“Mr Gardem said that the service could have benefited from more advertising as very few people knew about it”.How often have you heard statements like that? They come to light when there’s some sort of negative impact on a bus service. There’s a slight element of passengers grasping at straws. The public often lob this sort of thing at operators as justification for a service’s unaltered retention. Or that a route would have done really well had the operator been bothered to publicise it. It implies the operator isn’t trying hard enough.
As if an operator would just run a service without telling anyone. I know that in the past, there’ve been classic examples of poorly marketed bus services but this is less likely to be the case nowadays.
Sometimes, short of pulling people off the street at gunpoint, there’s little more you can do. New ideas are worth a try but, if no one’s travelling, you have to admit defeat. A barren service can’t be sustained for ever.
Mr Gardem (sic) was referring to the pending withdrawal of Arriva Green Line 712 from St Alban’s to London. In this particular case, the service will have been on the books for 18 months, long enough for Arriva to know that it won’t work. I say fair play to Arriva for giving it a try. If you don’t try, you’ll never know. There’s nothing wrong with a little measured risk in trying to grow a market. There’s also nothing wrong with getting it wrong as long as you recognise what you need to do to remedy the situation.The public view it differently, of course. The difference between a failed bus service and, say, a failed food product is that the grocery line will simply fade away among the other nearby choices on the shelf. No one will really notice or lament its loss. If they do, they have alternatives.
The bus? Put on a service and you immediately raise expectations. It becomes part of the local fabric, part of the passengers’ collective memory. No matter that the service lasted but a season and no more, customers will swear it’s been on for decades and their lives have totally revolved around it. They will refer to it for ten years after the cull, as if it was on from the 1920s.
So, the question is, had Arriva marketed the 712 during its short life, or not? Yes they had, continuously, using radio, billboards, local door drops and press releases… at both ends of the route.
10 comments:
Marketing isn't just about advertising. From what has been said here, Arriva did a reasonable job on that.
Marketing is also about market research. Was there really a market for the service in the first place?
It's hard to feel any great sense of loss when we are talking about a bus running every 2 hours, and taking 1¼ hours, given that there are 8 trains per hour, taking 25-40 minutes.
On a separate note, how wonderful it is to see the Gill Sans font lending itself to the simplicity and uncluttered look of the timetable. No swirls, no multi-coloured designs, no gimmicks, no stupid adverts, just a straightforward, easy to comprehend and understand timetable.
Stevie D said...
"It's hard to feel any great sense of loss when we are talking about a bus running every 2 hours, and taking 1¼ hours, given that there are 8 trains per hour, taking 25-40 minutes."
That's true for passengers traveling from St Albans to London or vice versa, but it would appear that it's not so simple to get from St Albans to Butterfly World or Brent Cross. Maybe Arriva should try running just between St Albans and Brent Cross, but more frequently?
St Albans to Brent Cross is not a difficult journey - trains from St Albans to Cricklewood every 15 minutes, frequent bus from Cricklewood station to Brent Cross shopping centre , total journey time 40-45 minutes. OK, it's not noticeably quicker than the direct bus, but with a choice of 'every 15 minutes with 1 change' or 'every 2 hours direct', not many people will bother with the bus.
As Stevie D said, I think this one will have failed for the same reason easyBus and later the National Express commuter coach between Milton Keynes and London failed - you just can't compete with the speed and convenience of rail when said rail service is faster, more frequent, not necessarily all that much more expensive and in the case of St Albans you even have a choice of two.
But it's true that bus companies don't publicise things enough. Early on in their tenure in Milton Keynes, Arriva re-routed my local route (the 7) to take out a big chunk of its "wandering", giving an 11-minute journey time to the station. You genuinely couldn't beat that by car. But it didn't pull in the rail commuters - or not until the "big bang" publicity of the network relaunch and of the simplification of the evening services.
Sometimes people aren't listening and you really have to shout *loud*. Might not be the case for St Albans, but the industry isn't always as on the ball as you suggest.
I can tell you about another service, up in Scotland. There is a demand, but its been running for about 18 months and people still are only founding out about this service! Sometimes you can advertise but I DARE SAY a gun would do a better job in telling people!
"As if an operator would just run a service without telling anyone. I know that in the past, there’ve been classic examples of poorly marketed bus services but this is less likely to be the case nowadays."
Veolia Cymru recently decided to upgrade its much maligned X6 service, renaming it the "600", adding later buses in the evening. It took about a month for them to print timetables and there was no information about the later services anywhere on board.
In contrast, Stagecoach started service 60, operating in competition for most of the route. For a few weeks before they were championing the new route on their vehicles and their website, plus handing out timetables at bus stations and having stalls at local events to promote all of their services.
Things were so different when there was a network of Green Line coaches . . . (-:
In one part of Scotland, the information is so poor, tendered services are put on and withdrawn after a year without a proper timetable having been issued by the local authority. It's really rather shameful.
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