As the Plymouth Citybus sale deal draws closer—and details begin to emerge—we consider Plymouth in the context of recent developments in Blackburn, where Transdev Blazefield bought the former council owned Blackburn Transport nearly three years ago.
First, though, here’s the latest from Plymouth. If Go Ahead buys Citybus, Go Ahead promises that it will: - Offer £20.2mil for Plymouth Citybus
- Maintain existing school bus services for a minimum of three years
- Operate all existing local bus services as is, for at least six months and will give the council 90 days’ notice of any change, five weeks in addition to the regulatory minimum
- Make no drivers compulsorily redundant in the first 12 months of ownership, unless for reasons outside the company's control
- Eliminate front-line step entrance vehicles by April 2011, reducing the fleet age from nine to eight years
- Retain the Citybus name
- Give the council a percentage of any profit made in the next 30 years upon the sale or long lease of Milehouse depot
Anti-sale protesters may feel like it’s all over, and they are probably right. They may nevertheless point to Blackburn as an example of how things might go wrong. This autumn, forced into action by what Transdev Lancashire United claims are poor free travel payments and recession-led decline, it’s taken unpopular decisions. Not even Blazefield is immune. And not everyone at Blackburn is happy.
Lancashire United has slimmed things down and done the infamous but nonetheless clever M.A.P.-two-step, something the former National Bus Company made famous in the early 1980s: reducing the PVR by using peak vehicles that aren’t strictly necessary during off-peak periods. In Transdev’s case, it’s using step-entrance so-called ‘school bus’ double decks on all-day service, selling some now surplus single deck SLFs.
Blackburnians (is that the correct term for such folk?) have short memories. Under arms-length control, Blackburn Transport was reported as loss making and under-managed. Blazefield has a reputation for turning around marginal businesses (as it did upon Lancashire United’s formation in 2001 to tackle former Stagecoach malaise). It’s fixed Blackburn, launching in the process a Best Impressionable, Spot On market-led service soon after. Were Blackburn Transport still in existence, there’s little doubt that the former municipal would face exactly the same pressures. The action would actually be compounded by two further years of losses and without the benefit of Spot On market-led growth.
Not all bad news in Blackburn: Transdev is stimulating demand with fare deals
Transdev Blazefield’s decisions seem the lesser of two evils. It’s a good use of resources during difficult times, especially if it makes the difference between profit and loss; or between good housekeeping and wholesale withdrawals. Given the choice, most passengers would probably agree, though it will continue to brass-off wheelchair & buggy passengers.
Yet, in marketing terms, selling SLF single decks and replacing them with step entrance deckers is retrograde. Not only is it sending the wrong signals, it will start to erode further recent ridership increases.
Whereas Plymouth Citybus is capable of renewing its step entrance ‘school bus’ fleet with former London SLF deckers, it seems Blazefield isn’t able to. Citybus has had the foresight to invest in SLF deckers that it would appear will remain available for use for at least three years. And this, no doubt, is one reason why Go Ahead can offer the school bus promise: modern vehicles reducing the engineering overhead that are acceptable for general use.
Yet, in marketing terms, selling SLF single decks and replacing them with step entrance deckers is retrograde. Not only is it sending the wrong signals, it will start to erode further recent ridership increases.
Whereas Plymouth Citybus is capable of renewing its step entrance ‘school bus’ fleet with former London SLF deckers, it seems Blazefield isn’t able to. Citybus has had the foresight to invest in SLF deckers that it would appear will remain available for use for at least three years. And this, no doubt, is one reason why Go Ahead can offer the school bus promise: modern vehicles reducing the engineering overhead that are acceptable for general use.
10 comments:
£20.2 million!!!!!!??? IIRC, the asking price was about £10m. Obviously Go-Ahead see alot of potential in Plymouth.
I think it was the council who claimed that they were expecting bids of at least £10 million. They also budgeted to spend £900,000 to get an 'evaluation' of the company if they wished to sell it. All seemed a bit pointless really.
Having said that I think the £20 million has surprised a lot of people
I guess that with a commitment not to change local bus services for 6 months the current competitive routes will continue?
Go Ahead have paid well over the odds for Citybus, when you think they paid about £23m (I think) for W&D in 2003, which was about double the size of Citybus and much more property, with no clawback !
Blackburnians - yes, the correct term for such folk as us - have good cause for being upset with Blazefield. No doubt the company has to survive and make the unpopular decisions, but consider that they:
Promised a strong fleet renewal with new low floor buses, half of which promptly went to the Hyndburn Circular, a Lancashire United route Blackburn had never operated.
Introduced Versas which were very quickly sent over to York.
Now run what to the 'man in the street' looks like a very tired fleet of nondescript vehicles - except for a couple of priveleged routes.
Shame - they appear to be a very good business elsewhere who really should be getting their local PR in order and remembering their promises to actually improve on what they took over.
yellow buses fetched 15m not 13.8!
The capital receipt to Bournemouth council after all disbursements etc was £13,826,150.00.
I must say fleet age of less then 8 seems very optimistic. Seeing that the 'new' deckers are already 8 years old now, even these perfectly acceptable vehicles will have to be replaced? Along with countless Dennis Darts this would mean a considerable amount of buses being changed around. Even the 56 reg Enviros will be 5 years old by then, and along with the midibus fleet of 709s needing to be replaced this target will need an amazing amount of money to cover the cost of replacing this amount of the fleet!
Laurence - the fleet age will surely mean the average fleet age, not that all vehicles will have to be less than eight years old. Plymouth still have a few 709Ds, Volvo Citybuses and step-darts in service - if these are replaced (even with newer second-hand cascades) this will probably easily achieve the 8 year average figure quoted.
Citybus have been relatively good at investing in their fleet - in all honesty I'd have expected that Citybus would have achieved this target anyway. They had already replaced much of the step-entrance fleet on front-line services. Some of the step-darts have been reinstated to allow for the new routes launched to counter First's competition. Whether these will still be running in 2011 is a different question.
The $20 million certainly was a surprise - and surely is a figure the City Council cannot refuse. Go-Ahead presumably do see a lot of potential in Plymouth - I wonder if they see First Devon and Cornwall as a subsidiary which struggles to meet the profit targets set by the masters in Aberdeen and one which might 'abandon ship' before too long. First D&C have already retreated from much of Cornwall (to the extent that Western Greyhound is now the largest operator there) and are seeing some hard competition in North Devon from Stagecoach (Devon General as was).
If the pattern of services in Sussex is anything to go by, I imagine Go-Ahead Citybus would go for tendered services in both West Devon and SE Cornwall and may well expand commercially in Saltash and possibly Ivybridge.
This is a space which will be very interesting to watch in the next year or two.
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