By Tim Hodges
The age old Brighton summer tradition of an open-top bus to the Devil’s Dyke is no more. For this summer at least.
The service 77 will not have an uncovered top deck this summer.
The buses used from the normal fleet are no longer structurally sound enough to have the top dismantled and crucially Brighton and Hove City Council no longer funds the attendent required on the top deck for health and safety reasons.
Brighton and Hove Buses and their various predecessors have been running open-top services from the Palace Pier and previously Rottingdean to the Dyke since the 1960s.
In the seventies and eighties an old Bristol Lodeka bus would crawl up King George VI Avenue – Snakey Hill to locals – en route to the beauty spot.
Brighton and Hove Buses still runs the Brighton sightseeing tour as an open-top service.
They are probably waiting to see how the i360 service pans out.
@rolivan. It’s a bit up and down
So Go Ahead (also owners of Southern Railway, Gatwick Express and Thameslink) firstly delayed start of the 77 this year because they didn’t get funding from Brighton & Hove City Council.
Now they come up with some dubious tale about “health and safety” then linked to a lack of money from the council to provide an “attendant” upstairs!
This company that has invested millions in new buses funded by the same council and throws thousands at repainting buses and flash mobs for PR exercises – like their staff, I too have little trust in the honesty of this company and their management anymore.
Time that Brighton & Hove Buses got some proper competition in the city and had some of their major profit making routes taken away from them!
So Go Ahead (also owners of Southern Railway, Gatwick Express and Thameslink) come up with some dubious tale about “health and safety” then linked to a lack of money from the council to provide an “attendant” upstairs! This company that has invested millions in new buses funded by the same council and throws thousands at repainting buses and flash mobs for PR exercises. Perhaps get another company (Big Lemon or Stagecoach) to take over this service?
Don’t understand health and safety bit when skegness has a bus every 10 mins 0800-2300 on town to Butlins service and no attendant!
Here in the Isle of Wight Southern Vectis (another Go Ahead subsidiary) runs several seasonal open top services, none of which carries a conductor or attendant. Brighton, Hove and District Omnibus Co. were pioneers in the use of open top buses for tourists from the 1930s onwards. These structural and health and safety issues are completely spurious in my opinion.
Outrageous. And don’t palm us off with ridiculous lies. Next you’ll be saying ‘Brexit means Brexit’.