I may be way off but I seem to think that today’s the day all impediments should be cleared for England to welcome the new order, at least on paper. For today, if I have my facts right, in three hours and one minute, Arriva shares are suspended on the stock exchange and Deutsche Bahn takes over, at least on paper. This will conclude with DB UK Holding Ltd having acquired all Arriva shares.
New Arriva livery complete with interesting roofline
We’ve said before that we can expect no major change to UK bus operations, at least on paper. In spite of soothing noises from Berlin, Omnibuses confidently predicts that this won’t be the case forever, or for long. Expect management reshuffles. And not just on paper.One area in which we may see changes is in corporate thinking. Yesterday, Arriva was in the top three of the Big Five which, today, really becomes the Big Four, on paper. Arriva has always tried to collaborate with the communities it serves but has nevertheless always trumpeted the free market. It has already indicated that in today’s perilous financial climate it would even consider sacrificing Aqua for a local livery, if the partnership deal was right.
Passing to the State (though not ours), will Arriva go further and begin to lean towards calls for a replication of a London-style operation in other larger urban areas by being the first operator to trumpet franchise agreements?
After all, this is a model with which parent DB is most familiar, and definitely not just on paper.
2 comments:
Remember that in Germany, DB is also a major bus operator. Until not too long ago these bus operators had local identities and brands and the fact that DB owned them was unknown to all but the experts. Recently, DB has thrust its corporate identity on these buses and effectively killed their previous identitities, thus going back to the situation of the 1980s when this was also the case.
This is generally true, although there seems to be some inconsistency. As you say, it does go back to the 1980s, when most (including the former yellow postbuses) had a standard nationwide identity. In those days, there were already some regional identities, such as the Regional Verkehr Oberbayern (RVO) in southern Bavaria; now, this subsidiary appears to be using the standard red livery; however Autokraft (based in Kiel) appears to have retained its identity and livery for the present, even though the website says that it is a 100% owned subsidiary of DB Regio.
One could speculate that the Arriva logo would be replaced by the boxed 'DB' logo - as for example with the freight subsidiary now known as DB Schenker, but I suspect they would only do that for operations in Germany; and since Arriva's German operations are going to be sold on, I presume it will not happen. I suspect that outside Germany, the DB image is not so widely known, and it might not 'play well' in some countries!
Given the current growing controversy over Stuttgart 21, and the past summer's overheated ICEs, I guess that DB top brass have other priorities at the moment!
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