This is a second guest post by Dangermouse. Omnibuses welcomes contributions
Just like Tony Hancock and “go to work on an egg”, the bus was also a very significant part of working life. It was not so much a choice but an expectation, especially for what used to be called blue-collar workers. 
A rare thing: a small network operates in Newbury for 21st century employer Racal Vodafone
The result was “Works Services” providing direct access from many residential areas straight to the workplace, with no need to change buses. Even in my local town up till 10 years ago, I remember seeing at least five different work services serving different employment sites.Most were pretty busy and where filled with men, woman, the young & the older who were all happy and cheery. I bet if you think back to your local area 20-30 years ago you can remember seeing plenty of these types of services, running about providing a substantial network for workers, sometimes tied in perfectly with schools, all of which helped curb traffic on the roads at peak times.
Unfortunately, times have changed and so have types of employment, with much heavy industry now becoming rarer within many parts of the country. The result is that the special works service is no longer needed. Or if it is, it’s a kind of insurance policy for the occasions when the car’s off the road; or for young people before they can use their wages to buy a car.
But wait, new and exciting employers have appeared to help create many new jobs, but alas, many of these seem to have failed see brand new work services for these new white-collar jobs, with many people now being forced to use cars to get to work. The only place I know from this new generation of employer who provide “work buses” is Prudential in Stirling that has over 20 buses and coaches to provide such services, with many being well used.
But the question has to be why have work services never continued in great numbers. You might think call centres or industrial parks would look at this type of scheme to help reduced traffic and parking problems.
Could it be those white-collar workers don’t like the bus? Or do people just think of the work bus as something related to the past and needed to be gotten rid of? I get the sense that such services would have a much greater impact on reduced peak traffic, far more than form of political planning.
Pity that planning has resulted in the call centres in such awkward locations, ones that never seem to lend themselves to an easy bus service.
26 comments:
No - a works service to India would be quite extreme!
I'm amazed that accessibility doexn't seem to be a planning consideration.
I realise that there are cost savings by moving away from town and city centre locations, but access to hospitals, employment centres etc then becomes harder for many. I recently saw a school in South Shields that appears to sit in the middle of open country. What's that about, for goodness sake!
Planners have a lot to answer for, classic example in my local area would be closing a hospital in a convenient town centre location and selling off for redevelopment. The replacement hospital is located in the middle of nowhere with the assumption the bus network will somehow just adapt itself to suit, the NHS bods assumed that a successful inter urban express could just divert to serve the place in th middle of nowhere. It was explained the diversion would cost 10-15 minutes in the schedule and an additional vehicle at approximately £120k per annum not ignoring the possibility that existing passengers may not appreciate the additional time added to their journey. The bus operator was made out to be the bad guy, refusing to incurr the extra cost of laying on a service to the hospital without the guarantee of covering those costs. The old hospital had none of these problems, being in a convenient location it benefited from a multitude of bus routes to its front door from across the borough thanks to its city centre location but this was not of concern to the planners who saw a fast buck in selling the current site and using PFI to fund a new site in the middle of nowhere.
Whilst I can't think of any publicly accessible "Works Service" journeys in this rural shire, there are certainly closed door contracts run by the employers. Knorr-Bremse (aka Westinghouse Brakes), Vodafone, Virgin all spring to mind.
The closest to a proper "Works Service" we have is a special early journey on the Trans Wilts Express designed for workers at a sandwich factory, the bus then neatly picks up work mid-route on another service, and thereby cuts the dead mileage considerably. Equally "hidden" but arguably a "Works Service" is a trip on Swindon's 7 where in the evening the usual Dart SLF swaps with a country service double deck to convey the shift-change load from an industrial estate en-route.
Works Services are clinging on, but that Northern General destination blind alternative "Miners" is probably no more.
Back in the full employment days pre-Thatcher era our local factories contracted coaches to provide free transport to work.Come Thatcher the new manage your business saw the end of the free coach forcing people into cars.Problem was there was no where to park.Thatcher had the cure.Simply close the factories.
Fundamentally as Anon@0839 states, the moment you move employment locations away from easily-served places like city centres, bus use plummets.
Planning policies have given out mixed messages over the years, with highway authorities typically asking for on-site car parking to keep problems off their roads. That absorbed some of the money that might have otherwise paid for works services, but the adoption in many offices of flexible working hours reduces the demand for collective transport still further.
More recently there has been a greater recognition that providing car parking generates peak hour traffic, and emphasis switched to requiring travel plans, to reduce car use. But councils in many places would rather have the employment on their patch than on someone else's, and so travel plans - often token efforts at best - tend to be observed in the breach.
Nottingham meanwhile has been toying with a workplace parking levy for years - mainly to fund its tram ambitions - to the distress of local employers. Boots thinks it can get round it by moving parking to part of its site that isn't in the city council's area, but there will be others who regrettably can't see the positives arising from the levy and regard it purely as a cost to be avoided.
Sadly, my experience is that even where such services are provided for free, many people regard them as too inflexible for their own lifestyle e.g. diverting to take the kids to school in the morning or stopping at the (out-of-town) supermarket on the way home.
Although the Vodaphone buses were a re-requisite of planning permission for their mega office block, there are still loads of parking places.
The local newspaper in Newbury regularly carries letters asnd editorial comment about "empty" buses running around.
Pfizer used to have a network of coach services to their head office in Surrey. Staff of all levels were required to use it and 'fined' if they turned and opened the car park gate with their parking permit. One operated from the East and Mid Kent area. I presume it has ceased following the closure of their operation at Sandwich.
When the new Tunbridge Wells hospital was approved for construction outside of the town at Pembury there was a requirement that a wide network of bus services should be provided. Just before it opened last year the Health Authority applied to have the requirement removed as they had no money to run them. It was reputed that no one had actually worked out the cost of operating the network!!!
A local network to Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells has been operating on a temporary basis (with help from KCC)but few people seem to use it. Now it is being cut back and additional car parking being provided. Part of the problem is that health services have been downgraded or transferred from elsewhere, particularly Maidstone. Whilst there are now two buses an hour on this route there is no evening or Sunday service. From where I live I would have to allow two hours to get there for an appointment by bus as against 30 minutes by car! With most A & E patients being taken there by ambulance its hardly surprising people want to use their cars.
A few months ago I had the same problem when I was referred to Medway Maritime Hospital at Gillingham for a major operation. A three part bus journey. Not easy if you have to make an appointment. Best way was to drive part way and use just the one bus.
I know from my experience that for health reasons the last thing you often want or cope with is such a long bus journey.
There big business park near where I live with a good number of call centre staff etc, and yet there hardly any buses operate around it.
Parking is a disgrace! of course no one has a choice....
I bet it could be a cash cow if someone looked at it.
Wessex Connect operate the 'Aztec Bus' network based on Aztec West business park in north Bristol. It operates in the peak with 5 routes across north Bristol, with at least two journeys on each route. It all started from a service SGBC ran on behalf of Orange from their office on the centre to their Aztec office, and after Wessex Connect took over it expanded from that!
I have been wondering recently whether companies could not be incentivised into encouraging bus travel among their staff. Perhaps offering them a way to collate the milage travelled by their employees and bragging about the environmental qudos. With new smart card systems it should be possible to provide a cumulative total milage travelled (or at least number of journeys) for an arbitrary group of people (identified by smart card I'd numbers).
Operators could provide any interested companies with a way to sign up online, invite their employees to sign up and the employer then receives an easily embeddable 'badge' to place on their Facebook pages/corporate websites etc.
Encouraging companies to advocate bus travel seems a little explored area, perhaps an area where investment in smart cards and associated CRM may be able to be leveraged.
It is not so much they are not needed but more that bus companies have given up and don't change to meet changing needs
You seem the same with Industrial, Office & Retail parks where the bus companies do not even bother to provide services.
Quote"I have been wondering recently whether companies could not be incentivised into encouraging bus travel among their staff."
Not a lot of use when in 98% of the cases there is no viable bus services and those that do have a service it is sparten and does not operate at the times it is needed
Most people no longer work 9amm to 5pm but the bus companies think that.
My partner works at a call centre in Poole. There is no work bus service due to the cost. With people working shifts starting from 8am and going right up to 9pm, and living all across the borough, it would likely require several vehicles and drivers - and they'd all get a handful of passengers at any one time. This is quite a change from the last few decades where people would all come in for 9pm and leave at 5, and live largely in the same place.
What they're trying to do is to get the local operators to provide a better service to the area (for anyone who finishes after 6pm, there's no service unless you fancy a 15-minute walk up a hill). But for the company to run its own service, there's no way it would.
The only company I can think of that does is Chase Manhattan here in their partnership with Britannia. But they're still private contracts...
The new Tunbridge Wells Hospital: the "Section 106" obligation (and funding) to provide adequate public transport was transferred from the Trust to KCC.
The public bus service, operated by Countryliner, from Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells is frequent and from observation, little used.
There is also a staff bus from Maidstone and from Tunbridge Wells was provided by the Trust but, again, appears to be little used.
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Most new developments like this are now obliged to include public transport provision for a set period, but if car parking space is provided as well, workers will often vote with their feet ... workplace parking levies are not popular ...
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One works service of sorts that does appear to be successful - the Ensignbus 73 route to the Lakeside retail complex. This is now a 24 hr service to meet the demands of retail workers.
"Not a lot of use when in 98% of the cases there is no viable bus services and those that do have a service it is sparten and does not operate at the times it is needed
Most people no longer work 9amm to 5pm but the bus companies think that."
Very defeatist attitude. Are you saying that there are no employers on any existing routes that an operator would not want to encourage employees to use their service?
I understand the conversation about ill served out of town industrial parks however such places are not the only employers and there is an argument for going for the low hanging fruit first, no?
Do First East England not operate some contracts/routes for Bernard Matthews in the Lowestoft area?
Its the only other one i can think of apart from those already mentioned.
The Prudential network in Stirling/Falkirk and beyond is very comprehensive and is very well used, a credit to the company!
There was, until not very long ago, a bus service in Andover for the workers of the Portway Industrial Estate, it served the main Estates in Andover and ran in the AM and PM peaks.
The service was cancelled by Hampshire County Council as there are already buses serving most of the route. The Industrial estate is also served by the Hourly 76.
Regarding incentives to get workers to use the bus, what about being able to claim bus travel as non-taxable expense for employees earning under a certain amount? It would make work pay that bit more for the lowest earners who need to travel. It could be easily done through the company payroll.
It could even be used with further reductions in BSOG if passenger numbers increased to a certain level as a result.
Or would such a measure prove to have little value?
Many if not most works services were to large engineering or manufacturing works. Most were stage carriage services, and the size of the works justified - indeed required - a large number of routes. They were therefore highly visible to the interested observer.
Now, most employers are much smaller and most works buses seem to be contracts, not registered local bus services, so fewer people know about them. So while numbers are well down on the old days, maybe there are more works buses around than we realise. In fact I think a number of posts here demonstrate this is the case.
The North East manages to retain a number of works services. There are still a few special routes serving the DHSS complex at Longbenton / Benton as well as peak shuttles to the Metro at Four Lane Ends. It's a shadow of the huge roll out of routes, that I used to sit and watch at 1630 each weekday, as buses from all over Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Northumberland passed through where I lived. Happy memories.
There are also special routes serving the business parks that have sprung up at Balliol Park and Great Park. The former Newcastle Corporation / United / Northumbria 46 service has grown into something very unexpected due to the Great Park development. Evening buses divert to cover for shift changes at call centres.
Go North East still serves the Team Valley with works routes and recently added a new set of routes for N Power workers.
The works service isn't dead but perhaps not as vigorous as it used to be. Very few such things in TfL land though - I can only think of the unusual 387 workings to Creekmouth given the special workings to Fords at Dagenham went a long time ago.
I do believe there still not as many as there could be. Livingston has a mix bag of call centres,
manufacturing etc, at a number of different locations, but very little bus service operate via the places often enough. From 6am-9am people are starting work every 30mins but bus companies dont seem to understand this point. RBS has no work buses for its Head office bar on that provide a shuttle to the train station. Yet the Parking is dreadful, its next door to Hugh Industrial estate.
BIG Q:
Why cant companies join forces to provide joint work services I bet there could fill up the buses with everyone....
Re Andi North - It's Walworth estate which is served by the hourly 76.
Although the dedicated peak factory service in Andover (used to be the 91, latterly the 6) has gone, peak journeys on the 5 still serve Portway estate.
Surely one of the best examples of a works bus service is that provided right on Busing's doorstep, where Britannia Parking operate a fleet of 20 plus vehicles for various clients.
Re Eric @ 2349
The tax exemption already exists , as long as you have enough travellers. The below extract from the HMrc website explains.
A Fact Sheet for Employers setting up Green Travel Plans
This fact sheet explains how the tax and national insurance systems encourage employers to set up Travel Plans for their employees. A Travel Plan is a package of practical measures to reduce car use for journeys to and from work and for business travel.
Where an employer helps employees to get to and from work, such as by providing petrol or season tickets, these benefits are normally taxable. But there is no tax or NICs to pay if an employer offers:
free or subsidised work buses
subsidies to public bus services
cycles and safety equipment made available for employees
workplace parking for cycles and motorcycles.
Works Buses and Minibuses
A works bus (a bus or coach seating 12 or more passengers) or minibus (seating 9 passengers or more) can be made available to employees to transport them to and from work. Any number of employers can join together and provide a works bus or minibus service for their joint workforces. As long as the vehicle is used mainly for commuting or travel between workplaces, employees and their families can use it occasionally for other trips.
Public Transport
Some employers pay subsidies to finance a public transport service that is useful to the employer, for example one that stops outside the factory gate.
If an employer pays such a subsidy to a local public bus service to transport employees to and from work, there is normally no tax or NICs to pay as long as the service is available to all employees.
I suppose some one needs to push the issue and make it more open.
"Most new developments like this are now obliged to include public transport provision for a set period, but if car parking space is provided as well, workers will often vote with their feet"
The set period is normally no more than 12 months and the service s normally finish after that. In most cases no more than a token services is provided so they are little used.
The reality is bus companies have given up on providing bus services for commuters , frequently the peak services are less frequent that the off peak.
Most bus services are of no use at all to most working people so very few use them. It is mainly people working in retail in the town centres but even there fewer and fewer use them as shop hours are more flexibale nowadays but the bus service are not as they pretty much only operate 7am to 6pm and with no services or very limited serivces on a Sunday
Bus services now pretty much only provided for concessionary pass holders & schoolchildren and they have given up on the rest of the market if they ever even bothered.
Excellent information on such an interesting and important issue!
Adopting a more rational approach towards public transportation is vital in order to change the living standard in modern hugely-populated world cities.
My personal attitude: Leave your car and walk or use your bicycle as much as you can.
Public transportation schemes like "Park-and-Ride" currently used in the UK, allow and facilitate the combined and smooth use of cars with public transport.
An increasing number of car owners have realized that using their cars to drive small distances within cities has become extremely time-consuming (due to traffic jams, difficulty to find a free parking space, etc.) and expensive, and, as a result, they have opted for using public transport, walking or cycling.
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