Raised Expectations

As an industry, we’re quite adept these days at shouting aloud about any investment in vehicles we have made. Though some do it better than others—and some local media are more receptive than others—25 years of telling the world of our investments pays off in terms of positive PR and, ultimately, ridership increases. It was rare beforehand that we would say anything.

Such press releases can also have a negative impact and this was evident last week during two separate conversations with passengers, all of whom had their expectations raised following years of reading our good news in one of the local rags.

One felt that it was about time we invested in new vehicles for his route. He stated that other passengers felt like him. This was a major “killer” service of strategic importance to us and to him. When I pointed out that the buses he used day in day out were actually only just about five years old, having been part of a substantial upgrade, he cited an unacceptable breakdown rate because of the “old” vehicles.

Breakdowns are sometimes unavoidable but clearly unacceptable to passengers. I felt that the vehicles’ and route’s reliability were very good indeed and, later, was proven right when looking at the stats. Breakdowns were a myth, as was the fact that the vehicles were “old”. But it’s perceptions that count.

The second occurrence was a conversation with two women who raised the question, when was their route going to benefit from the sort of investment they see around them and in the local papers. How do you tell people that their route doesn’t set the world on fire, is cross-subsidised by the “killer” route, and will never carry the sort of investment of which the ladies were hoping. Actually, you tell it straight but that doesn’t mean they understand. And it’s a story that never appears positively in the local newspaper. They look around them at the new stock and feel left out. Another case of raised expectations that will probably lead to moans and groans to other passengers. To them, a five-year-old bus of the sort about which the earlier passenger was complaining would be luxury.

Should we then abandon trumpeting our purchases in the local press, reverting to the old ways of the pre-privatised industry when we let the vehicles speak for themselves? I did wonder, but only for a minute. I then recalled the uplift in passengers after telling the world of our major investment. It generates a visible, tangible, measurable shift. It just seems that it will get harder and harder to bleed that extra business out of the population in the future.

Did he really say that On-air?

(Yes he did. I double checked using BBC iPlayer).

Amid the memories of a red flag flying over Sheffield’s town hall, its declaration as the first nuclear free city, its determination to take on the then Thatcher government and other stunts that led to accusations of the council misrepresenting the local electorate, cheap bus fares will forever be remembered as the major success of the so-called People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.

All that finished over 20 years ago. A fortnight ago, in spite of what appears to be a firm stance from Conservative-led Westminster, the South Yorkshire integrated transport authority launched a public consultation regarding its quality contract proposals. It wants to take back control of the city region’s buses. Perhaps here, more than anywhere, you would expect locals to support such a notion. And thus far, the authorities seem to be pushing on an open platform without doors.

Unsurprisingly, fare reductions feature within the proposals, though not to the extent of the 1980s. Then, you could travel countywide for 2p, equivalent to 8p today. Under the franchise, whole network tickets would sell at £4. That’s only 30p shy of First’s current prices and 50p more expensive than Stagecoach’s combined bus/tram tickets (though, if course, Stagecoach offers a more limited network). £4 is equivalent to £1.08 in 1980. City singles would run at 70p (19p in 1980) or 60p with a smartcard.

South Yorkshire promises its proposals will provide a “real difference” to bus service quality, including environmentally-friendly low floor buses with CCTV and RTI at busy city locations. Not knowing Sheffield especially well, is much of this in place or already within SYPTE’s remit?

And the cost? No mention of that, yet. As a reflection of the likely price tag, the sum spent on commuters in the North East (sic) is currently £234 per head compared to London’s £641. While TfL has been incredibly successful in growing the bus market, people are beginning to question the cost.

What was therefore interesting was a comment on the radio a fortnight ago from the then *Conservative* deputy chair (now chairman) of *West* Yorkshire’s integrated transport authority that WYITA’s QC plans for would garner *savings* to improve transport. That’s what he said, though it doesn’t feature in the post-programme WYITA official press release. Can that *really* be the case, in either West or South Yorkshire? Improvements while making a saving? That most certainly aligns with the current government’s goals. If indeed this is possible, it’s a case of “Never Give Up. Never Surrender” for the protagonists of quality contracts.

i WYITA Press Release of 16 June

BSOG—driver for change?

We mentioned it briefly yesterday. There’s renewed talk of change to BSOG. Specifically, there are whispers that in future local transport authorities may administer all or part of it.

What is BSOG? Worth c.£450mil, operators may claim back most of the duty they pay on fuel. It’s available without favour and some argue this makes it a blunt instrument.

Even before the current government took power, there were BSOG-relate plans to incentivise operators to switch to smartcard technology or use green buses. The flaws regarding smartcards are that it neither rewards passenger growth nor encourages small operators to invest. If you already have LTA-purchased smartcard equipment, enhanced BSOG comes as a nice windfall.

This is one argument in favour of BSOG transferring to LTAs. It then becomes a deliverer of the sort of outcomes the P.T.E.G. in particular thinks passengers think they want.

But there’s more. By giving LTAs a proportion of BSOG, authorities and PTEs can begin to use the subsidy to further local aims. Is this a good thing? The theory is that reductions in BSOG would mean more marginal services passing to LTA control who would then have the wherewithal to make network choices. Here are some possible consequences:

1. Is this re-regulation by stealth?


2. Does it fosters political rather than commercial control of the local network? Is this a good thing?


3. Will it encourage LTAs to siphon funding from existing budgets to protected services such as education and social services?


4. Will it add another layer of bureaucracy, as funding travels through another pair of hands?


5. Will operators lose work to lower cost operations and will network benefits erode?


6. Does political control mean a concentration not on large-flow radials but socially necessary orbitals? And other smaller flows?


7. Can smaller LTAs handle the additional responsibilities without taking on expensive additional staffing?

On the other hand, might BSOG in the hands of LTAs mean:

1. Better all round publicity and RTI?


2. The fostering of quality partnerships of whatever description?

Cuts, Cuts and More Cuts

If you know of any actual, pending or rumoured cuts in local bus services your way, resulting from local transport authority cuts, please email me.

At least it seems that the government is highly unlikely to make radical changes to free concessionary travel. Other than what was proposed under the previous government, we don’t yet know what it has in find for BSOG, reforms that will no doubt make the industry worse off, overall. Expect something radical. By that I mean unpalatable.

The likelihood of funding problems in the future already means a number of local transport authorities, big and small, are planning for or executing cuts in subsidy and therefore services. Today, for example, Warrington Transport operates a completely revised Sunday service following the cancellation of all Warrington council Sunday contracts. No Warrington Transport bus will be on the road after 1800. Halton Transport’s two-hourly Warrignton-Chester service will from today operate between Runcorn and Chester only. Hourly buses to Widnes and Liverpool remain after 1800, thanks to cross-boundary support from others, subsidised by neighbouring authorities.

Warrington my be a smaller player. But changes are starting to affect larger authorities. There’s a rumour, for example, that Greater Manchester PTE are looking to slim down Sunday evenings, too, if push comes to shove. Time was when Sunday services were soft targets. This is certainly no longer the case before 1730, with stronger demand during city shopping hours.

Further south is big-spending Surrey council. From 28th August, it intends to shave off £1¾mil from its £3.6mil bill in two areas of the county, plus the abandonment of its Pegasus fare-paying school transport project. Though the council claims this will have a “minimal impact” on passengers (because, for example, people will now need to change buses), the same cannot be said for operators, whose bottom lines are supported by this sort of subsidy.

The other emerging fact of life in local government will have a further impact on its ability to deliver supported services. Increasingly, councils are implementing “jobs freezes”. As staff retire or leave, expect gaps in knowledge and professional skills. Such transport-related jobs have traditionally been something of a bolt-hole for industry professionals, in difficult times. 25-30 per cent cuts in authority budgets will see this avenue well and truly blocked off. The number of new posts advertised in New Transit, already pitifully small compared to the halcyon days of yore, whether in the industry proper or local government, will reduce further (partly because New Transit is now monthly: best to see the Jobs in Transport website). The eight vacancies currently advertised in the Centro PTE are very much the exception. Consider them while you can. As for bread and butter jobs elsewhere, vacancies have all but dried up in Coach & Bus Week and are few and far between in routeONE.

Ashamed

Less than a day after Stagecoach’s Brian Souter called on the government to cut roads expenditure rather than subsidies to the bus (and rail) industry comes a government report (in the midst of the Competition Commission enquiry) that the Big Five return nearly double the profit margin of smaller operators.

The report suggested that fares had increased by 24 per cent since the deregulation of the bus industry. Just 24 per cent? “We have to ask ourselves why it is that the cost of bus travel has gone by up so much while bus company profitability is extremely healthy”, said Norman Baker, a transport minister.

Since the minster is looking back to deregulation, one answer is that the previous Conservative government in deregulating the bus industry chose to adjust the ratio between fares and subsidy. One of the driving arguments for deregulation was to reduce subsidy and this it did admirably. To compensate, fares went up. There was no option; it’s a self-evident balancing equation. The treasury and local transport authorities all benefited from this rebalancing.

Marks & Spencer and Tesco receive plaudits when their profits increase and come under much media scrutiny when they go into reverse. Bus operators, on the other hand, face media criticism when there are signs of any profit. With average profit margins of 11.2 per cent, is this sufficient for the longer-term sustainability? This is probably about four per cent below the optimum and it has been falling. Why should the industry be ashamed of returning a profit when no other sector in the capitalist economy of ours is criticised?

In Code

Ever since the death in 2002 of a young pupil on the top deck of a school bus, attributed to driver distraction, Wales seems to have redoubled its efforts to make school transport as safe as possible. Since partial devolution, Wales has adopted a cohesive approach that’s seen innovations in transport, some of which we’ve detailed before. Indeed, the Welsh region is an ideal size to promote consistency.

In terms of school buses, at one stage Wales was reported as about to ban outright the use of double decks but has stepped back from that particular position. Instead, it aims to get risk assessments and good practice in place. The Welsh government is sponsoring a number of interesting and potentially innovate ways of tackling school transport problems, too.

One is the recently published unified travelcode.org. Here is a region-wide school transport code that, nationally, England would do well to emulate. The website has a contemporary feel for the sub-16 market. Its strength is in its simplicity. It could go into more depth and I am sure readers can find gaps but, let’s face it, young people when faced with anything remotely authoritarian are somewhat disinclined to do anything that involves too much effort. They prefer something quick and punchy.

No doubt there are equally good examples across English councils. The beauty of travelcode.org is its regional significance, easily adopted and understood throughout the area. With sections for parents, in curriculum support and in offering competitions, we hope the Welsh have hit on something that is more meaningful than either the slightly mixed messages pupils may get from operators and authorities adopting slightly different standards and those traditional booklets or leaflets that are never read or quickly discarded. Adding a section for operators and drivers might even complete the picture.

And we might dare to suggest that there is no harm in English schools using Welsh material themselves to “make every journey a good one”. Well done Wales.

i Travelcode.org

In the spirit of Deregulation?

This is a second guest post by Trentside Traveller. Visit the new Trentside Traveller Blog, covering an area largely unrepresented in terms of a quality bus narrative: Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. Interested in writing something for Omnibuses?

Competitive services, especially against large territorial companies, are becoming increasingly rare nowadays. One operator that stands out from the crowd in this respect is Nottingham’s Premiere Travel, who are actively competing with two highly regarded competitors—Trent Barton and Nottingham City Transport.

Premiere first began competing with Trent Barton in 2007, on the Bingham-Nottingham corridor. Initially, the X1 consisted of only peak-time journeys but, after a year, the company stepped this up by adding an hourly off-peak service. Within a few months, the off-peak frequency was doubled to every 30 minutes, competing with Trent Barton’s ‘Xprss’ route which operated every 15 minutes. Premiere also added Radcliffe-on-Trent to the service (not served by Xprss), which doubled the number of journeys between Bingham and Radcliffe (Trent provided two per hour on its Radcliffe Line service). The final step saw the X1 become the ‘Red1’ in early 2010, with Premiere now running a bus from Nottingham to Bingham every 15 minutes throughout the day, though evening services are limited and there is none on Sundays.

As a result, Trent Barton announced from June 2010 that it was reducing the cost of its weekly tickets (though still not to the level of Premiere’s) and pledged to donate £1 from the sale of every weekly ticket to a local charity or community cause.

Following the Red1 service comes Red7, which was launched in June 2010. Premiere created this route from two existing services, and some sections of some former Veolia tendered routes in Gedling and Netherfield. The Red7 provides a 15-minute frequency from Nottingham to Mapperley, which competes directly with Nottingham City Transport’s own Red Line 44/45 services. In Mapperley, the 7 and 7.1 routes continue to Calverton over a route inherited from Veolia in 2008, but substantially re-worked by Premiere. The village now sees two Premiere buses per hour, which indirectly compete with Trent Barton’s Calverton Connection service (though the Red7 takes a different route). The 7.2 and 7.3 service replace sections of the former 54 and 154 routes in Gedling, and extend these routes through Mapperley and into the City. Veolia replaced sections not covered by Premiere with new routes 73 and 74, under contract to Nottinghamshire County Council.

Premiere has, by launching these commercial ventures, opened up some new links on the Bingham-Nottingham and Calverton/Gedling-Nottingham corridors. Its Red1 has also forced its competitor to lower fares, with short-term passenger benefits. What longer-term effect this has for the operators, however, remains to be seen.

Perils of an Emergency Budget

• A 50p flat fare for each *single* journey payable in future by all those over 60 who currently enjoy free travel.


• VAT on bus fares from January 2011, timed (coincidentally?) to correspond with the higher 20 per cent rate.

These were two measures that the chancellor of the exchequer did not announce in yesterday’s emergency budget. I wonder whether he thought of either of them. My guess is he did. For example, buried within the budget was a sentence that reads, “The zero rating for passenger transport services will also be updated to reflect the status of the provider of a passenger transport service made in conjunction with postal services”. This refers to the dwindling number of post buses. You can almost hear the thought process regarding VAT on bus fares in general. We’ve been there before, regarding VAT on bus fares, of course. As for free travel, yes, he must’ve thought this through because the budget contains a specific, continued commitment to keep things free.

Of the two, I know a number of older people who would be prepared to pay 50p per journey rather than travel each time for free, though I guess they’re the better off among their peers. But with the restoration of index linked pensions, perhaps there’s an argument for a token fare. With national pensions payments due to double, this surely cannot be ruled out in the future.

The actual, real announcements themselves don’t make pleasant reading. You can blame neither the current nor previous governments for the position in which England finds itself. That should be left firmly at the door of those greedy, stupid bankers. They’ve cost us greatly.

With a fifth of workers facing a public sector pay freeze (added to those in the private sector already experiencing this or worse) and VAT increasing to 20 per cent, the retail sector is already citing concerns for its future. The BBC’s Robert Peston, widely held as single-handedly responsible for the recession owing to his bleak forecasts, yesterday claimed the VAT rise would create “significant anxiety to retailers”.

It’s axiomatic that the fortunes of the bus industry and high street are very much intertwined. This is the more so as the VAT increase will hit lower income families & groups, who often tend to rely more on the bus service. And even if retailers fail to pass this probably unavoidable rise on to customers, the mere thought of such an increase will have a negative impact on our willingness to catch the bus and spend. As peak hour workers have dropped off, the bus industry has relied on the passenger buoyancy associated with the high street boom times over the 10 years to 2007. It seems that boom is now well over. And it will have a marked impact on the bus service.

And on top of all this bad news, there’s far worse to come. England this afternoon will need to queue for their flight home, after failing to get through to the knockouts in the world cup.

Budge Over

Attitudes to busways really do need to change. Are the only people who are positive about them bus operators? On the one hand, there are motorists who feel bus rapid transit is ineffectual. Then there are planners who feel that only a light rail (tram) scheme can ever encourage modal shift. They seem only to shift emphasis when a tram is financially out of the question, as these undoubtedly will be in the new straitened times. Locals directly affected along the alignment want neither tram nor busway but the bus seems so low profile and so locally polluting that it becomes anathema.

What we really need is more of a body of evidence to support the notion that BRT wins modal shift and encourages significant ridership increases. If the world’s longest busway, in Cambridgeshire, had only started when it should’ve (last year), then we would have yet more significant inter-urban hard facts. Double delays mean yet further patience on the part of Stagecoach and passengers. Overruns, faults unfixed and floodings continue, though news now coming through is more positive. Meanwhile, Stagecoach began damage limitation regarding its fleet of 09-plate bio-ethanol busway vehicles in an attempt to distance itself from the problem not of its making.

Environmental campaigners fight on in what is increasingly becoming a futile attempt to block the south Hampshire busway, between the towns of Fareham & Gosport. A further court has rejected the campaigners’ attempts to halt the project though, who knows, this may still fall to the axe of public spending in a cutting of losses.

The latest was in the supreme court, which concluded last week, that bats and badgers would have to budge to make way for the BRT scheme.

It’s been more a campaign to halt a busway than to protect the environment and wildlife. The locals simply do not want buses running up and down their back gardens. I would challenge whether trams, as in the original proposals, would be less intrusive (in terms of nuisance).

If the campaigners considered the risks to the bats and badgers—most of which would presumably move elsewhere, I guess—against the wider environmental benefit of easing traffic along the beleaguered A32, the peninsular one road to Gosport, then they would perhaps be more sympathetic towards buses.

And better a busway than a new road proper (which would probably have been given the nod straightaway had it been the 1980s). For this is what the campaigners actually are saying: build a separate by-pass in a completely different location. Away from us.

This surely can be neither good for the local environment nor the answer to Gosport’s traffic problems. We know from every other occurrence that such a thing would be totally ineffectual in halting traffic congestion. It would simply double the capacity on the existing car park that is the A32. So long as it’s well managed, with BRT there’s at least a chance that Gosport can at last break from its car-born environmental problems in a modern, innovative, positive, cost-effective and far reaching way, without such an invidious, expensive and intrusive a project as a tram or unsustainable new all-modes dual carriageway.

It’s all about new attitudes and new thinking, really. If only we can make the leap.

Censorship

Here’s an example of what the bus industry is up against regarding local media. And, more interestingly, here we have an example of a newspaper editing its online content to suit itself.

Shame on you all at the Echo. Under your Saturday morning headline of “Wilts & Dorset Bus Crashes through Poole’s St George’s Hotel” was the most cynical and patently over-exaggerated piece of journalism I’ve read in a long while. And that’s saying something, regarding local press reporting.

The article went on, in graphic terms, to suggest the bus “ploughed through the side of a Poole pub” in the early hours, when photographic evidence would suggest the bus, for what it’s worth a More-liveried Volvo B7RLE/Wrightbus, actually hit the outer wall. It didn’t appear to get very far, either, certainly nowhere near the pub building. None of the garden furniture some two feet away was damaged.

So, here we have an example of what the entire bus industry expects. Normally, these sorts of stories get the usual anti-bus web readers highly excited. On this occasion, though, their opprobrium was reserved not for the bus company but entirely for the Echo, and quite rightly.

This was the original headline and start of the piece early on Saturday morning. Note how "a bus ploughed through the side of a Poole pub...". By 1110 that very day, it was amended

Not that you can read those comments. They’ve been censored out by the Echo. In an astonishing admission of guilt, neither you nor I are allowed to see the original story, headline or comments. The Echo’s taken it down and instead more soberly reports this was an “incident”. Do the local media usually correct misleading bus stories? Only when it sits them, it would appear. And, does a bus operator have the right of proper recourse? Rhetorical question.

Still over-exaggerated, the bus did not appear to “career into the beer garden” as the revised article suggests, at least not from the photo evidence. Had a car hit the wall, would it’ve been newsworthy at all?

Mind you, the aforesaid Volvo was looking pretty sick after its encounter. Then again, try driving any vehicle through a low brick wall and see what happens. No, please don’t try that at home.

What the George should now do is review its own health & safety: there’s a bus stop next door jst beyond its car park entrance by the estate agent and insurance broker. And the damage will be all too visible this morning as Go South Coast top brass arrive at work. Its HQ is only yards away.

i Read the revised account

10 Points for Transport

The emergency budget looms. We’ll know more about what we’re in for. To date, this is my understanding of the position at Hammond Towers, headquarters of the DfT. Where Jim Hacker (Yes Minister) failed, the government may yet win through. Here is Omnibuses’ guide:

1. The government’s no. 1 priority is deficit reduction. This will and does mean cuts initially of £680mil with more, much more, to follow.


2. In terms of local transport authorities, the government expects them to absorb the cuts through efficiency savings and smarter working. This may protect bus subsidies somewhat but don’t expect smarter working to be a panacea. Authorities faced with budget cuts across the board will protect education and social services to the detriment of buses.


3. Major schemes such as busways, bus stations, etc will need to be the subject of a more rigorous risk analysis and benefit cost analysis than to date. Even those with a high BCR (e.g. Leeds Trolleybus requring just 1½ per cent of Crossrail’s £16bil) will be subject to a continued moratorium, if not yet contracted.


4. The government would wish to see a more European (cheaper) approach to transport projects. Expect greater private/public collaboration and streamlining, where possible, of the planning system (untying red tape).


5. London will better than the provinces. Though the methodology in 3. and 4. above will apply but there’s no suggestion that Crossrail, Thameslink and Underground upgrades will be chopped significantly. The provinces will see this as galling, given that there are already many alternatives in getting around and across London. London pleads a special case: capacity is running out.


6. Carbon reduction is seen as important and projects may therefore be reappraised.


7. The government will offer incentives for green car in the budget. Will it also incentivise the use of buses, too? Not much chance of that.


8. There remains a commitment to High Speed 2 rail, especially links to Leeds and Birmingham, plus Heathrow.


9. Heathrow Airport expansion is off. Instead, the government wants to make Heathrow better.


10. The government is considering the introduction of a lorry user charging policy for foreign heavies.

Normal Service is Resumed Shortly??

Define normal.

This is the first day that I haven’t posted on Omnibuses for nearly 18 months. Not posting like this is such an odd feeling. I feel slightly bereft. I didn’t have to put the alarm clock on to get up ridiculously early on my day off which was nice.

And, rather than Friday evening perhaps preparing a few pre-planned posts, I treated myself to a traditional English curry (sic) while taking in that apology of a football match from South Africa. My wife made the better decision and went out. Would’ve been better had I not wasted my time and blogged instead.

Those operators having plastered their buses with supportive stickers must surely be feeling awkward this morning at the worse than usual rollercoaster that is English international-level football. A tournament is turning into torment. Good luck England? No such thing as luck, good or bad. It was just plain rubbish. Normal service has resumed, then. Perhaps English football is simply mirroring the economy.

First things First

When appointed, the new managing director at First Devon & Cornwall will have an interesting in-basket.

This follows news that the incumbent Marc Reddy, currently splitting his time between Plymouth and Southampton, will in future be working full time much nearer his Bournemouth home, as MD for First Hampshire & Dorset.

After a long succession of issues and MDs, Reddy’s reign at Plymouth was without doubt the most successful. He’s managed to modernise the fleet and overseen one of the few post-recession expansions at a First subsidiary: here, we’re talking Plymouth’s Ugobus, of course, itself interesting as First usually dislikes local branding. And he steered the company through the Bus Oscars to gain a runner up position.

He’s also presided over further cuts in Cornwall such that First’s presence in parts is increasingly looking like the minority operator. He’s found that Western Greyhound (four times winner at the Oscars) has been quite willing to take on what he’s dropped. He has also seen Stagecoach establish itself in North Devon upon the back of tender wins.

Indeed and in spite of the efforts Reddy’s made, life especially in Cornwall has not been easy. In territory such as this, it’s often difficult for a PLC—and easier for lower cost operators, not that Western Greyhound should be classed as such. It’s almost impossible for group subsidiary companies to attain the sort of margins for which the City is looking, without either retreating significantly to core, strategic routes or a heavy reliance on subsidy. In other words, group PLC subsidiaries come with overheads and shareholders that are less easily serviced in rural areas (and not just in Cornwall and not just at First). First, of course, is foremost an *urban* operator.

Well established Truronian name bucks First trends by continuing, albeit as a coach provider only

First has hardly ever backed away of a subsidiary purchase. Indeed, First ostensibly *expanded* in Cornwall with the purchase of Truronian, though that was an expedient designed to rebuff potential borders. If First has decided to cling on to all its assets, it needs to sweat them. Shrinking them to the size where they are in-parts an also-ran may ensure shareholder success but there must come a point where the overhead is simply too great for the remains of the business. Operating conditions in Cornwall aren’t the best in England and, eventually, the company will need to apply the next set of cutbacks. Profit in urban areas is fragile enough at the moment, and TAS has reported that urban operators aren’t making enough for medium term sustainability. What, then, of First Devon & Cornwall? May be First needs to take a different view.

First is keen to keep its territory intact and not sell any of it on. It demonstrates through retention that it wishes to keep the satus quo. But First isn’t adopting the same approach on the ground. While ensuring it keeps the regional map pure white, at local level it’s prepared to do the opposite by yielding routes to its competitor. This seems a bit of a dichotomy. Better to accept that margins will be poorer and ensure that overheads are spread over a greater number of routes, garages and staff. Better to keep the network intact and the standards, practices and employment rights complete. If shareholders don’t like that approach, may be First (and others) should invest in joint ownership with others such that the poorer returns associated with deeply rural areas are masked and do not damage the overall results of the group.

An alternative is to play for subsidy. This is risky for a PLC with higher overheads. Higher margins at First preclude it winning substantial tenders. And, of course, subsidy will be in short supply in the future, as transport faces its greatest squeeze for over 10 years. Urban areas may just be able to weather that particular storm. That’s not necessarily so in the Celtic national minority nation of Cornwall.

Stagecoach to enter Salisbury today. See the shock story, exclusively on the Wiltshire Bus Blog.

Bus Where To?

It’s difficult to predict exactly where the axe will fall when it comes to subsidised bus service cuts but expensive, demand responsive services are a definite possibility. Take Swindon. Its looking to save over £300,000 on its bus bill and the flexible Vbus service is already in its sights. DRT was once hailed as the saviour of rural services and low frequency urban community routes but, in reality, they’re very costly. A report on Plymothian Transit on Tuesday suggests Taxifast DRT will be closing soon, too.

Can these services ever be commercial? Welsh bus entrepreneur Clayton Jones thinks they can be. The most interesting of Jones’s recent new registrations are actually the Flexi 1, 2 and 3, all of which were due to start on 4th May 2010—but probably didn’t. Each is a flexibly registered service from early morning to late evening, covering considerable swathes of Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cynon Taff authorities in South Wales. May be this is a reincarnation of the former Hospital Quick service though with a wider remit.

Basically, they appear to be registered dial-a-ride operations designed to use eight seat minibuses licensed as private hire vehicles, such vehicles being permissible these days. These are part of the same fleet once used for a short time on school contracts, reportedly terminated by the local education authority.

We’re not sure how the fares structure on these services will work and where it fits into the free travel arrangements for Wales. If fares are higher to compensate for the low floor door to door nature of the service, as you might expect, it surely must raise an issue regarding reimbursement. Perhaps this has accounted for the delay. Were these services in England, the guidance suggests they would be ineligible for reimbursement if the fares charged are higher than comparable bus services. Wales, however, has its own interpretation on such matters.

The dedicated booking website “Buswhereto” remains inactive. It’s an interesting name that seems to parody the lilting, undulating tones of the South Wales valleys. Whether this will ever be a template to stave off the cuts in Swindon and Plymouth, of course, remains to be seen. Fares on Vbus in Swindon are currently £2 return.

Thank you to those who’ve troubled to leave comments or send an email to me following this post. I must say I appreciate your thoughts. The frequency of posts aside, I have no immediate intention of giving up blogging.

Unknown Quantity

There’s no doubt that smartcards are spreading, whether on the back of either commercial schemes or via transport authorities. They’re designed to make payment, reimbursement and integration easier. Doing away with thousands upon thousands of cash transactions would be no bad thing. Millions seem to be sloshing around and one wonders whether the government will at some point plunder the smartcard pot. Certainty in the short term, linking smartcards with BSOG now gives smartcard schemes a welcome kick-start.

There are, however, a few unanswered questions about the smartcards themselves, as opposed to expensive back office systems and reader hardware, such as:

How long will each card last?

Is longevity dependent upon how they’re treated, stored or the frequency of use? Should we be smart in replacing those being used most often?

Should we simply replace cards after a certain lifespan or wait till they fail?

How many will fail prematurely? Even small percentages mean large numbers of smartcards are mass adopted. Is there any danger of data or monetary loss?

The answers could lie elsewhere. In the longer term, it could be that m-ticketing, beloved by Arriva but initially conceived (and aborted) by First as part of FTR, could prove the more durable, even before the smartcard revolution’s really begun. Smartcard and ITSO technology seem remarkably complex and cloaked in secrecy. But plastic ain’t dead yet: free travellers in Scotland & Wales need one, for example. And a smartcard could have benefits beyond transport in the wider world.

Lastly, passengers outside London probably continue to prefer the convenience of cash. Even if the industry would prefer they use other methods.

Nicola and Me

What do Nicola Shaw and I have in common? Not a great deal, as it happens, but I calculate that leaving aside the period when posts on this blog were sporadic, I reckon I’ve been blogging on a fairly frequent basis about as long as Nicola’s been at First Group. That, dear reader, you can regard as pure coincidence.

By yesterday, First had managed to expunge Nicola from most of its website and introduce Tim O'Toole, who is not a direct replacement... but look hard enough and Nicola still pops up...

What we definitely do *not* have in common is that Nicola is one of those people who is not scared to leave her job, even in these straitened times. The rest of us, well, we have little option but to stay put till we finally lose control of our destiny, as decisions are taken by others or the economy at large that result in our being swatted like flies. And there was me thinking the economy was here to serve *us* and not the other way around. Either that or people are so stupidly over-confident in the belief that nothing will ever happen to them that they are bordering on the delusional.

As Jerry Casale put it the other morning on Radio 4’s Today, we have “de-evolved”. We aren’t going forward with confidence and at best are treading water through sheer fright at not knowing from this day to the next whether we have a job. Here, Nicola has bucked that particular trend and she must have supreme confidence in her abilities in finding a new one. Till then, I see her lapping up the summer sun (if she’s got any) and watching the world cup with a glass of red, feeling cool and smug that the rest of us are still on the treadmill.

When senior people like Nicola and Dave Kaye (Bus chief operating officer) depart their employer First Group at the same time, the indications are that the organisation is in trouble. But their departures were actually a complete coincidence, even though Kaye was earmarked to replace Nicola. It did mean First’s officers spending enough time last week trying to convince the City that its ship was stable.

Nicola’s departure was planned. After five years of juggling her responsibilities between UK Bus and elsewhere, travelling the country & internationally with it, it would leave anyone jaded. She’s worked hard for the industry and for First, and deserves our appreciation and respect.

And that’s something Nicola and I *do* share in common. Not the respect bit but in feeling jaded. May be it’s the difficult environment in which we live, adding additional burdens to the rigours of the day job. May be its frustration with this stupidly slow laptop of mine. “Jaded” is a term I could easily apply to myself and I feel I need to slacken off the pace a little regarding blogging. It’s the 530th consecutive day, today, I’ve managed to post something on Omnibuses. That’s without mentioning years of posts beforehand almost every day. Quite a record and unsurpassed, I’d say. But daily posting can’t go on indefinitely, not single handedly. Regrettably, pleas for help have largely fallen unanswered though I am grateful to those who have responded. I simply can no longer keep this up, not daily, much as I may want to.

Meanwhile, Nicola’s managed to realise a long held ambition to run a bus company. That still seems slightly odd and decidedly unfeminine when you consider that all her peers and contemporaries who have that same ambition are middle aged (or older) men. But she did it. Tipped as successor to Moir Lockheed himself, who knows how long her wait would’ve been. Lockheed gives no indication of budging and seems another person at First who doesn’t live in fear. In a 2006 interview in The Guardian, Nicola said, “It’s nice to be in a place where you can influence things, makes things better. In a bus company you can do that.” Can you really do that at First? Nicola did.

Lighten Up

Last week, First may have officially launched its Temsa Avenue lighter weight bus in Bradford, where it will undergo a six month evaluation, but perhaps the most important area for such re-engineered technology is in the far south west.

Over recent years, First’s investment in its Devon & Cornwall subsidiary has lagged. Managing director Marc Reddy has managed to persuade the First UK Bus board of the need to invest but it’s been geographically patchy and reliant on cascaded though some relatively new stock. The other side of the coin, in reducing its fleet age profile, is the steady reduction in mileage and PVR, as First especially in Cornwall slims down. Older vehicles get scrapped.

Perhaps the Temsa Avenue is akin to the Bristol SUL and Bristol LH of old. These two buses occupied a high proportion of the Western National fleets of the 1970s and 1980s and were particularly suited to the operating environment in which they found themselves. The narrow-bodied Plaxton Supreme bodied LH coach seated about the same number as the Avenue. Back then, their main failings were (a) a lack of capacity on occasion and (b) short operating life. The latter was a function of its lightweight nature. The former is less of an issue these days, even in the free travel honeypots of Cornwall.

And there’s the proverbial rub. Going lightweight eventually brings with it an additional vehicle replacement cost. But that’s exactly why First should be using those vehicles in the south west. Operating a bus at one ton’s worth of lighter weight, in a market such as the far south west, would bring with it instant benefits, where there are fewer demands on buses making service. By that, I mean fewer all day 18-hour commitments, compared to urban operations. It’s conceivable that a lighter weight bus such as the Avenue might suit its environment that much better than in an intense operation in urban Bradford. In Bradford, there’s still a trade off between lighter weight and the robustness of a heavyweight bus such as the Volvo B6RLE. You can depend upon Volvos day in and day out, and night in and night out, for reliability and regularly over long periods.

Meanwhile, what is First’s trial trying to achieve?

1. It will allow First to gain operational experience of lighter weights.


2. First will better understand the trade off or balances between the revenue expenditure savings of a light weight against capital expenditure of a more conventional, perhaps longer-lasting heavy weight.


3. Undoubtedly, it will challenge the UK sector to come up with lighter weight composite buses, including those with traditional heavyweight chassis.

No. 3 is very important. Manufacturers need to make buses that the industry needs. The industry now wants lighter vehicles, whether minis, midis, conventionals or deckers.

Take a look at First’s largest Cornish competitor, Western Greyhound. There’s definitely an operational fuel penalty now that Greyhound is at last investing in heavier low floors. Heavier than conventional minis, that is. The fuel inefficiency of its 23 Optare Solos compared to blighter Vario O814s they have replaced will be only too apparent.

Ingerland

You either love it or loathe it, so they say, but that’s actually untrue. There’s room for shades of grey when it comes to the black & white world of football. Me, I tend towards the David Mitchell (of Mitchell & Webb) view of the game rather than Gary Lineker’s. I have a passing interest but it nowhere near rules my life. Given where I live and the occasional visits to the team nearby, that’s unsurprising, though last season was considerably better, innit.

Long football festivals such as the world cup have a marked affect on the economy. Supermarket beer sales and frozen pizza, for instance, and that’s why you will see all sorts of flags strewn across the checkouts at Tesco. Gets you in the mood to buy that crate of lager, dunnit.

And they also distort the bus industry, too, though it’s difficult to predict exactly to what extent. Some operators have applied their version of the Tesco bunting to show support for “our boys” by sticking something on the side of their buses. Better make sure they aren’t too sticky, for when the bubble bursts, as it surely will, wonnit.

I’ve yet to see the figures, of course, but my guess is that England’s disappointing opener last night will have resulted in distortions, as people who might travel mid-evening get home (or to their pub) earlier and or travel out later. Worse, there will be people who usually or even occasionally travel by bus who won’t shift from their sofa at all. They’ve got their official-looking shirt and their six pack, as they lapped up the pre-match speculation and the post-match analysis. Likewise especially on Saturday afternoons. It’s not just about England, either. Top international teams will attract large TV audiences, before, during and afterwards, wonnit.

If England does get through to the final (Sunday 11th July, 1930), operators may as well submit their cancellations to the traffic commissioners. Remember 1966? Not a car, not a pedestrian, not a passenger in sight. And that was before mass adoption of televisions, innit.

End of an era, today on the Wiltshire Bus Blog...

Untangle This

On 9th June under the post of 29th May (looking at conditions applied under the former road service licensing system entitled Restrictions of 29th May), an anonymous commenter says,

‘In looking at timetables to respond to today’s post on the attitudes to standing passengers I have come across a mind-bending licence condition on Barton Route 4 (TER 1/272):

‘No vehicle operating on this service which has a lay-over at the terminus at the "Red Lion" Sandiacre in excess of the headway on the Derby to Nottingham service as co-ordinated with the Trent Motor Traction Co. Ltd., shall take up intending passengers at the "Red Lion" terminus until after the scheduled time of departure of the next Nottingham bound vehicle operated by the Trent Motor Traction Co. Ltd.’

Beat that if you can! Thankfully, to sort this all out, along came deregulation and the merger of Trent & Barton...

From the Company Postbag

And from the Inbox. Just goes to show you can’t please all the people, all the time. Some comments are, of course, better directed to the local transport authority but then again the public hasn’t yet grasped it’s been over 20 years since deregulation & privatisation.

What’s the point of your buses? I never see anyone on them.
Why don’t you put on a double deck or a following bus over the summer for the good weather and children off school?

Your buses never take a direct route and always go all around the houses.
How dare you withdraw the bus along *my* street just to save five minutes and make the bus quicker for everyone else.

Your bus is too long for my street. Why don’t you use something smaller?
I can’t get on you bus at five o’clock. Get something bigger, will you.

Why does the driver have to hang around at every bus stop waiting for time? Can’t you make the timetable quicker?
You must know that emergency roadworks spring up all the time. You really should design your timetables for these eventualities. Now, I’ve missed my appointment.

It’s unfair you don’t provide more buggy space for young mothers. Why should we have to wait for the next bus or fold our pushchairs?
I resent having to stand because your buses have so much space taken up for buggies.

Your divers are so rude. They never say anything to you when you board the bus.
Why can’t your drivers simply get on and *drive*? Chatting nicely to passengers as they board simply holds us all up.

I pay my council tax like everyone else. Why are you even thinking of withdrawing my bus?
The amount of subsidy you must get from the public purse is ridiculous. You should not run empty buses.

The bus fare is too high. After all, I’m not trying to buy the bus.
Don’t tell me to go and buy a season ticket. I only use the bus occasionally.

It makes no sense to run buses that no one is using. Buses with so few people should be withdrawn to save money.
I know few people use my bus but we’re always being encouraged to use public transport to save the environment so you can’t cut it.

Why are your buses so expensive? When I catch a bus in London, not only are they much more frequent, they’re better value and run later.
Do everything to keep my council tax as low as possible.

You should protect drivers more from abuse and attack by providing an assault screen.
Those screens are ridiculous. How can you talk to the driver or ask him a question? It makes him so remote.

At night, you should withdraw buses permanently where drivers are prone to attack.
Now there’s no evening bus, I’m trapped in my home. I’m too scared to walk.

All young people do on the bus is run around, shout, swear and play their music.
There’s nothing for young people to do around here unless they travel somewhere else, on the bus.

I can’t afford to pay more than £1 return to get my child to school.
What do you mean, you’re withdrawing the school double decker. Surely, it must pay with all those children on it.

The trouble with the school journey is there’s a different driver every day. Little wonder the pupils play up. They need the same driver all the time.
I’m worried that the same driver on my daughter’s school bus day in day out means he’s being “inappropriate” with her.

I don’t like going upstairs any more because of all the anti-social behaviour up there. I prefer to stand downstairs.
Since you’ve replaced double decks with singles, young people push past us and older people are regularly left standing or left behind at their stop.

When are you ever going to invest in new buses for this route?
I wish you hadn’t bought those new buses. They’re uncomfortable compared to the plusher seats on the older ones.

It’s about time you provided a shelter at this busy stop.
Please remove the shelter you’ve recently installed. The young people in the evening make my life a misery.

It’s no good the council providing me with a bus pass if you lot won’t give me a bus.
Your buses are so full of older people I can no longer find a seat.

What’s the point in sending the buses to the retail park after shopping hours when there’s no one going to use them?
Since you’ve stopped buses running to the retail park after shopping hours, I find the timetable confusing and I can’t get home after my cleaning shift.

Omnibuses would like to clarify that where an illustrative image of a bus other than the author’s own is used, full written permission is sought and received before publication.

One Announcement and One Shock

This morning, after two significant announcements yesterday, we can indicate the reason First Group revealed Nicola Shaw is leaving. This is for Shaw to purchase Macquarie’s for sale London bus operation.

OK, this may be highly fanciful, but there’s a lot of speculation about at the moment. Though it would never now be Nicola running it, some are already linking First Group with the possible purchase of Macquarie’s business. First has lost London market share recently as it steadfastly seems unwilling to join its peers in a price war for tendered work.

Will the real Nicola Shaw please step forward... a very popular name

The London bus market is far from what it was:

• Margins are even tighter than they used to be, compared to the provincial UK industry.


• Tender prices currently favour TfL.


• TfL manages operations with a firm hand.


• Mayor Johnson is looking at economies even before the new Con-Lib pact’s announcement this week and to come.

Perhaps these are reasons why Macquarie yesterday announced it was backing out of the London. Other more pressing and local reasons might include:

• A shrinking Macquarie market share.


• Management certainly not so attuned to running buses in London as was predecessor Stagecoach.


• Being unable to spread its overhead, like original owner Stagecoach. In other words, diseconomies of scale.


• Difficulties with banks that force business reconsiderations.

Macquarie promised to break the mould so far as London was concerned. It’s arrival heralded a view that big banks would usher in a new era of investment with high returns for those selling. It didn’t happen. Instead, it can just look around at the downward pressure on London tender prices that, in the longer term, might leave the capital’s operations unsustainable. Better to get out now, even if there’s a loss. Who might buy?

• No one can rule out First, as stated above.


• Arriva and Go Ahead already have significant stakes in London and this might rule them out.


• Abellio, having recently purchased in London, is said to be expansionist. RATP will acquire London (and Bournemouth) operations and will be equally growth oriented. Both know and understand a regulated marketplace when they see one.


• Veolia Transdev may wish to take a punt, if only to seize market share.


• No one is yet ruling out Stagecoach. It would mean a volte-face in terms of operating within the constraints of regulated market but Souter will have half an eye on a bargain (for this will be a bargain).

And what of the shock Nicola announcement? Should we care that one of the industry’s few women leaders is leaving First Group? I believe we should, not because she’s a woman but because she’s been positive for the group. She will no doubt surface somewhere else. Meanwhile, at First she has:

• Turned the group around, overseeing much needed investment.


• Cut back office overheads.


• Introduced changes in working practices and eco-driving.


• Virtually eliminated the number of public inquiries at which First subsidiaries were forced to attend.


• Ensured it remains highly regarded in the City.

On the other hand, Nicola has:

• Presided over significant and sometimes savage cutbacks, in complete contrast to rival Stagecoach.


• Increased fares significantly.


• To all intents, quietly dropped the yellow school bus First Student project.


• Failed to rally stakeholder perceptions, especially in the city regions.

Nicola’s successor is Tim O’Toole, late of LUL and a very recent First non-exec director appointment. O’Toole will need to build on his predecessor’s work and tackle the remaining deficiencies by further improving First UK Bus’ reputation.

Attitudes Changing

It does still happen, of course, but nowhere near as often as it once did. That’s partly because there are fewer people using the bus, but mainly because attitudes change. I have been wondering just when our attitudes altered. I reckon it was some time in the early 1970s, long before the greed and individualism associated with the 1980s.

I am, of course, referring to people giving up their seats for fellow standing passengers. When I was a lad, my parents taught me to offer my seat to the following categories of standing passenger (and doing so was a regular occurrence):

• Any middle aged or older woman (whether they were fit & healthy or not)


• A woman of any age (but not a girl) with shopping, luggage or a family


• Any pregnant person (of any age and especially women)


• Any man of well beyond retirement age (but no others, as they were deemed fit to stand)


• Anyone of any age or gender who was “infirm” (as we once referred to it)

Back then, usually when you offered your seat, there was a gracious thank you and, without fuss or commotion, the standing passenger would sit.

There may be fewer passengers now but urban buses can become crowded at peak times, especially as there are fewer seats available per metre length of bus. A couple of months ago I offered my seat to a middle aged man with walking aids. He shuffled on board and stood near the driver, leaning against his crutches. He politely refused the seat, saying he was used to standing as few bothered to help. I have to say he looked pretty adept at ensuring he did not topple.

This was a curious situation. Having given up my seat, I didn’t feel I could go back to it while someone in need was standing. I joined the man on crutches and chatted, on and off and, lo! a young person boarded a few stops later and took the seat!

It’s a complete opposite to when I was young. Then, the younger you were, the more inclined you were to lend a hand (sometimes encouraged by parents). Within reason, of course. Youngsters and toddlers would move over to sit on mum’s lap. It seems nowadays that young people are the *last* to vacate their seat and usually, if someone offers to stand at all, they tend to be middle aged—people brought up at a young age to give up their seat.

Why should this be? Equality? Embarrassment? Laziness? Insensitivity? Can’t be bothered? Selfishness? Fear of rejection if the other person is uncharitable in their response?

Not helped, I fear, by DIPTAC feeling the need to introduce sticky labels on windows at the front of the bus requesting users to give up their seats for others.

Judging by David Cameron’s speech yesterday, you’d think he has enough to do… today on the Dorset Bus Blog.

Raising Eyebrows & Thinking Laterally

Exiling former ops director Andrew Wickham to Plymouth has given Go South Coast MD Alex Carter an opportunity to reshuffle.

Wickham’s job had grown significantly since his appointment and from Monday is now split into two. There are two points of interest and both will raise the odd eyebrow: who’s been appointed and their spread of duties.

“Stylish coach hire” indeed, from Damory. This is a Scania N270/Olympus from Buspicssouth, used with permission

Marc Morgan Huws moves up from manager at Southern Vectis to divisional director in charge of SVOC and what till this week was the former Wilts Dorset coach fleets—Damory, Bell’s, Kingston, Lever’s, Marchwood Motorways and Tourist. At first flush, this seems an odd match. Huws is rightly credited for the good things he’s done in growing the island’s bus business. How does that match with the eclectic coaching fleets?

Well, for one thing, Damory in particular has grown considerably though quietly, in recent years. For another, SVOC has itself sort-of hived off its school work to its sort-of arms length coaching unit. But more than that, the message I read is that Go South Coast is taking very seriously the development of its coaching and so-called lower cost units. Once viewed by industry watchers as peripheral to the overall GSC business, giving them the gravitas of a divisional director means we can expect major (and positive) change.

That leaves the other divisional director responsible for W&D itself and neighbouring Bluestar. That’s an interesting combination, too. To all intents, Bluestar has been moving closer to W&D in any case, as an operation of the latter but under a unique branding.

And the divisional director of the W&D/Bluestar combine? Here, eyebrows really will rise. It’s Ed Wills. Wills, a runner up in the 2009 UK Bus Oscars’ manager of the year beauty contest, is currently head of operations with competitor Transdev Yellow Buses. Wills has managed to prove himself in Bournemouth with the successful completion of a number of projects. TYB has a strong staff development policy and has been very supportive of this rising star. Perhaps rather *too* supportive…

With Wills running the commercial & operational side of things at W&D and Huws doing the same at Damory, a business interestingly having developed quite some in and around Poole, we see the power of lateral thinking. Not for GSC the déjà vu of a SVOC/Bluestar and W&D/coaching fleets split.

This leaves vacancies at SVOC and TYB plus an unfilled managerial position at Bluestar following the departure of Alex Hornby to Trent Barton. Sorting this lot out will be first on the list of the newly appointed divisional directors and we wish them well with their overflowing in-trays.

Transdev Yellow Buses also makes changes today, on the Dorset Bus Blog.

£20mil—and for what?

This is a story about South Wales and North Nottinghamshire. Yourbus is rapidly becoming a strong niche service provider outside its original Nottingham city routes. From today, it takes over the majority of services once operated under contract by Veolia, in and around Retford.

The Yourbus website trumpets the fact that Dunn Motor Traction t/a Yourbus is already experienced in bus services in North Nottinghamshire. This is because Dunn Line used to operate some of them, before the Dunn family sold to Veolia in 2006 for nearly £10mil. Since then, like much else in the Veolia empire, things don’t seem to have gone so well. In retreat, Veolia has left things wide open for others to cherry pick, and not just in Nottinghamshire.

Witness later this month events in South Wales. Veolia is reported to have spent as much buying the sprawling tentacles of the Shamrock business. It then had to spend a few bob more in remedying matters, including a significant sum investing in fleet. Next, it gathered together an eclectic mix of independents and scooped much of the southern Powys network revisions and retender of 2007. After which, it all began to slip, to the point where it’s retrenched so much from Shamrock’s Pontypridd heartland that Clayton and Kevyn Jones as Heart of Wales and New Adventure respectfully have been given an avenue back into the area. Not such a shrewd move, or did Veolia think it was buying more than it got?

This is not dissimilar to matters in Nottinghamshire, with Veolia’s retrenchment allowing the Dunn family to renew its toehold. As a result of the changes and the new areas of operation, Yourbus has livened up its website. It added Derbyshire tendered services from October 2009. There’s a new City-Chilwell service from February 2010 plus a 20-minute Sunday service from 2 May 2010 (coinciding with the launch of England’s first SQBP, something Dunn was very much against) and North Nottinghamshire, from today. I’m old fashioned and have never been a fan of bus drivers wearing shades but the inclusion of the driver upfront lends a personal touch, even if his pose is somewhat macho.

Yourbus Derbyshire services pass Crich and on the Yourbus website is a page about the tram museum

The site’s split into three: Nottingham, Derbyshire & North Notts. Looking through the Retford and Tuxford part of it, there’s maps and timetables aplenty. If I were picky, I’d suggest that the tabbed route numbers on the right need an indication of the route, because some are not on the front map. Perhaps some should indicate they are school services. What is odd, at least on my browsers, is that when you click a tab you get a timetable in a single direction only.

Yourbus started commercially between Nottingham & Chilwell in February 2010 and in May introduced a Sunday service, albeit at shopping times only

i Yourbus website at Brightsites.org.uk an address, like catchyourbus.co.uk, seemingly incorrectly registered with Nominet as a non-trading individual

Social Media & the Real World

Forgive me for returning to social media, as there was a wealth of interesting comments from visitors, following Friday’s post on the subject. Do check them out.

I was pleased to see a comment from Coach & Bus Week’s editor, Andy Sutcliffe. It was his editorial this week, after all, that started this particular ball rolling. Apart from some rather nice comments about this blog (always welcome!), he is concerned that compared to printed media, there is a lack of policing on the net and were some of the comments to appear in the traditional print media, it would result in a one way ticket to court.

The plausible looking Southern Vectis Facebook page looks official but in fact turns out to be is anything but. While it might look harmless at the moment, who knows what future problems it may cause. At the least, it needs the word “Unofficial” writ large on it

Another commenter had a different perspective on this. It came from social-media-in-the-bus-industry pioneer, Kirsty, late of the Bath Bus Station blog. That blog was one of the first of its kind but succumbed to a centralisation of First’s customer services. Ironically, First social media have reappeared elsewhere, not least with director Leon Daniels himself.

Her point was that it isn’t just on social media sites that employees diss their employers. It happens in pubs, on the street corner, from behind the cab and at the bus terminus. Managers don’t usually get to hear about it and probably can’t do much to stop it. When negativity appears online, provided there’s an honest and mature response, the employer has a means of tackling the issue, something impossible in other situations. There’s a chance to straighten the record.

What I might add to Kirsty’s comments is that a moan over a pint in the pub is perhaps damaging enough, but at least it’s in front of a limited audience. They may regard the teller as either legitimate or just a complainer. But when it gets online not only is it very public, not only does it assume a legitimacy it may not otherwise have or deserve, it’s probably immortalised forever. Managers using social media need to be vigilant and respond accordingly.

Transdev, Tempos and Timetables, on the Dorset Bus Blog today.

Souter Sinks his Sterling

Brian Souter is investing big time in Dorset!

Rather than Stagecoach itself, Brian Souter is the one personally investing in the Dorset economy. He’s sinking £9.5mil of a £25mil injection into Sunseeker International, the luxury yacht manufacturer off Holes Bay, Poole. This is via his Souter Investments, run independently of Stagecoach.

Sunseeker International has distributors all over the wealthy world and above, even in Albania. What would Albania’s late communist president and Beloved Father & Great Leader Comrade Enver Hoxha have made of that?

This significantly recapitalises Sunseeker, formerly known as Poole Power Boats, synonymous with indulgence, extravagance and opulence. It’s amazing that in the teeth of recession that Sunseeker can now look forward confidently to major growth. Souter rarely makes a mistake.

Souter seems to have a fascination with water. There was the cross-Forth hovercraft trial (2006), the Torbay ferry (2007) and the amphibious bus (2009); plus his recent personal investment in Fuller’s Ferries, Auckland, New Zealand. To date, all this has been akin to the water equivalent of buses & coaches on the highway. With Sunseekers, we see a departure similar to investing into the water equivalent of Bentley or Ferrari.

One of Souter’s other personal vehicle manufacturing investments includes Alexander Dennis that is unsurprisingly popular with Souter’s Stagecoach bus fleets. We can’t see an immediate mass-market tie up between Stagecoach and Sunseeker, though.

Participation

I wouldn’t want regular readers to think that I had such a leisurely life that I could listen to the radio when I wanted. Just the opposite, in fact. Occasionally, I happen to be in the right place at the right tome and so it was on Monday when Radio 4’s Call You & Yours was discussing the new coalition’s attitudes towards a more participatory local government.

I came in half way through someone arguing that there should be local referenda on local contentious issues. The thread was that local democracy should be broadened. (The counter argument I guess is that we elect councillors to represent us and make difficult decisions on our behalf. A referendum on many subjects would be time consuming and result in decisions being made without consideration or knowledge of the full facts).

The caller cited Plymouth Citybus as a good example of where a referendum might’ve proved useful. The city, he said, was polarised and a referendum would easily have steered a course, getting a city-wide view.

I wonder what the result would’ve been had the city put the sale to a public test. I can only look at the 2005 sale of Bournemouth Transport. It had its controversies. Fewer people were up in arms about the sale than was the case in Plymouth yet I would wager that, had there been such a vote, the result would be to retrain the status quo, keeping Yellow Buses well and truly within the municipal fold.

I base this on a conservatism that attaches certain nostalgic value to the sale of an important public asset such as Yellow Buses. Yellow Buses was never particularly controversial and was viewed by many in Bournemouth as safe, solid, scrupulous, and steady. In a referendum, residents’ default position would have been to retain the undertaking. I confess to feeling a certain affinity with this view, even though Yellow Buses was inflexible under threats from its neighbour.

Would the referendum have arrived at the right decision? Warts and all, Transdev has done an admirable job at network management, marketing, fleet renewal and operational delivery. It started with the biggest upheaval in the operator’s history with a measured risk that paid off, to the extent that it has levelled the laying field regarding its troublesome neighbour.

If and when the remaining ten councils plus Nottingham that own their own arms length operators come to selling their fleets, I wonder whether there will ever be provision in place for local referenda to help in the decision making process. And whether this will have a marked effect on the outcome, whether this will prevent or encourage a sale.

And looking back at previous decisions, would the answer have been different with a referendum at Caerphilly (Islwyn Borough Transport), Blackburn, Chester or Eastbourne when compared to Plymouth or if councils at Warrington or Edinburgh (Lothian) or Cardiff put their operations up for sale?

Indiscretions

See also Social Media, an Operators' Guide

The editorial in this week’s Coach & Bus Week warns operators of the problems that can be thrown up by new & social media—Facebook, blogs and their ilk. I trust CBW doesn’t mean us!

Though they could so easily be referring to positive Facebook stories that can turn sour (following adverse comments), CBW’s concern is about employees whose comments on general Facebook sites can leave a negative impression, be less than helpful and sometimes are plain injudicious. Negative comments by an employee in an open environment can be dangerous to your business.

There’s a tendency, particularly among those who use Facebook, to regard comments thereon as read only by “friends”. Rather than a limited audience, the reverse is true. I often find the concept of Facebook “friends” difficult to grasp. The terms “acquaintances” or “associates” seem more appropriate. Most people have, what, half a dozen close, trusted friends and a handful more on the periphery. How can they accumulate hundreds on Facebook and call them companions, with whom they seemingly share their most intimate details? As one person links to another to another, who knows what damage may be done were an employee to use Facebook for catharsis, for discharging the emotions, to get things off his or her chest.

Managers and even personnel managers at larger operators regularly monitor fora, boards, Facebook, unofficial company specific sites and driver blogs. Whether the same is true of other operators, I am not sure. While there is a fine line between free speech and censorship, an operator would not put up with a uniformed employee dissing the firm in public. Why do so on Facebook?

What CBW doesn’t say is the positive business power of Facebook and the like. In spite of its ability to get to the hard to reach younger demographic, it has taken operators some time to latch on to the positive power of social media. Even in 2010, it’s patchy and it took the very inclement weather of February 2010 to see major growth. Since then, things have stabilised and it’s possible that the Facebook bus business revolution may have peaked.

Beware, also, of negative sites that disgruntled users throw up from time to time. About 10 times as many people seem to be “P*ssed off with Southern Vectis”, for example, as there are fans.

Facebook and Twitter this year:

Followers or Fans	On Twitter	On Facebook
Bluestar	104 to 147 to 186 to 222 to 250	1,002 to 1,591 to 1,930 to 2,328 to 2,558
Southern Vectis	171 to 242 to 402 to 498 to 562	N/A
Transdev Yellow Buses	NEW 0 to 16 to 49 to 77	279 to 379 to 431 to 575 to 726
Velvet	108 to 125 to 132 to 150 to 171	707 to 733 to 743 to 854 to 955
Wilts & Dorset	NEW 0 to 58	316 to 650 to 833 to 1,490 to 1,865

Metrobus now has over 4,560 5,675 5,970 on Facebook.

That Driver

On Monday evening, I promised to come back on some of the interesting and informed comments on the post on the Dennis Dart driver on my Friday bus journey. Many thanks for those comments, as ever, and it was a post that seemed to engage a number of people. Here are some additional thoughts of my own.

“Should he not be praised for achieving that rather than scolded for the manner in which it was done?”

I would agree that it is praiseworthy where a driver makes up time but not at the expense of safety. Without sounding smug, I have travelled long enough to know the difference between a good drive and a poor one, whatever the driver's speed. In this case, it was definitely the latter. I would ask the question, would this drive have gotten the employee through a PCV test?

“Am I alone in thinking that a timetable that allows 15 minutes delay to be recovered on a busy journey is excessively generous for normal conditions?”

Probably not alone though you need to understand the nature of the route and its length. Generally, schedulers have slackened off where historically they would’ve tightened up at every opportunity. You have the VOSA/traffic commissioners’ 1/5 minutes window to thank for that. Here is a post all the way back to 2005 on this very subject.

“it's (sic) not just driving skils (sic) we teach (sic) it’s customer care, too!” A few slips but otherwise a good maxim for driver training. Readers should not infer anything because of the inclusion of this image

“I feel sorry for the driver because your actual complaint could actually put him out of a job, if anything you should of told him as you came off the bus”

Let’s turn this on its head. Let’s say someone in a senior position from outside the organisation contacted *me* about the quality of one of *my* drivers. What should I do? First, I’d treat it seriously. Secondly, I’d get someone to investigate. Thirdly, I would expect someone to take the appropriate action, whatever that may be.

I would not expect a driver to go down the road on the basis of a single third party complaint, though, no matter who contacted me. It’s remarkable, though, that there will no doubt be a strong link between a third party complaint and local knowledge at garage level.

For my part, education/retraining is the key, at least in the first instance. There are issues around protecting the public, the operator’s asset and good name. There does come a time when more direct action may be required but not after a single complaint such as this.

“If you can drive swiftly, yet without the passengers noticing, you're a good driver”

Often, but not necessarily. The real decisive or critical test as regards this particular driver was the comments ("murmurings" as I put it) of the passengers aboard… The other passengers, lay people if you like, *definitely* noticed this was a poor drive.

It is quite possible to drive “swiftly” without upsetting passengers or tipping them out of their seats. My journey simply wasn’t one such occasion.

“Slow doesn't equal smooth!”

True enough.

“They have [drivers] who never drive smoothly at any time and they are often the ones who do it with one hand rather than two”

Interesting correlation. I fear you are right. Am I alone in my abhorrence of one-handed driving? This sends out completely the wrong signals. The driver is in sole charge of over 11 tons of single deck plus at least three tons of passengers, when full. Reaction time in case of an incident will be that much slower, even perhaps with fatal consequences. Ask yourself the question again, would it get you through a PCV test?

“Busing had the benefit of a Pointer Dart... I am always pleased when one of their Pointer Darts is subbed as a know that journey will be a little more pleasant”

Might expand on this in a future post. I know one of my engineering colleagues has a strong view about Darts and their structural and mechanical weaknesses.

“Did running late make any difference to the way that the driver drove?”

No idea. I don't know the driver. Evidence from the way in which the driver tackled and treated passengers suggests that he was frustrated at being late and by this time possibly having a bad day. That’s not to make excuses for him but it could make allowances. Possibly.

“We are not told the length of the journey so it is difficult to put it into context”

I did wonder whether I should've added some context. Suffice to say that the journey was a mix of 30/40-mph limits with a spell of "derestricted" (national speed limit: 50 mph for PSVs).

“It could be suggested that the performance of modern buses has its part to play in driving standards, making it too easy to acquire bad habits”

It could, indeed. I’ve mentioned this, here.

“I don't remember my instructors saying anything about driving without passengers noticing when I trained two years ago with one of the large multinational groups”

Instructors are under an obligation to ensure new recruits take into account the human element and VOSA testers certainly must look for this. This is a most significant difference between a wagon and bus test.

“If I were twenty minutes late I'd certainly be fully utilising the capabilities of the allotted vehicle to minimise discrepancy with the timetable, to put it obtusely...”

And you’d do so safely, I trust, such that passengers wouldn’t notice. It’s when they do (and certainly did, in this case) that alarm bells ring.

“The quality of the vehicle plays a big role”

I take it you didn’t mean “roll”?? !!

Comparisons between a minibus and a B7 are very valid. I may return to this in a future post.

“From experience driving Darts doesn’t give the best of rides if you’re running late”

True enough. I referred briefly to the general ride on Darts here.

“Sacrificing ride quality isn't necessary, and as shown by other comments, isn't directly linked to driving swiftly”

Agree. Mostly.

“I personally find there is nothing more frustrating than a driver who is late and who clearly couldn't care less about the fact. Obviously a driver must never drive recklessly or take undue risks, but I'm more than happy for a bit of passenger ride quality to be sacrificed in the interests of punctuality when necessary”

It’s all about balancing the two.

“I feel sorry for the driver here. He is no doubt under pressure from his employers to keep to time”

I would be surprised if an operator would ever sanction or condone behaviour such as Friday’s, however laudable the intent (assuming it was laudable).

“Unfortunately the bus to take me to Uxbridge arrived late and then simply crawled at 20 mph all the way despite ample opportunity to regain time lost on the inward journey… I missed my connection”

This, too, is a management issue.

“The final problem for road staff is also that front line supervisors tend not to share management’s views on how to drive when running late, so maybe the retraining should start with the attitude of the regulators/inspectors/controllers”

We should all be on the same team, shouldn’t we, but sadly I do take your point that a driver’s view may be different and that there is a greater problem to resolve.

Assuming that the driver was late (owing to traffic conditions) rather than simply tardy, there is one further problem to solve: had buses been given the roadspace they deserve, the driver would never have been in this position at all.

Any further comments best left on the original post, please