Final Visit

Since the council’s sale announcement, Omnibuses’ Northern Corespondent has periodically reported from Chester. NC makes one last visit to see the fruits of the Blacon Pointer, stable successor to the Arriva/First battle royal

It’s impossible during one visit to say whether there are more people travelling on the Chester-Blacon 1/1A/15 services. I would strongly suspect there are. But it was immediately obvious that there are many more people on each bus. Significantly more.

Of course, that’s not surprising as there are now fewer buses. The Arriva/First Blacon Pointer quality partnership has resulted in a reduction in mileage on what is Chester’s killer route. A sensible frequency of a bus every 10 minutes in each direction plus inter-availability of tickets seems to have brought with it many merits: cost savings, face savings, and fuller buses.

And fuller buses send an self-affirming message to passengers that the service upon which they travel is valued by them and this in itself leads to a virtuous upward spiral.

Arriva’s refreshed its three-year-old investment in new buses with new livery repaints and a more modern “Chester City Bus” sub-brand, dispensing with the stylised rearward Roman soldier.

And alongside Arriva’s investment, First has significantly upped its game. First brings to the party a fleet of 09-reg Volvo B7RLE/Wrightbus Eclipses with leather seats and double buggy bays. These are late of the X64 Leeds-York service, a year long once competitive though failed push against Transdev Yorkshire Coastliner. Withdrawn in August 2010, the X64 forced Transdev to up its game still further and reduce its fares.

But, unlike in a truly competitive environment or where an operator has sole rights on a route, First can’t reasonably exploit its leather seat advantage in a quality partnership of two operators. In any case, is leather the right fabric for a short city-to-suburb service? Would they be better placed on, for example, the other First 1, the Chester-Liverpool? This, of course, may also find itself the subject of a partnership.

Publicity trumpets what seems like a good deal for the travelling public. In truth, it’s noting more than the public expects, anyway, viewing the bus service as a public asset and all that. Given that everyone wins—council, operators, public, Blacon residents seeing fewer buses drifting round—in recessionary times, could this sort of arrangement be the future for so-called warring bus operators?