Articulated Posted December 11, 2022 Report Share Posted December 11, 2022 Hi everyone, This thought has been bouncing around in my head for a while now... but I think it's time to consider a reorganization of how the various fleets under the Pacific Western family of companies are organized. Right now, there are individual pages for each series of buses under each brand. The problem comes when buses move between contracts/brands... under the current structure, this means new pages need to be created under the new branding, even if there is no change in fleet numbers. One example of the current approach is with Diversified 1588-1592, which were originally assigned to Northern Health Connections, but were transferred to Ebus 1588-1592; two separate pages needed to be created, despite being the same coaches under the same ownership. It also gets complicated when fleets get split up; another case is 5190-5193, 5195-5197, which were delivered to Toronto for Safeway Tours contract; three units have gone to Diversified in Terrace, another two have gone to Ebus, and others are likely with different contracts. The current format would require three (or more) new pages to deal with the split fleets, even though it's one series of buses. It's gotten more complicated as Pacific Western has picked up/created a number of different brands/contracts over the years, not all of which have distinct operating areas, and some of which are sub-brands to other companies/brands operating in a different region. BC Bus North is an example; it's run out of the Prince George yard (which can be considered either Diversified or Prince George Charter), but the legals on all coaches are for Pacific Western, whose page is focused on the former Ontario operations. Does it make sense to mix BC Bus North coaches with the former Ontario fleet? Pacific Western has a standardized list of fleet numbers amongst all its companies, and they don't renumber buses when moving them between contracts/brands, so I personally don't think there is much benefit of having separate pages for each operation. You also lose a bit of the history of the coach with separate pages rather than one page with its entire PWT history. Under my proposal, each brand would continue to have their own page with a fleet roster listing each bus/coach that operated under that brand. The current Pacific Western Transportation page, which is set up for the former Toronto operations, would be moved to something like "Pacific Western Transportation (Ontario)", with a new Pacific Western Transportation page serving as a main company page, with links to all PWT operations. All of the current fleet pages would be retitled with a Pacific Western title, which would list the full history. The current contract/branding would be listed under either a "Livery" column or the "Status/System" column. This is similar to the approach taken with other multiple-contract operators, such as Keolis Canada and Transdev Quebec, or even BC Transit. Anyway, I would appreciate if people would comment on whether they agree with this approach in organizing the Pacific Western pages. Thanks! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enzo Aquarius Posted December 11, 2022 Report Share Posted December 11, 2022 Agreed with your proposal; it aligns with other operators that sub-contract services. Individual contractors can have their own pages with details on what fleet they're operating; but the penultimate fleet pages should be under the Pacific Western naming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Transit Spotlight Posted December 14, 2022 Report Share Posted December 14, 2022 Also agreed. I originally set out to do a main PWT page with all the sub brand's fleet compiled into one page many years ago, but I removed it because I never had the time to do it. Maybe it's time to get back on it. Personally I'm more into the school bus side of the PWT but the same problem persists. The way the Southland wiki was originally set up was that the Calgary and Edmonton fleets were separated. It just became too difficult to track and keep updated so I just merged all the smaller Southland pages into one big one. Another thing that should be worked on too is making sure the pages stay up-to-date as well. Unfortunately, a lot of these fleet pages remain outdated for long periods of time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Articulated Posted December 19, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2022 Thanks for the feedback everyone! Given the positive response to the proposed changes, I'll go ahead with the moves in the near future (likely over the holidays when I have more free time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Transit Spotlight Posted July 8 Report Share Posted July 8 delete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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