Bus cancellations in TfL land..

[danielcanning]

Most Bus companies are having to cancel many of their services due to a lack of drivers, but not in London. Why is this?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most Bus companies are having to cancel many of their services due to a lack of drivers, but not in London. Why is this?

Do you mean withdrawal of services, i.e. "route 9 will no longer operate from 31/8/22"? They have been doing, it is massively controversial. Though the cause is more funding than lack of staff. I suspect the latter is mitigated in London by just how many millions of people live there!

If you mean random cancellations i.e. "the 10:25 journey on route 9 will not operate today", they probably are but it's not as visible as most London services operate on headways rather than the timetable. Almost nobody is going to notice the difference between a 5bph and a 4bph service if there isn't a timetable published.

 

[danielcanning]

Do you mean withdrawal of services, i.e. "route 9 will no longer operate from 31/8/22"? They have been doing, it is massively controversial. Though the cause is more funding than lack of staff. I suspect the latter is mitigated in London by just how many millions of people live there!

If you mean random cancellations i.e. "the 10:25 journey on route 9 will not operate today", they probably are but it's not as visible as most London services operate on headways rather than the timetable. Almost nobody is going to notice the difference between a 5bph and a 4bph service if there isn't a timetable published.

The second reason, there just doesn’t seem to be the shortage of drivers in London as there is in the rest of the country…

 

[Snow1964]

The most recent statistics are for Q1 22-23 (April-June 2022)

Looks like average was 97.72% of mileage operated

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/2022-23-q1-mileage-operated.pdf

 

[Busaholic]

There were 273 fewer buses in the fleets of London bus operators in March 2022 compared to March 2021, whereas the reduction the previous year only amounted to 34. In the six months since March more routes have suffered frequency reductions, though I have no precise figures.

You can work out roughly how many fewer drivers will therefore be required, spread over all fleets in all areas of London.

In addition, London drivers earn 'top whack'. quite rightly imo, and the various companies are competing with each other for staff. Given that no routes are being run on a conventially 'commercial' basis but to a TfL imposed contract, you can understand why a company like Go-Ahead has driver training buses on the streets of Plymouth hoping to persuade suitable applicants to transfer to their London subsidiaries.

 

[busesrusuk]

There are shortages in the London bus companies, however, that has been the case for the past 25 years that I worked in this field in London (now retired). However, garages have been adept at covering mileage, helped in no small part by some generous rest day rates (compared to the provinces and the caveat that some companies are more generous than others). Many of the recruits coming into the industry are/were keen to work extra hours to bolster their income so rest day working was quite high.

As others have said, with high frequencies the loss of a journey is not as noticeable to Jo public. Add in the service cuts that have been implemented over the last 18 months to 2 years and it has eased the pressure. Also, most London companies didn't shut down their recruitment efforts during Covid and would have picked up quite a few applicants as a consequence; there is nothing like a good recession (or Pandemic!) to see the applicant pool increase significantly!

The winning/losing of contracts also has an impact on individual companies in managing their staff positions.

This will, of course, run its course and shortages will become more prevalent in the not to distant future, especially if the proposed cuts do not take effect. If they do happen as proposed there will be some significant reductions in staff requirements in some companies. For every bus added or removed the general rule is it will add/lose 2.5 to 3 drivers per bus (on a normal 7 day operation).

 

[Edsmith]

Most Bus companies are having to cancel many of their services due to a lack of drivers, but not in London. Why is this?

There are driver shortages in pretty much all industries largely caused by the pandemic.

 

[Goldfish62]

If you're talking about missing journeys due to no driver being available it's largely due to how services are managed. For example, on a high frequency route scheduled at every 10 minutes, if there's a gap due to a missing gap the headway will often be extended between buses around the gap - in the very simplest terms the idea is that by running the service at every 12 minutes rather than every 10 minutes for an hour fills the gap and the extra couple of minutes between buses *should be* barely noticed by passengers, although there's an inevitable impact on EWT and lost mileage.

Low frequency "timetabled" routes are a different matter - no scope there to even out the headway. Missing bus = gap in service.

Oh, and yes, there are large shortages at all operators across London - larger than what has been the prevailing norm.