Swings and roundabouts, we hear this term a lot these days. Many routes change operator on tenders, no matter how long standing they are. However sometimes a route with a history at a particular operator can "return" following a new tender, and route 139 has been the latest recipient of this when it returned to Metroline operation in August
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VH45115 at Waterloo
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Route 139 traditionally has a really long history at Metroline, however wasn't always based out of Cricklewood under their tenure. The route started operation in 1992 running out of a now closed garage in Chalk Farm, running between Trafalgar Square and West Hampstead, major change didn't come again until 2003 when the route was extended to Waterloo. The route was also moved into its long term home of Cricklewood (W) in 2002. 2017 was when the biggest change arguably happened to the route, with an extension to Golders Green to give the area a link south of Oxford Circus following the rerouting of the 13 to Victoria. At this time what ended up happening was as the 139 contract was due for renewal, the contract wasn't tendered and was just passed onto RATP to see out the remaining 13 contract, while route 13 was taken over by Tower Transit. This did place Metroline at a loss of two routes, but the 2020 tender as I mentioned earlier saw the route returning to Metroline operation.
Soon after the tender was announced, it was made public that the buses to be used on the route would be the buses which were previously found on route 34 at Potters Bar (PB), as that route had been lost to Arriva in November 2019. This would also mark the introduction of Wrightbus vehicles to Cricklewood for the first time (ignoring the New Routemaster buses). The buses started arriving at Cricklewood prior to the national lockdown of March 2020 and managed to start spreading themselves over the garage's double decker routes, with them mostly being found on route 210.
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VWH2032 seen at Golders Green
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Metroline took over operation of the route in the early hours of the 29th of August 2020, with VWH2023 being the first bus to welcome route 139 back to Metroline operation. I went out the following week to see how Metroline were getting on with the route and how they had settled in to their returned route. I had decided to bus it into Central London, and that was a big mistake so I ended up needing to use the ring road to get to Baker Street which meant that I would be unable to complete an end to end journey on the route, however that would be no loss as I'm already accustom to that section really well, and social distancing measures throughout Central London meant that it was all full of traffic anyway. Upon boarding the bus it was nice to see the familiar interior of a Metroline bus on the 139 that I was used to for all those years prior to the Finchley Road changes.
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TEH1113 on stand at Golders Green
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The ride itself, well was nothing to get too hyped up over. As with many contract changes these days, the new schedule seemed to have had extra running time incorporated into it, which meant that when the roads were empty and not many people were boarding the bus the journey would be filled with extremely slow and agonising driving, or regulating at stops to a point you wish you could just get off and walk. Sadly this 139 ride was exactly like that, I was starting to feel impatient the closer and closer we got to Golders Green. Once we finally reached, I was the first person off that bus because I needed to stretch my legs. What made this worse is that when I reached Golders Green there were already 3 139s on stand, when only two are meant to be on the stand at any one time, suggesting that we had in fact arrived early as well. One of those buses was a standard Alexander Dennis Enviro400H, which are also found in Cricklewood's fleet and made up the 139s allocation prior to its move to RATP.
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VWH2028 seen at Oxford Circus
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Sadly the 139 seems to have become a victim of the extra running time group of tenders, where operators incorporate extra running time into the schedule in order to allow buses to stick to timetables and schedules better, reducing the risk of any excess waiting times and lost mileage. This is quite good for the operator, not particularly good for the passenger though. The 139 has also been a source of controversy within the company itself, being one of the first routes where Metroline has employed remote sign on, a practice where drivers clock onto work along the route itself as opposed to the garage. This hasn't particularly fallen well within Metroline's staff base, with staff being balloted for strike action as many of them are against the practice, however it does show the lengths operators are now going to save money and cut costs in order to win further work due to increased competition. The tendering system was initially introduced to cut costs, but have we reached a point where costs have now been cut too much? Leave your answer to that in the comments!
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VWH2029 seen at Golders Green
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It's always nice to see an old operator take on a route again, but whether Metroline returning to the 139 is a step forward for the route remains to be seen. It's been a fair few weeks since the takeover and the few times I've used it since, both for enthusiast and non-enthusiast related reasons have shown excess regulation and slow journey times. However it seems that it's something we might need to get used to on the majority of routes going forward from now on.
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