Arriva has held firm over its decision to withdraw Green Line 712 from St Alban’s to London. This in spite of a concerted passenger & press campaign to keep the 712 extant. Regular readers may recall that Arriva was blamed for not advertising the service enough, an accusation often levelled at an operator in the face of difficult decisions. You can actually hear the sound of passengers grasping at straws. As if an operator would simply run a service without telling anyone (yes, I know it has happened but these days is far less likely to).
Since January the 712’s gone save, that is, for a solitary return journey outward *from* London at 0930, returned from St Alban’s at 1530.
From Monday, however, local St Alban’s operator Uno is taking a punt at the market. Uno is wholly owned by the university of Hertfordshire but acts commercially, not philanthropically. Why can Uno success where Green Line has failed?
- Uno may have lower margins, expectations and a lower cost base. But, given the investment in fleet and premises, this won’t give it much of an advantage.
- It provides a fast-ish service direct from central London to the university’s Hatfield campus, arriving at 0930, returning after a very long student day, at 1630 : )
- Uno is operating an inferior timetable. Uno offers four return trips compared to Green Line’s six. Uno is cutting its cloth but the service is less likely to generate, especially after the winter’s absence.
- Arriva used two vehicles while, on paper, Uno uses but one. This does mean a considerable gap in London between the early commuter arrival at 0813 and the first off peak arrival at 1118.
While wishing Uno every success, even its management concedes that this is a trial and will depend upon demand.
6 comments:
Good luck to Uno, hope they can stay the course and find enough passengers.
Green Line was great in its day - really great when LT ran it as a network - but I fear those halcyon days are now long past.
With regard to advertising services, last year Stagecoach opened up a new service from Aberdare to Pontypridd. To promote this they had posters up on their vehicles, they designated half of their South Wales home page to advertise the fact, they even went to both bus stations handing out timetables. When they upped the frequency of the route, again they left no stone unturned in letting passengers know.
Veolia, who run along the same route, recently increased the frequency of their competitor service and introduced new fares. They've managed a little onboard advertising and had a few timetables and the new ticket information which you could get from the driver. Their vehicles still advertise a half hourly service (not 20 minutes as they are now). Unless you travelled with them, or sought out the information yourself, you'd have no idea of the improvements they've made to the service. Similarly, when they put on extra late services from Cardiff, no-one would have known.
Newport Transport launched a new service (6A) earlier this month.
There are no notices announcing it in buses or at the bus station and the Newport Bus web site has no mention of it. :-o
I'll be checking it on Monday to see how much "fresh air" it's carrying!
Good luck to Uno, I hope they succeed. But, as they will be well aware, St Albans people have an ability to protest about anything, as they did when Arriva withdrew. But many there are well heeled and not particularly bus orientated, so may not actually materialise on the bus. Be interesting to see what type of vehicle Uno use, as Green Line traditionally used a coach/dual purpose type of vehicle, which Uno have not had, hitherto.
I expect they protested when the Romans upped sticks.
Your blogger makes a number of very perceptive and accurate comments on the re-instatement of the 712. Firstly we are only using one vehicle and two dedicated drivers which does kept the cost base under control. Secondly we hope to combine the commuting, leisure and student markets by looping around the university as well as St Albans. Thirdly it will feed off the back of our St Albans local network which has been relaunched recently and the combined 712/local ticket offer should prove attractive. This was something that Arriva couldn't offer as they only operate trunk routes coming into the city and not local routes. Finally this is very much part of the combined effort of Network St Albans the Quality Network Partnership for St Albans which is working on all sorts of measures to co-ordinate public transport across the city.
We are using the first week or two of operation to sort out any operational issues and be totally confident on delivering everything we said we can before upping the gear on publicity. Clearly the key is to build a stable market with a core of commuters for the morning and evening peak, some students on the first return leg and then leisure traffic across the day. We think this can be done by spreading the word and following up on the good support for the service that exists in the city as well as normal publicity. We will give it a good trial but, of course, any service relies on public support and we will have to keep under continual review whether it is getting that support.
Many thanks to those who have campaigned for the service and we all hope it will settle down to again become a feature of life in Hertfordshire.
Philip Waters.
Chairman UNO.
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