More from Phil

Omnibuses concludes its interview with Velvet’s Phil Stockley, by looking at Go South Coast and the OFT... and the most important question of all. See Part One here...

OB: You are on record as saying you’d buy your former employers at Go South Coast a pint but your departure though amicable was decisive. Would you say that GSC management would buy *you* a pint?

PS: A few wouldn’t, most would and some have!

OB: How best would you describe your relationship with Bluestar? And Go South Coast?

PS: Professional. We applaud them when they do good things—the new buses on Bluestar 1 have made a huge difference, they have got UniLink looking superb and Bluestar’s vehicle presentation is so much better across the board, to give a few examples. At the same time I suspect that our continued existence has surprised a few people and there is an uneasiness that is understandable but a little sad. In the end, my view is that for the bus industry to have a healthy future, it needs to consist of good companies that are successful, the cake is big enough for all of us so we will continue to try to find a relationship with all our fellow operators that respects our competitive position while at the same time placing the priority on delivering first class public transport to the public.

OB: Views regarding your bus services in Eastleigh and beyond are polarised. Some view them as combative, others as complementary. Some say you were naif to take on or even establish yourself near GSC. Was this folly on your part or has GSC over-reacted?

PS: We established ourselves in Eastleigh because we felt there was a gap in the market in this region. In some respects it has proved harder to establish our niche than we imagined it would, but we believe we have managed to establish some key differences between ourselves and the other players that demonstrate there is a role for an operator like us.

OB: You say that you deliberately designed your service B to operate as far away from Bluestar as possible. Some were surprised that Bluestar responded to your B in such a decisive way. Were you?

PS: Yes and no. We always suspected they would want to bare their fangs at some point, so not surprising in that respect. But I can’t believe even they saw the B as competitive because anyone with a map, a timetable and a few grains of common sense can plainly see that it wasn’t. I suppose we could have carried on running all our positioning mileage to Southampton for the 300 and the college runs as dead mileage, but what a waste! So we picked the only possible line on the map that missed all their key commercial flows—even where we ran in parallel, we timed our journeys as far away from theirs as possible.

All our publicity was about Boyatt Wood and Velmore to Southampton, which had no other service, and anyone who thinks that we ever anticipated toppling our blue cousins with 4-5 journeys a day from Eastleigh to Southampton, as opposed to their 15 minute frequency, almost 24/7 service coverage, is frankly mad. So in that sense, surprising that they put as much effort into it as they did, although I guess we saw it as a sign of respect.

OB: The competition authorities seem to have a bad reputation in the industry for picking the wrong fights. Post-Cardiff, do you think you have a case regarding your service B and the Fair Oak Flyer and, if so, how could the authorities help you?

PS: I’m not prepared to make any specific comments on our case because I don’t wish to prejudice anything that may emerge, but it certainly appears true that the competition authorities have more work to do to establish exactly what their role is in a deregulated bus industry.

OB: In the light your experiences since Velvet started, how welcome is the OFT market study report on the bus industry?

PS: While this study addresses the general state of the industry rather than exploring specific cases, I do believe it is a well put together piece of work which raises relevant and interesting questions that need to be debated. My hope is that the industry as a whole will engage positively with the relevant authorities to provide constructive input - whether for or against any proposals that might be forthcoming - and does not simply stick its head in the sand and hope the issue goes away.

OB: What is the future for small operators in a world ever increasingly dominated by larger ones?

PS: Small operators can get a lot closer to the communities they serve and it is much easier to micro-manage the quality of one’s operation with small numbers of buses and drivers. Equally, large operators have the resources to achieve things that small operators can’t. In my view there is a role for both—the size of the company is not the most important thing, it is the talents of the people that run them that matter most.

OB: Do you ever see the time when you would work closer with neighbouring operators under the terms of the Local Transport Act 2008?

PS: Yes, of course. We have no reservations about working with neighbouring operators. We already do with things like Solent Travelcard. And if it helps to give the public a better perception of their transport system, so much the better!

OB: And finally, the key question, one that has apparently floored even the prime minister. What type of biscuit do you prefer?

PS: I’m tempted to say "no comment" but honesty prevails and custard creams win the day! There is probably some deep-seated psychological reason why this is so, but it would take a better man than me to rationalise that one.