Night-time Pit Stops

For the Metroline Bus Company, transporting 181 million passengers over 33 million journey miles along 82 routes around North West London constitutes a typical business year. The company operates over 1000 buses daily from ten depots covering the region.

For the support staff based at the largest depot in Holloway, refuelling, washing, cleaning and parking up 240 buses represents a typical working night. The depot gets through around 100 thousand litres of diesel a week. Keeping track on the allocation of fuel put into the buses during the night-time turnaround is a financial necessity for Metroline.

The information is used to calculate the Bus Service Operators' Grant, effectively a duty rebate allowed by the Government to support public transport. To claim this rebate bus companies must provide detailed returns showing how the fuel was distributed against operating routes and vehicles. Breakdown, support and training vehicles are not eligible.

Diesel usage and mileage are also used to calculate fuel economy performance, which is important in helping to make informed decisions on the procurement and suitability of new vehicles to routes. Managing this task would be impossible without the support of a robust fuel dispensing system geared to public transport operations.

Metroline uses Merridale Auditor and FuelFX software supplied by MIS Fuel Monitoring of Wolverhampton. The equipment was specified following a competitive evaluation in 1999. It is now fully operational in all ten Metroline depots, the most recent of these being the installation of Integral pumps and monitor units at new depots in Perivale and Kings Cross.

Commenting on the selection of the Merridale system, Tony Lambard, Training Manager and project manager for the implementation, notes that compatibility with the accounting systems used for the fuel duty rebates was an important factor.

"We used an automated system previously, but this used paper roll print-outs which had to be reconciled manually. We had some challenges with the new system in the early days because the fuel operators were being asked to key in data to a computer system. Having captured the details of the transaction, however, the big advantage now is that the information can be processed electronically which is not only more efficient, it also reduces any risk of errors and subsequent queries."

Details of all fuelling transactions from each depot are downloaded by GSM data links to the company's headquarters in Harrow, for analysis and the generation of management reports. Fuel stock is checked daily by the depot stores manager. Replacement supplies are ordered by the company's central purchasing department in Harrow.

Refuelling and turning round 240 buses is a highly organised process, with all the speed, precision and safety precautions of a Grand Prix pit stop. Indeed 40 of the depot's buses make a return visit on completion of the night services Space is limited and specialist shunter drivers are used to move the buses within the garage. For safety purposes, a system of traffic lights is used to regulate the movement of buses onto the fuelling point.

The shift starts at around 6.00pm as buses return from their last route of the day and line up behind one of three refuelling islands. In turn they are shunted to a pump where the pump operators input vehicle details into the Merridale Auditor pump control unit. These details; the vehicle fleet number, type and the mileage reading taken from the hub odometer; together authorise the delivery of fuel. The volume of fuel taken to fill up the vehicle is then recorded and information is stored electronically by the Auditor unit.

Data from the Merridale Auditor units is downloaded daily, at three o'clock in the morning for processing by the central accounts department. In addition to calculating duty refunds, the information provides a comprehensive record of all fuelling transactions, to support business operations. Reports can be collated to check vehicle mpg economy performance over specific routes. Fuelling history can be traced in the (rare) event of a bus running out of fuel. Another important area of feed back is details of failed transactions - where the operator has had to bypass the system.

As buses stack up on the starting grid the pressure is on to get them through. To protect the integrity of the database the software is designed to reject any unrecognised or non conformal entries. In these situations the operator is allowed to bypass the transaction by using a coded entry number which will then capture all the details of the unrecognised vehicle. This may occur for various reasons, such as a new bus not yet updated on the system database. Full details of these transactions are recorded in an exceptions report for checking and reconciliation at depot level.

"The important thing is to keep the line rolling," says Tony Lambard. "We do not have time to start dealing with database queries during the night. And the last thing we want is a bottleneck at the start of the line. The exceptions report can be checked during the day by fleet management personnel to ensure that the appropriate corrective action is taken."

Holloway is just one of ten depots operated by Metroline so this a nightly process of data capture for collating and analysis between head office and depot. And with such a dynamic refuelling procedure, it is important to make sure that the fuel stock can be accounted for efficiently.