Ealing Community Transport

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Ealing Community Transport (ECT) is a social enterprise which provides various services, including recycling and community transport as well as being one of many operators of London Buses.

1 Recycling
2 Company history
3 Garages
- 3.1 Bus types in use
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Recycling

In early 1995 ECT started its first green box recycling service, c roughly the size of a milk crate, into which paper, glass, cans, foil, textiles, shoes, household batteries and engine oil can be placed, collected once a week by ECT. Materials are sorted into compartments on the recycling vehicle at the kerbside to avoid contamination and mix-up of items. This recycle from home service is now used by 860,000 people in 16 Local Authority Areas, across some of London, Avon, Somerset, Warwickshire and the West Midlands.

As well as doorstep green box recycling, ECT also runs flat recycling services, whereby a block of between 25-125 households has several recycling containers between them, and depots. These depots collect all the materials collected by the doorstep recycling service as well as items such as books, electrical items, fluorescent tubes, fridges, furniture, green waste, plastic, scrap metal, tyres, white goods, paint and wood.

ECT has developed into a company with an annual turnover of around £50million pounds, with 600 staff working in its recycling, community transport, engineering and refuse collection.

[edit] Company history

Ealing Community Transport was established in the 1970s to serve the small towns on the outskirts of Ealing. Due to a lack of revenue the service was shut down in the late 1990s.

In April 2003 ECT was restarted and won the tender to operate Transport for London route 195 (Ealing Hospital - Charville Lane) from First Group, using a fleet of new 10.2m low-floor, dual-door Caetano Nimbus-bodied Dennis Darts, replacing First's short, single-door Marshall-bodied Darts. Not only was the vehicle capacity increased at this time, the frequency was enhanced to provide a 12-minute service throughout the day (20 mins evenings and Sundays). The increased frequency has been popular with passengers and loadings have increased^{[citation needed]}.

During the early 2000s it decreased its frequency and is now only every 15 minutes. ECT has experienced problems with vandalism and arson attacks on its buses, and came third last in the best contractor survey. Initial problems with window etching were quickly addressed and ECT Bus has also been involved in Operation Eyesore in west London, in conjunction with Met Police and TfL, where front-page images on local papers identified local vandals, leading to a number of convictions. Performance of the route has been exemplary in terms of operated mileage (before traffic causes) and, despite operating through Southall, an area renowned for its challenging traffic environment, reliability is extremely good - at April 2006, ECT Bus is in second position in TfL's league table for smaller operators. The current bus fleet for the 195 contract stands at 14 vehicles.

[edit] Garages

ECT operate one garage in Greenford, which runs London bus route 195. The Greenford bus depot is part of a local council depot and was first used in 1993 as a midibus base. The opening of Greenford garage led to the closure of Hanwell, and in 1995 the garage was operating 110 midibuses. The standard fare of vehicles in the late 1990s were Renualt/Wright midibus', and Marshall minibuses but unfortunately both types had a bad reputation and did not last long. In recent years the allocation has been much diverse, ranging from Marshall bodied darts to Dennis Trident Plaxton vehicles. In late 2003 Ealing Community Transport moved into the depot with their first London route - 195 using garage code EY.