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Arriva Buses (including Greenline)

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arrivamatt

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This is something that in my opinion, the industry isn't very good at though. As a lot more people shop in out of town retail parks, services to these retail parks are generally shocking. A lot more people live in new housing estates too and these are often poorly served. All bus operators want someone else to pay them to serve these areas but if it goes well, they want all the profit but if it doesn't go well, least it's not their funds. Workplaces, there are significantly more people now working at big name warehouses and yet with Milton Keynes as the exception, big box industrial is rarely served, especially at shift times.

I'd also say that in some instances, Arriva actively doesn't want people to go to major places. Cheshire Oaks, a shopping centre with an annual footfall of nearly 8 million. They lobbied Flintshire Council to get the 5 tender removed from Cheshire Oaks. In Leicester, at Fosse Park, buses to the internal stops are shocking. Inside Fosse Park is now an intercity coach hub with 30+ departures per day from there. Plus now there is AirCoach running hourly. And yet all that goes into Fosse Park is the 104 and X6. The 50 and X84 stop outside and so for people wanting certain parts of Fosse Park, they have to hike around the retail park, at which point it's easier to drive.

Hopefully this won't be considered returning to or digressing into the retail park question again, but can answer some of the questions from a both a customer and bus network design perspective to keep us on-topic.

There are several striking similarities between both Cheshire Oaks and Fosse Park. It'd be difficult to argue that both locations are car-centric by design, situated near to several motorway junctions on the very outskirts of a major locale. The former is served by a multitude of other operator's interurban services that can call, quite logically, with a minimal time penalty and without requiring additional resource. Service 5, operated by Arriva, runs at a lower frequency, is a tendered service and still calls relatively close to the park, but by glance of the timetable, it doesn't appear to have the bandwidth to do anything further.

Unreliability is a big issue there but why is the solution to that remove buses from a huge destination? The solution should be to install bus priority and make it easier for buses to access. There are a good few options for easy ways to improve access to Fosse Park so that more buses can serve it without a huge time penalty. All it needs is operators, the councils and Fosse Park to work together rather than continuing this spiral of decline where everyone just removes the bus from a major demand point just because there can sometimes be a few delays.

Fosse Park is well served by the 50 and 104 for local traffic, and X6/X84 for customers travelling from further afield. We've experimented with a number of different ideas on how we can penetrate Fosse Park better, but the reality is that sending the 50 either into or through the park would require additional resource just to bolster the existing timetable given the congestion into the car parks, exacerbated at this time of year, so would disagree that driving to and around the park is quicker than walking the short distance from the bus stops. You'll be aware that the gravity of the retail presence has shifted since the redevelopment of Fosse Park West and the construction of the new Everards Brewery (if you haven't been, do go - it's brilliant!) where we've seen our customers utiilise the Sainsbury's stop as a central hub, from which virtually all of the retail outlets are within a <400m radius, the industry-wide benchmark for walking proximity to bus stops, and you could argue that this provides easier access to more of the space than the M&S/ASDA stops. We also considered that whilst Fosse Park is a major trip generator, we must consider the market as a whole, and any time penalty incurred by diverting the service would be a major detractor for our customers in Enderby and Narborough.

Only today, we met with the travel planning team who work closely with Fosse Park, and we engage with them very regularly as a key stakeholder. The missing element you haven't quoted would be cost - the requirement to increase road capacity to give us better bus priority. Who pays for this? There's an appetite from all parties to encourage modal shift for staff and customers but retail also has its challenges; particularly as the park would have to balance recovering said costs with keeping tenancy rates attractive, which may compromise occupancy. Fosse Park is private land (owned by The Crown Estate) so outside of the Council's remit. It's a complex issue, but pleasingly, we've seen employee modal share increase at Fosse Park incrementally over the past four years as a result of continued network improvements and stakeholder engagement.

The huge Caterpillar site at Desford, unserved by buses. Next, Enderby has to be propped up by worker buses due to the lack of normal buses. Magna Park only has half decent buses because the park fund them. Huge housing estates in Derby are left unserved. Major theme parks - Sullivans, Reading Buses and to some extent Go South Coast have got huge business serving theme parks, but there are far too many attractions like this. Operators aren't bothered with Drayton Manor having nothing and Twinlakes having the stupidly confusing 5A for a few weeks of the year. There are many more examples but you get what I am saying.

The wider point around "Arriva doesn't want people to go to major places" with your other examples; sorry, but there's evidence to refute this statement and not sure I do get what you're saying. Drayton Manor is served by Tamworth's 110 up to every 15 minutes, albeit a short walk from Fazeley Square, where we've sold travel and entrance tickets as a combined bundle. Clearly, the 5A from Leicester to Twinlakes operates during the summer school holidays as it wouldn't be commercially viable to go there during school term time - as most of the target audience of the theme park will be in school. Magna Park in Lutterworth is only funded for core shift journeys - but we operate there commercially for the entirety of the day to compliment this offering and to offer more customers, more choice. Caterpillar (and neighbouring Neovia) has been served by Arriva in some way in the recent past, and unfortunately, it wasn't commercially sustainable - but we had a go. We approached Next in Enderby, but they needed something more bespoke that didn't fit with our overall proposition. Derby has a very comprehensive bus network for a city of its size, well served by multiple operators. Like every bus operator in the country in the deregulated market; if there's a commercial opportunity that's is viable, then it'll be evaluated and pursued.

The bigger problems with the buses around Fosse park is that with the exception of the X84 the services are so unreliable as to be almost unusuable and take so long that it can be as quick to walk due to a combination of circuitous routing and buses regularly having to wait for time for much of the day.
Personally I would only be serving Causeway Lane on the way into Leicester with services leaving St Margaret’s via the back exit and running nonstop to Jubilee Square on the way out and would also look into introducing set down only restrictions as far as KFC on the 50 to move local passengers onto the 51.

With the exception of serving the residential roads of Narborough Road South, the 50 takes broadly the same route that the car would take. Without quoting the exact figure, route 50 operates above the depot average in terms of on time performance. I hear the ask about the speedier routing out of Leicester; but the omitted bus stops are more popular boarding locations than Jubilee Square. By your suggestion of moving customers onto the 51 and introducing set down only restrictions, they'd effectively receive half of the frequency assuming that they're only travelling on the common section of route only from the city centre, which isn't necessarily true.

The thing about Leicester in particular is that to take the 50 for example the buses that operated on the route now were for the most part built before those that operated on the route 15 years ago. Whilst investment is often focussed on certain routes in most areas each time the flagship routes get new buses the displaced ones typically cascade down the routes with the oldest ones being withdrawn whereas in Leicester the last few rounds of investment have seen some coridors be downgraded in absolute terms with midlife buses being shipped out and end of life ones cascaded from other routes being shipped in in their place.

The 50/51 corridor should be allocated E400MMCs - the newest in the fleet. Fully appreciate that this isn't always quite the reality at the moment, where allocation has had its challenges whilst electric infrastructure is being installed at Thurmaston, but service delivery hasn't been compromised. The corridor will be one of the beneficiaries of brand new Wright Electroliners over the next few weeks.
 
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markymark2000

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There are several striking similarities between both Cheshire Oaks and Fosse Park. It'd be difficult to argue that both locations are car-centric by design, situated near to several motorway junctions on the very outskirts of a major locale. The former is served by a multitude of other operator's interurban services that can call, quite logically, with a minimal time penalty and without requiring additional resource.
They are more built for cars but also due to generally poorer transport links, people are pushed more into their cars. One thing that helps no one is car centric planning combined with poor (in the grand scheme of things) transport links. There is limited potential for modal shift in some cases.

Service 5, operated by Arriva, runs at a lower frequency, is a tendered service and still calls relatively close to the park, but by glance of the timetable, it doesn't appear to have the bandwidth to do anything further.
Arriva was lobbying for it. It used to be the SP1 and SP2 which worked best, then it became the big 5, then Arriva kept trying to get various parts taken out so they could become the sole operator in some areas and also reduce the tender to 2 buses rather than 3. The timetable is padded too so the bus can sit around sometimes a fair bit. Arriva also never tried to get a new bus stop installed near Queensferry Asda which would have saved about 4 minutes off the journey time. Arriva never liked Cheshire Oaks due to a local gentleman's agreement not to step on Stagecoach area and Cheshire Oaks is a Stagecoach area, anyone stepping onto eachothers area means the other retaliates and starts playing silly sods, we saw that pre Covid (bigger story, full thing probably not relevant to this discussion)

from which virtually all of the retail outlets are within a <400m radius, the industry-wide benchmark for walking proximity to bus stops
Even those within a 400m radius, people don't tend to walk in a straight line though and so the distance can be far higher. Asdas entrance to the 50 bus stop towards Leicester is over 600m. Primark to the 50 stop towards Enderby is 500. We could go on all day about the silly fact that it is a 400m radius rather than actual walking distance, it's been used to justify so many car centric developments.

Only today, we met with the travel planning team who work closely with Fosse Park, and we engage with them very regularly as a key stakeholder. The missing element you haven't quoted would be cost - the requirement to increase road capacity to give us better bus priority. Who pays for this? There's an appetite from all parties to encourage modal shift for staff and customers but retail also has its challenges; particularly as the park would have to balance recovering said costs with keeping tenancy rates attractive, which may compromise occupancy. Fosse Park is private land (owned by The Crown Estate) so outside of the Council's remit. It's a complex issue, but pleasingly, we've seen employee modal share increase at Fosse Park incrementally over the past four years as a result of continued network improvements and stakeholder engagement.
For the cost, surely it could be shared. The council wants less cars on the road in general and want more people on buses so that they have to subsidise them less, Arriva wants more passengers so they get more revenue, Crown Estate needs more people on buses as that then means more car parking spaces are available and with more spaces and fewer cars, short term that means more people would travel there as the current situation causes induced demand. Overall that means higher visitor numbers for the park which helps them to attract higher rents and rates. If there is a better interchange style facility that means that coach passengers will find it more pleasant waiting there and so will potentially spend a little more while they are there (the current stops mean you are likely to get to the stop as close to departure as possible because of the lack of facilities). Everyone can benefit from it, just no one wants to put the money in. Everyone wants someone else to pay for things which will increase their profits. Same issue with almost all things for public transport.

The wider point around "Arriva doesn't want people to go to major places" with your other examples; sorry, but there's strong disagreement and not sure I do get what you're saying. Drayton Manor is served by Tamworth's 110 up to every 15 minutes, albeit a short walk from Fazeley Square, where we've sold travel and entrance tickets as a combined bundle. Clearly, the 5A from Leicester to Twinlakes operates during the summer school holidays as it wouldn't be commercially viable to go there during school term time - as most of the target audience of the theme park will be in school. Magna Park in Lutterworth is only funded for core shift journeys - but we operate there commercially for the entirety of the day to compliment this offering and to offer more customers, more choice. Caterpillar (and neighbouring Neovia) has been served by Arriva in some way in the recent past, and unfortunately, it wasn't commercially sustainable - but we had a go. We approached Next in Enderby, but they needed something more bespoke that didn't fit with our overall proposition. Derby has a very comprehensive bus network for a city of its size, well served by multiple operators. Like every bus operator in the country in the deregulated market; if there's a commercial opportunity that's is viable, then it'll be evaluated and pursued.
Drayton Manor a short walk? It's 1.8km away, take 30 minutes to walk according to Google. Not many people are seeing that as a viable option. That is the equivalent of terminating your buses at Leicester Royal Infirmary but claiming you go 'not far from St Margaret's Bus Station'. (Yes, I checked, google says 1.7km for LRI to St Margarets)
Twinlakes, I agree with what you are saying on the overall level of service, it is the timetable that makes it overly confusing though for passengers on the 5A as, the bus suddenly goes off a completely different way to the other 300 or so days of the year and ruins the consistency of the normal 5A timetable. Just 2 random gaps on the Melton loop so that the bus can serve Twinlakes.
Magna Park, a huge site with so many staff finishing at the same sort of time, how does this not pay commercially? If you can't make a bus pay with that many warehouses kicking out at the same time, something is wrong. If the routes are right, you should be able to fill double deckers there. There's other businesses and areas which can make buses pay from just having 1 Amazon warehouse kick out and yet for some reason wherever Arriva is the operator, they can never make industrial work pay. That is an issue with Arriva as plenty of others manage to make it work.
Caterpillar/Neovia, again, big warehouse with a lot of staff kick out at a specific time, how can you not make that work unless your routes don't go where the staff want to go. Next in Enderby, Next as a business may want different things doesn't mean it shouldn't be served though, their staff may still want it, just whoever you spoke to may want different things. Derby may have a 'comprehensive bus network', I suppose that makes up for so many housing estates not having a bus. We have a comprehensive bus network, oh, just walk 20 minutes and then you can access it. Wonderful, very attractive.
Of course I have only picked up a few examples for each point, there are many more around the UK where places are unserved the bus network just want people to come to them, they don't want to go to the customers. Unless buses can become some kind of TikTok trend and everyone starts using them for fun, buses need to go to where people live, people work, people shop and people want to go. That's a basic thing, currently buses don't do that for far too many people and as we are seeing in Leicester and various other areas, 'travel solutions' companies and technology firms swoop in and can take hundreds of people to certain sites, all people who could be on the core bus network but aren't because operators fail to accommodate demands that are there.
 

GusB

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The recent news about the closure of ArrivaClick Watford has been moved to a separate thread:

This thread has been locked. It's a single thread covering quite a broad topic and as such it has become rather unwieldy.

As and when any other news concerning Arriva crops up, feel free to start new threads on an issue-by-issue basis. I would, however, ask forum members not to start new threads for the various Arriva operating companies unless there is something specific to discuss.

Thanks, everyone.
 
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