Who was Right & Who was Wronged?

One wonders whether the directors of Go South Coast and indeed Go Ahead itself will be reading the OFT report on Cardiff Bus v 2Travel with renewed interest. One wonders, too, whether the OFT will begin to take a retrospective look at Eastleigh bus operations to determine whether one company was predatory. All this follows reference in parliament on 21 May 2009.

Competition between Velvet and Bluestar ser 2 has now ceased

For, Saturday saw the end of Velvet’s Fair Oak Flyer, the direct Eastleigh-Fair Oak service introduced in January 2009. The Southern Daily Echo blames the withdrawal on Bluestar’s service 2 revisions that saw Bluestar's four buses an hour increase to six. As a result, parliament heard Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne refer to a “desperate need to provide local authorities with the powers to re-regulate buses” in the light of an “extra-ordinary fight” between Bluestar, the large, dominant operator and “new, innovative and young competitor” Velvet.

Huhne cites Velvet’s attempt to provide new links that were “suddenly” thwarted by Bluestar only to find that Bluestar ceased just as soon as it could, something to which Huhne referred as a “scandal” and as “outrageous, bully-boy behaviour on the part of the dominant operator”.

Crucially, Huhne intends to take this up with the OFT. And if, in the post-Cardiff Bus world, the OFT bites then there could be repercussions (or so Velvet supporters might claim).

But, we all know that life isn’t always quite as simple as it looks. For one thing,Velvet MD Phil Stockley is on record as saying that he supports the free market. This suggests that an incumbent should be free to defend its position. And it suggests that Velvet understands the business risks of bus operation (if anyone does, Stockley does).

For another, Velvet has spotted a niche in providing the C1 & C2 under contract (albeit a short term one). With its subsidy, this is a far better bet for Velvet.

Thirdly, there’s no mention within the Southern Echo’s pages of Bluestar’s recent investment that brings the average age of Bluestar’s 100-plus fleet including Unilink to about eight years, far less any considered argument as to whether the hoped for local authority intervention would guarantee the future of smaller operators.

It's interesting that the Southern Daily Echo fails to capitalise on the situation it champions. It reports that, with the fall of the Flyer, 100 journeys are now axed (actually 78 on Mondays to Fridays). It then neglects to mention that from 15 June 2009 Bluestar’s 2 sees the withdrawal of the Fair Oak-Eastleigh shorts, leaving three buses per hour through to Southampton where, before the Flyer, there were four through. This equates to 83 journeys per day between Fair Oak & Eastleigh, compared to Bluestar's current 128.

83 may yet be more than realistic given the strength of that market.

It has always been this blog’s aspiration to point to both sides of an argument. And so it is that in summing up this post on the remarkable parliamentary mention of both Bluestar and Velvet, we wonder ultimately whether the OFT may decide who was right and who was wronged.

i Photo by Southern England Bus Photographs ( used with permission)

Go South Coast's Wilts & Dorset could also find itself being mentioned in parliament, as the RMT considers taking the issue of violence against transport workers to the Commons via an MP's Early Day Motion. This follows the recent attack on a Poole driver.