First Essex Route 100, Chelmsford to Lakeside with Volvo 7900H

Taken from their leaflet cover

First Essex operates Route 100 in Essex with the route starting from Chelmsford and ending at Lakeside. The route goes via Billericay, Noak Bridge, Basildon and Grays.

You can view the map below

Taken from Traveline which you can see here

Here you can view the timetable from First Essex and Traveline.

You can see the video footage I took of the First Essex route 100 here.

First Essex route 100 Volvo 7900H by clondoner92

Route 100 Chelmsford to Lakeside via Basildon

Operated by First Essex from Basildon depot

Volvo 7900H (hybrid)

Registration: BV13ZBD

Fleet Number: 69902

Filmed on 28th September 2015

The Volvo 7900H is a hybrid bus based on the Volvo B5LH. The chassis is used on both single deck and double deck bodies. You can see more on the Volvo B5LH on Wikipedia. The bus service also has free Wi-Fi on board.

In my view, since the bus has readers for the ENCTS passes, the same as London Buses provide, I think First Group should invest in enabling contactless bank cards to be used in order to speed up boarding to allow journeys to be more efficient. We will wait and see as time progresses.

The bus services outside of London are different from London Buses due to the single door and no smartcard (except for selected areas in Britain) or contactless payment system; they are old school and still use hard cash. The advantage of this though is you can get a return ticket instead of paying for two single fares. You can see more about the First Essex ticket system here and also Essex County Council have a multi operator ticket which you can see here.

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