high capital and fuel costs dogged the hydrogen buses that were used at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games a few years back.
So even though I said I looked forward to checking these out, I am beginning to regret my comments because of this. I now feel that both the Victorian Government and Transit Systems has made a major mistake here.
I saw it today as well – here’s a link:
https://www.busnews.com.au/cambridge-expert-warns-melbourne-hydrogen-buses-are-destined-to-fail/