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Looking back, things had so much promise. In July 2006, Veolia (the new name for the former Dunn-Line business) was the successful winners of a large number of contracts in the north east Nottinghamshire area, mainly centred around the town of Retford, and the village of Tuxford, where Dunn-Line had maintained a small depot for some years prior to the Veolia take-over. Initially, the new operator was treated with some hostility, both by passengers and the local press, who saw a French multi-national company (more commonly associated with refuse collection services in Notts) taking established services away from the Lincolnshire Road Car (by then, part of the Stagecoach Group) and a number of other independent operators.
As with any large-scale contract win, there were some initial teething problems at the beginning of Veolia’s services. This was not helped by the county council’s desire to enact many route and timetable changes to long established routes, but things settled down quickly, and the public benefited from the arrival of several new vehicles in the shape of four brand-new Optare Tempos and one Optare Solo, which were shared between Veolia’s Tuxford and Lincoln depots for exclusive use of the new contract services. These vehicles offered a dramatic improvement on the MCW Metrobuses and Optare Deltas that Road Car had favoured.
During the summer of 2008, Veolia suffered the loss of the 54/55 routes between Newark and Bingham. These services had been acquired by Dunn-Line from MASS Transit, and were in-turn acquired by Veolia, who continued to operate them from their Lincoln base. Rumours began to circulate about the future of Lincoln depot, and in February 2009 the announcement was made that the depot would be closed, and all north east Nottinghamshire based work would pass to Tuxford, along with a small number of vehicles and drivers. It was only two months before it was announced that Hull depot would also close, with the assets passing to East Yorkshire.
A further casualty in 2009 was the 37 service between Newark and Retford (via Tuxford) which was registered commercially by local independent, Marshall’s of Sutton on Trent. As a result, the Veolia contract was terminated. Then, this month, a subtle announcement was placed on the county council website indicating that Veolia was surrendering all its contracts in north east Nottinghamshire from June 2010, presumably meaning the closure of Tuxford depot. A sad ending, for a company which started off showing so much promise.
Monday, 26 April 2010
Veolia: a sad retrospective?
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9 comments:
One wonders if Veolia under-priced the initial contracts in order to be sure of winning them, and to undermine the existing operators?
They also won a large number of tenders in Mid-Wales a few years ago, and I seem to recall some suspicion of similar practices there as well. Perhaps it's not the most successful way to run a rural bus service after all. At the end of the day, a business needs to make profits!
Under their old identity (Connex) they did the same in Jersey - they said they could run services with a 33-bus fleet. They now have nearer 50 service buses and a dedicated school bus fleet...
There's a very good reason why they're much better at handling rubbish.
RC169, in Powys a number of contracts were won and before operation a number of services (mainly schools contracts) were sub-contracted to other operators. This was either because Veolia had no depot in the area (services in North East Powys, subcontracted to Tanat Valley) or because Veolia didn't have enough vehicles to operate them. However, as far as I know the majority of services they won in Powys are still by Veolia.
I would say their base in Rhondda, Cynon, Taff has suffered the most out of the Welsh operations. A number of contracts won after Veolia took the reigns, have since gone back to the incumbant operator or independant operators. In addition, the large tendered and commercial network inherited from Shamrock was scrutinised by the accountants and ruthlessly pruned where they found the sums didn't add up under the new Veolia regime. Depots were closed and consolidated into a "super-depot" at Treforest, yet the new depot doesn't seem to have improved the look or performance of the ramshackle fleet there (including many cast offs from the former Dunn Line operations). Few contract wins have followed and those that have been won in Gwent have resulted in newer lowfloor vehicles being shifted from Treforest to Newport depot, leaving Treforest with no option than to run coaches on services around the estates of Pontypridd. The future still looks bleak at Treforest as the few commercial services operated are now subject to head on competition from the previous owners of Shamrock as well as another well respected independent (Edwards of Llantwit Fardre, who started stage carriage work following requests from locals, tired of Veolia's poor performance on these routes).
Seems like Veolia have got bored of their bus operations in the UK and are managing decline...
Paul.
Makes you wonder how bad Transdev's bus services will get when they merge with Veolia.
Unfortunately I drive with Transdev, so I'm expecting it to go downhill rapidly! (Hope I'm wrong.)
You're painting Veolia in what I can only describe as a very charitable light.
They set up operations in York taking over the passenger service contracts from Top Line Travel, plus a few other contracts won from other operators - yes, they brought in several new Solos, but new vehicles do not make a good service - I would imagine that the newer vehicles were a requirement of the contract rather than any intention by Veolia to improve services. They very quickly earned themselves a reputation as being cut-price cowboys (which echoes everything I've heard about Dunn-Line) and were not at all popular. Since the division was taken over by Transdev, things have improved significantly.
I don't know where this "promise" that they showed was, but what we saw in York was no better than a politician's promise - no-one ever believed that they were in it for anything other than to free-load off a council contract that gave them a guaranteed income.
"Unfortunately I drive with Transdev, so I'm expecting it to go downhill rapidly"
That'll make quite a splash by the pier, also in the Echo. Sorry.
Seriously which is the bigger Veolia or Transdev?
One only has to spend a little while watching current operations in south Wales to see how bad things have got for them.
Gareth.
NCC got what they paid for - Rubbish. Pity the public were inconvenienced by these cowboys for so long.
Unfortunately when Veolia breezed in there was also a knock on effect for the drivers and staff of the displaced operators in terms of jobs, lost overtime and lower pensions.
I suspect that it is now the turn of the Veolia staff to suffer by the actions of their previous employer.
Could this have been avoided? You might wonder why, and by whom, Veolia were able to seize such a large share of the Nottinghamshire Contracts in the first place.
This has been written by a local Bus Driver, who still works for one of the displaced Companies.
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