Can Carrying

In the coming years, historians will look back at 2009 as a pivotal year. A combination of recession and over-enthusiasm for a major rail franchise looks set to alter the structure of the bus operating industry. One of England’s transport giants is likely to come tumbling down. Further, they will point to one man who made it happen and carried the can.

Rightly or wrongly, the blame will fall upon Richard Bowker, the former chief executive of the National Express Group, for his group’s over-ambitious bid for the east coast main railway line, subsequent debt and in theory its ‘nationalisation’.

Talk of the Spanish Cosmen family taking a controlling interest in NatEx since NatEx bought out Alsa has passed. There’s a view that things are now irredeemable.

NatEx now views its other bus operations as “non-core assets” and may let them go to help reduce its overall £1.8bil debt. There remains speculation that the vultures are circulating to buy the group’s local bus companies, Travel Dundee and Travel West Midlands, with the possibility that Travel Coventry could even be sold separately. Travel London & Surrey went in May to Ned Rail for £32mil.

This in spite of NatEx shrugging off an earlier unsolicited offer from First. Expect another, better, First offer. You may recall that there was speculation earlier this year that Virgin wished to step in to operate the ECMRL at NatEx’s expense.

Where does all this leave one of England’s Big Five? Potentially no bus operating subsidiaries and, for the biggest rail operator of them all, perhaps even no rail operations, if the government invokes its option to take back other franchises as well as ECMRL.

Meanwhile, this time next week AMPM Travel will add a second route in the west midlands, a half-hourly service from Birmingham to Chelmsley Wood. That it’s initial route is successful in a recessionary, declining market can surely only be at the expense of NatEx West Midlands.

And on the ground in the West Midlands, NXWM continues to exercise those who view its fleet of 20+ year old MCW Metrobus IIs as a poor show. In spite of significant investment in recent months, the operator has been tardy in eliminating completely the dwindling number of Metrobuses that NXWM.

No other Big Five operator could ‘boast’ such a large antiques collection for so long a period. Nice for enthusiasts but hardly 21st century. Rather than carrying them, any new owner would wish to can these buses immediately.

Vacuous?

As operators discover that bus backs are an important marketing tool that should be reserved to sell the bus service and nothing else, designers are becoming more and more creative.

Yet, are we the only ones to feel that the following bus back is just a little vacuous?

Monday—visit Debbie
Tuesday—sale in that designer shop
Wednesday—lunch with Brett
Thursday—a little light shopping
Friday—go to Ikea
Saturday—grandkids day out [where’s that apostrophe?]
Sunday—shop, of course

Shopping on four days out of seven? There *must* be more to life.

Sundays seem especially lacking in any meaning. Whatever happened to a late breakfast accompanied by Melodies for You on the Light Programme; the call of church bells; the smell of a slowly roasting beef joint; a stroll in the park; the burble of a Morris Minor’s long stroke during a spin in the country; and high tea on the lawn? No, it has to be shops, of course… plus a Big Mac, fries and regular Coke.

Hot and Bothered

I guess most people reading this will know that we’ve had a fine and often sunny May and June. Cooler now, it’s hot work behind the wheel and, these days, the traditional avenue of cooling down has been closed off to drivers: they need to keep the service entrance doors closed, unless stationary. How often do you see buses with their doors open in service, these days? Rarely. Newer buses have interlocks to make quite sure doors remain shut while in transit.

Still, it could be worse. Those who remember cramped half-cab driving conditions with engines next to the driver will know how uncomfortable a summer shift used to be. Hot? Blistering. And noisy to boot.

The hot weather seemed to result in an increase in the number of drivers who rested their right wrist on the open driver’s cab window, with the hand reposing limply in the air stream. We’re not sure whether this cools the driver off sufficiently but driving one handed is never good practice, even if the punters rarely see it. Modern automatic buses are easier to drive than their half-cab ancestors but they also tend to accelerate and move quicker. With only one hand on the wheel, the driver loses valuable seconds in the event of an incident where he might need to steer and this is of concern and bother just as much as was the heat.

Eccentricities

It’s 20 years ago this month that the old eccentricities of Barton Transport were taken over by the new ones of Wellglade, Trent’s holding company.

Trent Barton: keeping up the tradition of eccentricity

In the days of municipal, PTE and nationalised bus fleets, Barton Transport was Britain’s largest independent operator (once Lancashire United was taken over), running at its prime over 300 buses & coaches. In the same way that post-deregulated Trent Barton was to astound us all quite literally in a variety of ways, the Barton family had been doing so for much of their company’s life. And none more so than in the early- to mid-1970s with the eye-opening and almost universal adoption of the standard coach bodied dual purpose vehicle as its standard.

This was in the shape of AEC Reliances (while available), Leyland Leopards and even Bedford YRQs, with Duple and particularly Plaxton Panorama Elite Express bodies. This latter body type was among the best ever designed in Britain but it was odd to see such high numbers on what were at the time called stage carriage services, the more so since the destination indicator was below the windscreen.

All bodies came with New Bus Grant specified wide, driver controlled, two leaf automatic doors. Barton Transport’s order in 1973 for a staggering 145 such vehicles flooded the area with something of a little luxury comparable then to the current Trent Barton initiatives today, including modern investment in Café Nero-style interiors. Even in an era well before easy access, you could forgive Barton for buying vehicles with such steep steps while others weren’t just being low framed Bristol REs or Leyland Nationals but high framed Bristol LHs.

The Bartons, aka “The Family”, were indeed known to be an eccentric bunch. Well before the dual purposes, Barton bought vehicles that were highly appointed, often unusual and they even had a First World War Daimler extended to 40ft. They owned half of another quaint operator, South Notts of Gotham (goat ham), till Nottingham City Transport took over in 1991.

Focusing on the Passenger

Passenger Focus has nine months till it begins in earnest its statutory representation of bus passengers. In its current shadow form, it’s already building up its strength (staff in three pilot areas), its research and its involvement with the wider industry. Passenger Focus will be uniquely funded and resourced.

Where does that leave Bus Users UK? The National Federation of Bus Users as was relies largely on sponsorship from the industry itself. First Group has already indicated that it is no longer able to support BUUK, citing the current economic conditions. In the light of the recession and the statutory role of Passenger Focus, might others follow suit? Without such industry sponsorship, BUUK will be weakened to the point that it may need to scale back. It cannot possibly rely solely on the subscription of its membership.

The role for this eclectic body of grass roots bus users isn’t likely to diminish unless Passenger Focus takes over BUUK’s role on the Bus Appeals Body. There are currently no plans to make this body statutorily accountable. Whereas Passenger Focus will undoubtedly widen its mammoth rail market research to include the bus side, it’s unlikely to be geared up to hold the plethora of bus surgeries across the country. These benefit real and regular passengers though occasionally they simply frustrate them (when the answer is “no”). Surgeries are nevertheless patchy. There is no reason why, for example, bus companies and indeed transport authorities cannot undertake this role themselves.

At present, Passenger Focus is using BUUK in partnership. BUUK benefits from a number of senior people with wide bus experience (e.g. Gavin Booth and Stephen Morris). How long will it be before Passenger Focus overtakes and indeed eclipses BUUK?

Role for Taxis

Today is likely to see the Conservative party launch a policy aimed at transforming rural travel. Taking out the party politics of it all, the plan is to offer demand responsive or semi-demand responsive taxis to remote rural areas. Given the possible proposed funding, could this be as significant in policy terms as the Transport Act 1985?

The first comment to make is that public transport in rural areas isn’t as bad as people perceive it to be. True, there may no longer be the evening departure home (traditionally as late as 2130!) or even an early morning service (how well are such buses used even in urban areas?).

If you happen to live on an inter-urban bus route, you probably have a half decent bus service or better. There are still many rural areas that can sustain a regular bus service to their nearby town, with or without direct subsidy, and perhaps operating at marginal cost on the back of a school bus or two. Education transport is still the key to rural bus service provision as it has been for 40 years since the National Bus Company famously introduced the idea of marginal costing and the peak vehicle requirement. Park the larger vehicle up during the day between schools and you squander a resource.

But that doesn’t mean everyone’s adequately served. The answer has to be something more flexible (this is not new—we are already seeing examples of these), not only for those who wish to continue living in the country beyond their driving licence expiry but also to reach increasingly decentralised health care provision, for example. And this is the second comment. Flexible services operated by smaller more realistically vehicles cannot run in isolation. They, too, need to have links with education transport. And why not health? Getting non-patient emergency transport on board’s been something of a transport holy grail. Too often, the various components of the health sector have been unwilling to play.

Thirdly, sometimes where flexible services have been tried they’ve proven to be quite costly and not always cheaper than a small bus at marginal cost. There’s evidence that some of these services are being replaced by fixed services as cutbacks.

And fifthly, there needs changes to the way in which the taxi industry operates. Too often, taxi firms cannot see the benefits of such operation or when they do they price expensively. It’s not in the nature of the taxi business to operate to a flexible schedule. Taxi firms therefore need nurturing. Will there also need to be changes to the law to ensure that passengers can more easily use private hire vehicles on semi-fixed routes? PHVs are often the bedrock of taxi provision in rural areas.

Shocking

It must’ve been, oh, 17 years ago that I found myself, in a more junior position, in front of an audience answering questions on school buses and commercial services carrying pupils. One questioner was something locally to do with some sort of federation of parent-teachers associations. She asked whether operators made a profit from school transport.

You betcha!

She was shocked, genuinely believing that operators should provide such services at cost, as a community payback. For those elements under contract, perhaps my company wasn’t getting as much as we would’ve liked but certainly more than the authority for whom the buses were under contract was really happy to pay. That was in the days when operators were more concerned about mileage than margins. Things have changed.

In fact, things indeed move on. I came face to face with the same person last week. She is now a senior local politician. The item under discussion was safety on public transport. She had a further question. When were problems of driver abuse most acute: mid-evening when there might be brickings (my word), after the last bus at 2300 or during the Friday/Saturday and Saturday/Sunday night buses?

None!

Problems were at their worst between 1515 and 1615 during the afternoon school peak.

Once again, she was shocked.