Decline in UK bus services

[Lewisham2221]

Running off on a tangent from the First Potteries thread:

I read this thread with sadness having been born in Alsager and first got involved with buses - not First but good old PMT. I am of the view now, living in Northampton, that there are few destinations where lots of people actually want to go. e.g. large factories or employers, shopping centres. In any street like ours nearly everyone goes to work in different directions. When they socialise they go to different places - the town centre is no longer the mecca for many people's night out. My point is, perhaps not very well made, is that these days buses need to run services from every street (ideally house) to everywhere else in (and out of town) to meet this need. In theory this can only be achieved by making two bus journeys - one into town say and one out and folks will not do that. Private hire or private car achieves quicker, faster, convenient, practical and cheaper results.
I do not know the answer, decades of planning blight, random housing developments, emphasis on cars has contributed and is not easily fixed. Taking political control does not resolve the problem, rate payers take the risk, the services often restricted to political maps and not natural destinations. (Is Newcastle U L and Stoke under same political control now?)Politicians will also need to take more drastic and unpopular action if they are committed to buses which they will fear will rebound at the elections. Furthermore, they need to look at the impact these cuts have on the elderly, handicapped and other socially limited groups but since when is that a vote winner?
This may sound a rant and irrelevant to First Potteries but imho it is. First have to operate in this environment and it is not easy. Not that I have any sympathy for First but that is a personal view!

This. This. And more this.

Whilst it's very easy to point the finger at First for the decline of bus services in North Staffordshire, it's also worth noting that overall number of buses operated by other operators in the area has also declined massively. If everything is as "obviously profitable" as some people like to make out, why is no other operator leaping in to tap into that? Why are others, such as D&G, waiting for First and the other large groups to throw in the towel, before tentatively stepping in to offer "replacement" services, often at lower frequency, later starts and earlier finishes, barely existent Saturday services and non-existent Sunday services? Surely that in itself should be telling people that buses just aren't as profitable as they like to think.

Arriva also jumped ship in Winsford (Mid/South Cheshire ops - Crewe/Macclesfield/Northwich), Cannock (and Stafford) and Burton-on-Trent, with the latter seeing the operation sold from Arriva to Midland Classic (Centrebus group?) and then sold on again to Rotala. Even "the really good bus company" Trent Barton couldn't make Buxton/Dove Holes work and sold it Centrebus.

As @SLC001 rightly points out above, outside of the major cities (Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol etc), the city centre just isn't the target destination for passengers anymore. It's easy to look at a passing bus, see a dozen or so "bums on seats" and assume that the service is profitable because people are using it. That simply isn't the case, I'm afraid. Similarly, travelling on a bus that is full and standing during your commute doesn't automatically mean the service is well used and profitable for the whole day. Making a few educated guesses and assumptions with regards to operating costs and income, there's only really two ways, IMO, for a commercial bus service to operate profitably and sustainably:

• The service needs to depart "full and standing" from it's origin on pretty much every journey, dropping off passengers steadily on the journey, with perhaps a few intermediate passengers. On the return journey, the bus would need to pick up passengers throughout the journey, arriving at the terminus with a full bus.

or

• The service needs to start with 20-30 passengers on board, with a steady flow of boarding and alighting passengers so that total passenger turnover for the journey is somewhere around the 150%-200% mark.

There may, of course, be some variations and alternatives to the above, but I reckon anything carrying less than 50 passengers per hour is on shaky ground. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that so much of the country has any sort of bus industry left at all.

 

[nw1]

Running off on a tangent from the First Potteries thread:

This. This. And more this.

Whilst it's very easy to point the finger at First for the decline of bus services in North Staffordshire, it's also worth noting that overall number of buses operated by other operators in the area has also declined massively. If everything is as "obviously profitable" as some people like to make out, why is no other operator leaping in to tap into that? Why are others, such as D&G, waiting for First and the other large groups to throw in the towel, before tentatively stepping in to offer "replacement" services, often at lower frequency, later starts and earlier finishes, barely existent Saturday services and non-existent Sunday services? Surely that in itself should be telling people that buses just aren't as profitable as they like to think.

Arriva also jumped ship in Winsford (Mid/South Cheshire ops - Crewe/Macclesfield/Northwich), Cannock (and Stafford) and Burton-on-Trent, with the latter seeing the operation sold from Arriva to Midland Classic (Centrebus group?) and then sold on again to Rotala. Even "the really good bus company" Trent Barton couldn't make Buxton/Dove Holes work and sold it Centrebus.

As @SLC001 rightly points out above, outside of the major cities (Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol etc), the city centre just isn't the target destination for passengers anymore. It's easy to look at a passing bus, see a dozen or so "bums on seats" and assume that the service is profitable because people are using it. That simply isn't the case, I'm afraid. Similarly, travelling on a bus that is full and standing during your commute doesn't automatically mean the service is well used and profitable for the whole day. Making a few educated guesses and assumptions with regards to operating costs and income, there's only really two ways, IMO, for a commercial bus service to operate profitably and sustainably:

• The service needs to depart "full and standing" from it's origin on pretty much every journey, dropping off passengers steadily on the journey, with perhaps a few intermediate passengers. On the return journey, the bus would need to pick up passengers throughout the journey, arriving at the terminus with a full bus.

or

• The service needs to start with 20-30 passengers on board, with a steady flow of boarding and alighting passengers so that total passenger turnover for the journey is somewhere around the 150%-200% mark.

There may, of course, be some variations and alternatives to the above, but I reckon anything carrying less than 50 passengers per hour is on shaky ground. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that so much of the country has any sort of bus industry left at all.

If it's not feasible for a bus to run half-full, does that not just say something about the funding model for buses being wrong? In other words, government does not see them as enough of a social need to support them?

Should buses have to be profitable? Or is that just one particular political viewpoint?

Even in the 80s, perhaps even while still NBC but certainly in the very early post deregulation period, I remember seeing and using half-full buses.

"Full and standing" should not be something to aim at, It's uncomfortable for the passenger at best, dangerous at worst. If passengers have to stand on a regular basis, it's obvious that additional services or bigger buses are needed and if that costs money, so be it. If the bus company cannot afford it, government should step in with the funding.

I do find it odd that in an era when green issues and climate change are supposed to be important, there is not more importance placed on preserving or even improving public transport. (That said I do welcome measures such as the £2 fare cap).

 

[Lewisham2221]

If it's not feasible for a bus to run half-full, does that not just say something about the funding model for buses being wrong? In other words, government does not see them as enough of a social need to support them?

Does government want to properly fund  anything?

Should buses have to be profitable? Or is that just one particular political viewpoint?

For as long as it is left to private sector companies to operate them within the deregulated environment, then yes, absolutely. Whether that is the correct way to operate buses is indeed a political argument.

Even in the 80s, perhaps even while still NBC but certainly in the very early post deregulation period, I remember seeing and using half-full buses.

Funding and operating costs have changed massively since then, unfortunately. Where I am, the number of services and journeys which received local authority subsidy was astronomical even 15 years ago compared to today.

"Full and standing" should not be something to aim at, It's uncomfortable for the passenger at best, dangerous at worst. If passengers have to stand on a regular basis, it's obvious that additional services or bigger buses are needed and if that costs money, so be it. If the bus company cannot afford it, government should step in with the funding.

I don't disagree, but I don't doubt that many would disagree with taxpayers money being used to fund a clearly profitable, well used service.

I do find it odd that in an era when green issues and climate change are supposed to be important, there is not more importance placed on preserving or even improving public transport. (That said I do welcome measures such as the £2 fare cap).

Agreed.

 

[markymark2000]

Whilst it's very easy to point the finger at First for the decline of bus services in North Staffordshire, it's also worth noting that overall number of buses operated by other operators in the area has also declined massively. If everything is as "obviously profitable" as some people like to make out, why is no other operator leaping in to tap into that? Why are others, such as D&G, waiting for First and the other large groups to throw in the towel, before tentatively stepping in to offer "replacement" services, often at lower frequency, later starts and earlier finishes, barely existent Saturday services and non-existent Sunday services? Surely that in itself should be telling people that buses just aren't as profitable as they like to think.

As I said in one of the other staffordshire threads. Scraggs aren't bothered about buses. Stantons are just running a few tenders but their main stuff is the contract coach work. D&G tend not to compete and so won't jump in until they can be the saviour. None of these operators are actively trying to get people onto buses as is proven with the generally low quality vehicles which keep being sent out. Stantons never tried to join the £2 fare scheme and only today joined the Stoke Smart multi operator scheme. D&G, Stantons and Scraggs have zero care for making it easier to travel by bus and encouraging bus travel. They are all in 'plod on and hope that things change' mode. Minimal effort, minimal return. Then they all run off whinging for more funding to keep services running when their lack of actions come back to bite them. Huge lack of trying and lack of ambition. No entrepreneurial spirit.

I think adding to this, First has a poor history with competition and so it's not worth trying to complete because it ends badly. Firsts common response to competition was always flood the corridor and so everyone lost out. Why put yourself into a situation and risk First just flooding the route and you lose hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Arriva also jumped ship in Winsford (Mid/South Cheshire ops - Crewe/Macclesfield/Northwich), Cannock (and Stafford) and Burton-on-Trent, with the latter seeing the operation sold from Arriva to Midland Classic (Centrebus group?) and then sold on again to Rotala. Even "the really good bus company" Trent Barton couldn't make Buxton/Dove Holes work and sold it Centrebus.

What works for one company, won't work for another. Pay and conditions could be a big thing. In Arrivas case, they are heavily unionised which often means higher wages in comparison to their competitors. The conditions are also often not too bad. This won't help viability for Arriva as they will need more passengers to make a route pay it's way versus D&G in Crewe who pay slightly less and I believe have slightly worse conditions so they will need less passengers to make the route viable. Because of Arrivas pay and conditions, it often makes them less competitive at tender stage as well so you can't even use contracts to cross subsidise commercial work. Finally, Arrivas route viability calculation makes a lot of viable routes, unviable.

As @SLC001 rightly points out above, outside of the major cities (Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol etc), the city centre just isn't the target destination for passengers anymore. It's easy to look at a passing bus, see a dozen or so "bums on seats" and assume that the service is profitable because people are using it. That simply isn't the case, I'm afraid. Similarly, travelling on a bus that is full and standing during your commute doesn't automatically mean the service is well used and profitable for the whole day. Making a few educated guesses and assumptions with regards to operating costs and income, there's only really two ways, IMO, for a commercial bus service to operate profitably and sustainably:

• The service needs to depart "full and standing" from it's origin on pretty much every journey, dropping off passengers steadily on the journey, with perhaps a few intermediate passengers. On the return journey, the bus would need to pick up passengers throughout the journey, arriving at the terminus with a full bus.

or

• The service needs to start with 20-30 passengers on board, with a steady flow of boarding and alighting passengers so that total passenger turnover for the journey is somewhere around the 150%-200% mark.

There may, of course, be some variations and alternatives to the above, but I reckon anything carrying less than 50 passengers per hour is on shaky ground. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that so much of the country has any sort of bus industry left at all.

The number of passengers is no good as the value of the passenger is very different. A concessionary pass holder is worth less than £1.50 whereas a fare paying passenger could be worth £3 or more. The route length is also a big factor.

You do not need buses to be full and standing for profitability. If it's full of concessionary pass holders perhaps but in general, that couldn't be further from the truth.

If it's not feasible for a bus to run half-full, does that not just say something about the funding model for buses being wrong? In other words, government does not see them as enough of a social need to support them?

Well, Yes. The funding model that needs to change is the dismal concessionary pass reimbursement. No one with the power to push for change will fight for it though as it would be biting the hand that feeds them so to speak. Government will try and avoid doing it because it would mean them paying up a lot more. The concessionary reimbursement is far too low for operators on routes which are higher amounts of pass holders and the other issue is, to get higher conc pass reimbursement, fares have to be higher and so the constant fare rises are because of the stupid reimbursement which forces operators to put fares to silly levels just to get a half decent rate for conc passes. Essentially meaning that fare payers are put off using buses because it's too expensive but it the fares aren't stupidly high, the concessionary pass reimbursement is not worth it.


The amount of poor quality operators has vastly increased since Covid as well and then people wonder why patronage is lower. Stagecoach South Wales was cancelling 700 trips per week on their network and even now there are endless cancellations, yet they are complaining about patroange being lower and costs rising so fares are going up and the network cut back. Why are passengers going to return to a network which has 700 cancellations per week? Sticking with Stagecoach, Merseyside has done various changes to the network at the start of Covid and now passengers don't want to travel on the new network because the benefits of the old network were faster journeys and higher spec vehicles. Now it's low spec clapped out vehicles on a slower route. You can't blame passengers for not wanting to come back when you have bus companies who are doing stupid things like the above and running down their networks. It's an endless cycle because bus companies want everyone else to fund their ventures. Bus managers are stuck in the stone ages believing everyone wants to go to town centres and councillors and council staff stuck in the stone ages just keep funding what worked years ago. No one wants to adapt the network so that it takes passengers where they want to go, the networks are designed around where the bus companies and councils want people to go and sadly that doesn't match where people want to go.


Add into this the political twerps who keep trying to make a name for themselves. Whether it be egotistical twerps like Andy Burnham, Steve Rotherham and Tracy Brabin who do all that they can to criticise buses because 'everything privately owned/ran is bad'. Why would anyone try to start getting on buses when these mayors keep bashing them. It's hardly encouraging is it? Tories playing political games with funding too leaving funding announcements until last minute.


If bus managers, Central Govt and councils continue in their current ways, there will not be many buses left in a few years.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The amount of poor quality operators has vastly increased since Covid as well and then people wonder why patronage is lower. Stagecoach South Wales was cancelling 700 trips per week on their network and even now there are endless cancellations, yet they are complaining about patroange being lower and costs rising so fares are going up and the network cut back. Why are passengers going to return to a network which has 700 cancellations per week? Sticking with Stagecoach, Merseyside has done various changes to the network at the start of Covid and now passengers don't want to travel on the new network because the benefits of the old network were faster journeys and higher spec vehicles. Now it's low spec clapped out vehicles on a slower route.

To me Stagecoach has, pretty much everywhere I see it, totally lost its way without Souter holding the reins, and is now in a spiral of terminal decline to the levels of mediocrity shown by e.g. Arriva, and First is perhaps more "on the up" with some good promotional approaches.

There's no better example than the Oxford-Cambridge X5 - once a premium route with very nice coaches, and now lopped at Bedford and using a random mix of city-spec and middle-distance spec double deckers in either "Fisher Price" or "school bus" liveries. I've now done Oxford and back, and I shan't be doing it again, ever - it was just grim in that kind of vehicle as it bucked, jolted and rattled its uncomfortable way around the windy country lanes it serves. The "other X5" - Penrith-Cockermouth - is almost similar.

I do get the accessibility issues with coaches, but this isn't just a downgrade to buses, it's a downgrade to "don't care" - it's just truly horrible to use now. I get that the route's future is probably quite limited with East West Rail coming, but they could surely have continued to make it less of a distress purchase for the remaining few years, at least bothering to brand the vehicles and make sure the vehicles used were of the highest spec, even if the coaches did have to be sold with the Falcon service (which I believe is where they went).

A route that was built up over many years and highly successful is now close to death. £2 might be excellent value, but two hours on a city bus is just not a sellable experience to anyone other than those for whom price is the only consideration. It might work for e.g. the Transdev Lancashire long distance routes, but those are very high spec city buses (not really city buses bar the chassis and body) and they spend most of their time on good quality roads and motorways, not country lanes, so the relatively basic suspension of a city bus isn't a major issue.

 

[MotCO]

If it's not feasible for a bus to run half-full, does that not just say something about the funding model for buses being wrong? In other words, government does not see them as enough of a social need to support them?

Should buses have to be profitable? Or is that just one particular political viewpoint?

Even in the 80s, perhaps even while still NBC but certainly in the very early post deregulation period, I remember seeing and using half-full buses.

"Full and standing" should not be something to aim at, It's uncomfortable for the passenger at best, dangerous at worst. If passengers have to stand on a regular basis, it's obvious that additional services or bigger buses are needed and if that costs money, so be it. If the bus company cannot afford it, government should step in with the funding.

"Full and standing" can also mean that the bus stops at every stop to unload, making it a very long journey in terms of time for those that travel for most of the route.

 

[Lewisham2221]

As I said in one of the other staffordshire threads. Scraggs aren't bothered about buses. Stantons are just running a few tenders but their main stuff is the contract coach work. D&G tend not to compete and so won't jump in until they can be the saviour. None of these operators are actively trying to get people onto buses as is proven with the generally low quality vehicles which keep being sent out. Stantons never tried to join the £2 fare scheme and only today joined the Stoke Smart multi operator scheme. D&G, Stantons and Scraggs have zero care for making it easier to travel by bus and encouraging bus travel. They are all in 'plod on and hope that things change' mode. Minimal effort, minimal return. Then they all run off whinging for more funding to keep services running when their lack of actions come back to bite them. Huge lack of trying and lack of ambition. No entrepreneurial spirit.

Exactly my point. If running buses "properly" was the gold mine that many try to suggest it is, they would all be queuing up to have a go. But it isn't, so they aren't. Instead, they are doing what makes them money.

I think adding to this, First has a poor history with competition and so it's not worth trying to complete because it ends badly. Firsts common response to competition was always flood the corridor and so everyone lost out. Why put yourself into a situation and risk First just flooding the route and you lose hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Hasn't really been the case for a decade or more. In pretty much every example of meaningful competition I can think of in the past 10-15 years (maybe longer), First have either held out until the competitor backed off, or scaled back and/or eventually withdrawn.

What works for one company, won't work for another. Pay and conditions could be a big thing. In Arrivas case, they are heavily unionised which often means higher wages in comparison to their competitors. The conditions are also often not too bad. This won't help viability for Arriva as they will need more passengers to make a route pay it's way versus D&G in Crewe who pay slightly less and I believe have slightly worse conditions so they will need less passengers to make the route viable. Because of Arrivas pay and conditions, it often makes them less competitive at tender stage as well so you can't even use contracts to cross subsidise commercial work.

All costs which have massively increased over the same that subsidies have reduced.

Finally, Arrivas route viability calculation makes a lot of viable routes, unviable.

I'd love to see on what basis people, including yourself, are claiming routes to be "viable" when the very people actually operating them say the opposite.

The number of passengers is no good as the value of the passenger is very different. A concessionary pass holder is worth less than £1.50 whereas a fare paying passenger could be worth £3 or more. The route length is also a big factor.

You do not need buses to be full and standing for profitability. If it's full of concessionary pass holders perhaps but in general, that couldn't be further from the truth.

You calculate an average fare per passenger. I dare say you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere where the majority of people on board are paying £3 per journey. Throw in day/week/month/annual etc tickets, and I'm pretty god damn sure that you're going to be looking at each passenger being worth far closer to £1 per journey than £3! A 30 mile, 3 hour round trip ain't making money if it's carrying little more than a dozen people - unless those passengers are being replaced at a rate of about 10x.

Well, Yes. The funding model that needs to change is the dismal concessionary pass reimbursement. No one with the power to push for change will fight for it though as it would be biting the hand that feeds them so to speak. Government will try and avoid doing it because it would mean them paying up a lot more. The concessionary reimbursement is far too low for operators on routes which are higher amounts of pass holders and the other issue is, to get higher conc pass reimbursement, fares have to be higher and so the constant fare rises are because of the stupid reimbursement which forces operators to put fares to silly levels just to get a half decent rate for conc passes. Essentially meaning that fare payers are put off using buses because it's too expensive but it the fares aren't stupidly high, the concessionary pass reimbursement is not worth it.

The near blanket cutting of local authority subsidies for evening and weekend services needs reversing too. Operators tried to keep things going, but the numbers just don't add up. The downside, of course, is that this then has a knock-on effect to Mon-Fri daytime patronage. But if the Mon-Fri daytime services are only just generating the revenue to keep themselves going, they certainly can't prop up evening and weekend services. But then the Mon-Fri revenue drops as a result, so more fringe services get cut, and repeat...

The amount of poor quality operators has vastly increased since Covid as well and then people wonder why patronage is lower. Stagecoach South Wales was cancelling 700 trips per week on their network and even now there are endless cancellations, yet they are complaining about patroange being lower and costs rising so fares are going up and the network cut back. Why are passengers going to return to a network which has 700 cancellations per week?

Operators can't afford to keep up with increased pay and conditions. So drivers have left the industry in droves. There's no obvious way to combat that without additional support. So fares get increased and services get cut to try and balance the books.

Sticking with Stagecoach, Merseyside has done various changes to the network at the start of Covid and now passengers don't want to travel on the new network because the benefits of the old network were faster journeys and higher spec vehicles. Now it's low spec clapped out vehicles on a slower route. You can't blame passengers for not wanting to come back when you have bus companies who are doing stupid things like the above and running down their networks. It's an endless cycle because bus companies want everyone else to fund their ventures. Bus managers are stuck in the stone ages believing everyone wants to go to town centres and councillors and council staff stuck in the stone ages just keep funding what worked years ago. No one wants to adapt the network so that it takes passengers where they want to go, the networks are designed around where the bus companies and councils want people to go and sadly that doesn't match where people want to go.

Bus companies are well aware that everybody doesn't want to go to the town centre these days. But they also can't run direct buses from every district/suburb/estate to and from every school/college/hospital/business park/industrial estate/retail park/railway station etc etc etc. So they go for the option of connecting via a central hub, which is usually a bus station, which is usually located in a town centre.

Add into this the political twerps who keep trying to make a name for themselves. Whether it be egotistical twerps like Andy Burnham, Steve Rotherham and Tracy Brabin who do all that they can to criticise buses because 'everything privately owned/ran is bad'. Why would anyone try to start getting on buses when these mayors keep bashing them. It's hardly encouraging is it? Tories playing political games with funding too leaving funding announcements until last minute.

Quite. The perpetual negativity and animosity towards buses, from just about everyone - including regular users, does absolute nothing to help anybody.

"The buses are always late" being one of the most common myths. No, the 1 or 2 services which you regularly use - probably at peak time - are often, but almost certainly not always late. Yes, the bus company should do something about it (although it's worth remembering the necessary regulatory timescales that have to be adhered to, which may make it seem like nothing is being done), but constant negativity does nothing to encourage or reassure new or infrequent bus users, who may well see such negativity and make other arrangements, thus dooming your much relied on service to further passenger number reductions, and hence further cuts.

If bus managers, Central Govt and councils continue in their current ways, there will not be many buses left in a few years.

Yes, there are some things that some operators could do to help themselves, which might not break the bank. But if they aren't doing them, you've got to ask yourself why? At the end of the day, they have got to make a profit.

Bottom line: Operating costs have/are increasing. Gov and Local Authority support - financial and otherwise - is diminishing. Customers don't want to pay higher fares. Solve the conundrum.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Bus companies are well aware that everybody doesn't want to go to the town centre these days. But they also can't run direct buses from every district/suburb/estate to and from every school/college/hospital/business park/industrial estate/retail park/railway station etc etc etc. So they go for the option of connecting via a central hub, which is usually a bus station, which is usually located in a town centre.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if they did?

However, in actual fact, bus companies in most cases make no effort to make services connect, e.g. by lining up timetables or offering through fares. They certainly cannot be referred to as hub-and-spoke, they are simply collections of individual routes.

(The use of "connects with" as a sneaky way around the tacho rules doesn't count).

 

[Lewisham2221]

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if they did?

However, in actual fact, bus companies in most cases make no effort to make services connect, e.g. by lining up timetables or offering through fares. They certainly cannot be referred to as hub-and-spoke, they are simply collections of individual routes.

(The use of "connects with" as a sneaky way around the tacho rules doesn't count).

Sloppy use of "connecting" on my part, I'll give you that. I meant more along the lines of they operate a service to the bus station, from where you may catch another bus to your intended destination. Of course, that may often involve a long wait. Improving such connections is one of the things I alluded to in the "there are some things that some operators could do to help themselves" part of my post, along with proper route branding (where branded vehicles don't end up on other services at random times of day just because it's convenient for the scheduler); decent, up to date websites; customer service teams which give out useful, accurate information etc etc etc.

 

[Martin2013]

My feeling is that operators and local authorities need to do a better job of consulting with the public when network reviews are undertaken in order to ensure that as far as possible a network is created that meets the needs of its potential passengers. In my view this would mean that the network that is created stands a better chance of remaining viable long term.

I do also feel that the situation with local authorities having to cut back on funding for supported services has not helped matters. There are some routes that are just never going to be commercial for any operator and in a lot of ways its unfair to have a go at a commercial operator for opting not to run services that they clearly won't make a profit on and which quite frankly if you or I were expected to run commercially would probably not want to.

The answer here is for the government to provide proper support to local authorities and bus operators to enable socially neccesarry services to be maintained.

I also feel that elected representatives like Dan Norris (West Of England Mayor) are getting a lot of unfair criticism. If an operator has made a commercial decision to withdraw a service and the government is not allowing combined authorities to use BSIP funding to prop up these existing services then I don't feel the blame should be pinned at the door of elected representatives who are caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

[rg177]

As I live on the "Coast Road corridor" in North Tyneside - I have it fairly good. We have our "worst" service in terms of frequency ever and its still 12 per hour with inter-operator ticket acceptance. First bus out is at 05:19, last one back at 23:45. Patronage is great too.

I won't pretend that it's perfect - peak hour traffic can be bad but the timetable is reasonably resilient outside of that. It's very very rare for a service to be cancelled.

My lass lives in the west end of Newcastle so I've cause to use the 30/31/38 routes that Stagecoach run. Quite an eye-opener.

It just about copes in the Off-Peak but the 30/31 timetable through Elswick and Benwell seems to assume that it'll just blast through without picking anyone up - in reality it's very very popular. If there's a bus more than five minutes late and another one on time behind (so five minutes behind) I'll wait for the next one as it'll inevitably overtake.

In the peaks it is horrendous. You'll check bustimes and suddenly everything is on the opposite site of Newcastle and 3+ buses in a row simply don't exist. There seems to be no concept of service recovery and everything is allowed to bunch up. Instead of having three buses chasing each other up to Fawdon, turn one around!

The whole operation smacks of "don't care", and why would they. Stagecoach Newcastle run some pretty lucrative routes with no alternatives. Why bother trying harder?

 

[Harpers Tate]

It has taken the independent operators around 25 years to all but destroy their own industry. I'm not anything more than a user but what I see - here at least - is that, since the 1990s
- services are way less attractive than they were; slower, less frequent, more indirect etc., so it's a less attractive product
- in real terms (leaving aside the current subsidised one-way fare of £2) the cost of use has doubled; it has also doubled when measured against the cost of motoring (not my figures).

Hardly surprising then, that usage is way lower.

There used to be an express service (latterly only at peak hours) between here and the city - 13 miles +/- covered typically in well under 30 minutes. The same trip now takes close to an hour, made on a circuitous stopping route. In its last week of operation, the express that left the city at 1710 carried over 35 pax on every day except Friday (25). Yet it wasn't "sustainable". How many pax on a 40-seat vehicle does it take? I don't recall seeing any of the current slow services leaving the city with that level of patronage.

I think that there is insufficient understanding of the effects of fare rises and service deterioration. I suspect they see short-term gains and think they have done the right thing. What they then perhaps fail to understand is why, during the weeks and months that follow, the usage slowly falls. And they seek alternate explanations for that drop, without recognising it is of their own making.

It will take another 25 years to reverse this decline. It absolutely cannot be expected to produce results in but a few months. It will take a radical rethink about how services are designed; what the revenue effects of changes, not immediately, but over time, are.

For example: Returning to that "wonderful" £2 fare (which is, of course, great for anyone travelling between, say Leeds and Scarborough). From here to the local mall (~11 miles) - at that fare - would cost £16 round trip for a couple. There is no direct route; 2 buses (£2 each) required. I suggest that the first major thing "they" need to do, is introduce what the Americans call "free transfers" where a one-way ticket is good for further rides up to (say) 90 minutes after purchase. This would immedaitely make the cost of travel the same, whether the operators elect to provide a direct route, or require a connection.

And then: as a passenger, I care not a jot about what colour the vehicle is (i.e. its operator). In many places, here included, each route is a virtual monopoly so "competition" is irrelevant. Yet if my trip requires (because of these monopolies) me to use >1 operator then (£2 singles aside) my costs go up. It all serves to make the entire proposition less attractive.

 

[philthetube]

There used to be an express service (latterly only at peak hours) between here and the city - 13 miles +/- covered typically in well under 30 minutes. The same trip now takes close to an hour, made on a circuitous stopping route. In its last week of operation, the express that left the city at 1710 carried over 35 pax on every day except Friday (25). Yet it wasn't "sustainable". How many pax on a 40-seat vehicle does it take? I don't recall seeing any of the current slow services leaving the city with that level of patronage.

if that is the only well loaded trip of the day then probably about 80

 

[Lewisham2221]

You're looking at roughly £35-50 an hour to run a bus service (there's too many variables to be more accurate)

Someone buying a £60 monthly ticket and catching 4 buses per day Mon-Fri is contributing less than 75p per journey. The more buses they use, the lower that number falls.

That would need an average of 45 - 70 passengers per hour, every hour. Obviously some passengers are going to be contributing more per journey. 50 passengers per hour seems a sensible benchmark. Only problem is, you need to find those 50 passengers - every hour...

 

[dodecahedron67]

£35-50/hr seems very low. We use £85/hr as an estimate with every cost (fuel, tyres, drivers, etc.) included as our mark

 

[Lewisham2221]

£35-50/hr seems very low. We use £85/hr as an estimate with every cost (fuel, tyres, drivers, etc.) included as our mark

I was trying to lean on the slightly more generous side and was expecting someone to come back and tell me that they thought £50/hr was too high I was only doing quick, rough, mental calculations - I've probably missed something really obvious out, or used a far too outdated figure.

There's far too many variables to give a true "one size fits all" cost, £85/hr certainly paints an even bleaker picture for the future of the industry

 

[markymark2000]

Exactly my point. If running buses "properly" was the gold mine that many try to suggest it is, they would all be queuing up to have a go. But it isn't, so they aren't. Instead, they are doing what makes them money.

I think that it still is a good money making business. The difficulty is that the barriers to entry are quite high and the costs involved mean it's a large risk for an individual. The issue with buses right now is that the costs versus reward is not worth is against other types of work. Why tie up a bus in running a local service when instead you can buy a cheap coach and do rail replacement. I know a few newer firms who would just rather put their money into cheap coaches and throw them all on rail. Easy money.

Service work is much more difficult than it once was and that is down to a lot of issues with concessionary reimbursement and unsupportive councils when it comes to running buses.

Hasn't really been the case for a decade or more. In pretty much every example of meaningful competition I can think of in the past 10-15 years (maybe longer), First have either held out until the competitor backed off, or scaled back and/or eventually withdrawn.

Even so, every attempt at getting onto a First corridor has resulted in not too good things.

All costs which have massively increased over the same that subsidies have reduced.

Subsidies can't have reduced on an overall level. More routes are supported then have ever been supported

I'd love to see on what basis people, including yourself, are claiming routes to be "viable" when the very people actually operating them say the opposite.

There has been numerous examples over time and it has been said numerous times on this forum how Arrivas route viability calculator makes more routes unviable than have to be and then they do death by 100 cuts to make any replacement route even less viable again. Chester - Runcorn 21/X30 was proof of this. Both buses did pretty well. Arriva cut the 21 back to Helsby to push more people onto the X30. The X30 got overcrowded at the Chester end so much so that many elderly who were being forced to stand daily, chose not to travel instead. The 21 was essentially useless as it covered over the area which not as many people travelled (people tended to travel up to Runcorn or down to Chester, not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things did local journeys)

You calculate an average fare per passenger. I dare say you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere where the majority of people on board are paying £3 per journey. Throw in day/week/month/annual etc tickets, and I'm pretty god damn sure that you're going to be looking at each passenger being worth far closer to £1 per journey than £3! A 30 mile, 3 hour round trip ain't making money if it's carrying little more than a dozen people - unless those passengers are being replaced at a rate of about 10x.

Sorry, who said 3 hour round trip? Also the £3 per journey can certainly be done depending on the route type, especially more infrequent routes where day/week/month/annual tickets don't exist or are sold in very small numbers.

Operators can't afford to keep up with increased pay and conditions. So drivers have left the industry in droves. There's no obvious way to combat that without additional support. So fares get increased and services get cut to try and balance the books.

Yes people left the industry but there were a lot of other issues too such as the Department for Transport being slow at processing licences and then not having vehicle MOT slots available etc etc. People leave all the time but no one knew exactly how many people would leave at the end of Furlough and operators were expected to ramp up services very quickly. No one thought about the logistics of making it all work, they just wanted it to work. Right now though, I agree some pay was far too low but there is no way that some of the fare rises are justified to the current level (bearing in mind, some fares were extortionate already) because of pay and conditions. Certainly not by firms like Stagecoach. Smaller firms perhaps but not big groups.

Bus companies are well aware that everybody doesn't want to go to the town centre these days. But they also can't run direct buses from every district/suburb/estate to and from every school/college/hospital/business park/industrial estate/retail park/railway station etc etc etc. So they go for the option of connecting via a central hub, which is usually a bus station, which is usually located in a town centre.

Certainly not no but if you have a huge retail park which is bringing in millions of people each year, as a company, you should be trying to incorporate that into the network? Instead no. It's out of the way, it's not how things have been done previously. They refuse to run it. You can see the difference as for example Merthyr Tydfil has Cyfarthfa Retail Park which was opened around 8 years ago and a number of buses divert through to serve the park and there are often people sat there waiting for the bus. Broughton Retail Park near Chester often has passenger waiting for buses. Only a small diversion into the retail park and if anyone were to change that, there would be quite a bit of uproar locally. And the bus stop isn't even in the best location, but still very well used. The point being, where operators try to serve some of these out of town retail parks, it can work out really well for them and where historically (even if it is only a few years Pre Covid), this was a commercial risk and it paid off, now no one will give anything a chance. They want routes to be profitable within 30 minutes of the route starting up and almost no operator makes any attempt to listen to passengers to see where they want to go. It's a common theme in the industry.

Yes, there are some things that some operators could do to help themselves, which might not break the bank. But if they aren't doing them, you've got to ask yourself why? At the end of the day, they have got to make a profit.

They aren't doing them because it's effort. Effort that they can do without. Why try to get people onto buses when right now the situation is 'Operator says to council it's unviable -> Council finds funds to somehow put the route out to tender -> operator wins tender and gets more money for the route than they were earning when it was commercial'. There is money to be made while still making an effort. The evidence is literally all around you. Go to the areas where operators are making an effort and you can see they are getting people onboard. Then go to areas of minimal effort, you can see the difference. Everyone is now doing what Arriva has done for years but for years, everyone slated Arriva for doing it, now they're doing it as well. Chop, chop shop. 'oh, why is no one using our buses anymore, best ask the council for some help'

Bottom line: Operating costs have/are increasing. Gov and Local Authority support - financial and otherwise - is diminishing. Customers don't want to pay higher fares. Solve the conundrum.

You make it out like operators are innocent in all of this and they are stuck in the middle of a rock and a hard place. Many operators are just as much to blame for the declining passenger numbers as Gov and Councils are!

Sloppy use of "connecting" on my part, I'll give you that. I meant more along the lines of they operate a service to the bus station, from where you may catch another bus to your intended destination. Of course, that may often involve a long wait. Improving such connections is one of the things I alluded to in the "there are some things that some operators could do to help themselves" part of my post, along with proper route branding (where branded vehicles don't end up on other services at random times of day just because it's convenient for the scheduler); decent, up to date websites; customer service teams which give out useful, accurate information etc etc etc.

To do that, many people would spending 3x longer sitting on a bus versus if they drove. Where is the incentive to use buses?

The lack of connections is a huge thing, even companies not wanting to work with other divisions, that is one that makes me laugh. I always said Megabus should have had Plusbus selling discounted Stagecoach dayriders in some areas as then you can secure a passenger using the bus to get to/from the coach. Someone who otherwise has free reign over how to get to/from the coach, if you offer them a cheap bus ticket, it's an easy upsell and you've secured more passengers for minimal extra cost. There would be winners and losers (same as Plusbus, sometimes it's cheaper than the bus, sometimes more expensive) but overall, it would be a quick, easy, cheap upsell. Different subsidiaries working together. National Express do it in Birmingham and Coventry, a £2 'departure day bus pass' and 'free city centre transfer' from Digbeth but sadly National Express bus operation is only in the West Midlands so this upsell hasn't seen it's full potential.

 

[noddingdonkey]

It just seems really short sighted. Cut the (already insufficient) service to the bare bones because people aren't using it is a guaranteed way to ensure that even fewer people use it in future.

The industry and politicians are either serious about the idea of shifting people out of cars onto buses or they're not. If they are, a timetable that is sufficiently frequent that you don't have to plan your life around it is the minimum requirement.

 

[WAB]

So they go for the option of connecting via a central hub, which is usually a bus station, which is usually located in a town centre.

Or a collection of mangy stops with no information somewhere in the vicinity of the centre.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if they did?

However, in actual fact, bus companies in most cases make no effort to make services connect, e.g. by lining up timetables or offering through fares. They certainly cannot be referred to as hub-and-spoke, they are simply collections of individual routes.

(The use of "connects with" as a sneaky way around the tacho rules doesn't count).

Connections are mostly not helpful. It's difficult to cater for the different connection options in a town with more than a couple of routes. You either allow for delays and timetable 15 min connections which impose even more of a delay on top of the time penalties already incurred (walk to the stop, waiting for the first bus, indirect route, picking up passengers, traffic, etc.) or you timetable short connections which leave you in the lurch if you miss a connection into an hourly (or worse service). You mention ticketing; one commute I was considering involved TrentBarton and Arriva. Transferring from TB onto Arriva for a five minute bus ride (in lieu of a 30 minute walk) doubled the cost of the commute, not to mention having to dash from Corporation Street to the bus station and the unreliability of the routes involved (even though they are as frequent as you get around here). When you weigh up a 1hr trip by public transport versus 7 minutes by car or taxi, can you really justify using the bus?

A hub and spoke model really needs a minimum 20-minute frequency with 90 minute transfer tickets, one single bus interchange, otherwise connections are useless. This can't just die at 5pm either; it needs to continue until 7 or 8 with a fairly decent service on the main routes until 10. Of course, this is not financially-feasible so buses will continue in their doom spiral.

There are only a few places where I think it works, such as late-night TrentBarton 6.1 services to Matlock which require you to make an advertised connection at Belper (advertised on timetables, the destination screen and leaflets) from the 6.0 to the 6.1 and vv or the three way meets at places like Dolgellau. It requires a purposeful attempt to maintain the connection and coordinate timetables on a scale which would be infeasible in most places, particularly where there are multiple operators.

 

[nw1]

You're looking at roughly £35-50 an hour to run a bus service (there's too many variables to be more accurate)

Someone buying a £60 monthly ticket and catching 4 buses per day Mon-Fri is contributing less than 75p per journey. The more buses they use, the lower that number falls.

That would need an average of 45 - 70 passengers per hour, every hour. Obviously some passengers are going to be contributing more per journey. 50 passengers per hour seems a sensible benchmark. Only problem is, you need to find those 50 passengers - every hour...

But that has always been unrealistic. In my lifetime that I remember (I've observed buses since 1984 and used them since 1986) buses have never loaded that well throughout the day, at least where I've lived (rural, small town, and small city southern England). Only London and other metro areas would regularly load that well, I suspect.

The difference now seems to be that it's increasingly politically unacceptable to support buses which don't pay their way.

It just seems really short sighted. Cut the (already insufficient) service to the bare bones because people aren't using it is a guaranteed way to ensure that even fewer people use it in future.

The industry and politicians are either serious about the idea of shifting people out of cars onto buses or they're not. If they are, a timetable that is sufficiently frequent that you don't have to plan your life around it is the minimum requirement.

To my mind the national politicians are not really interested (and I blame the politicians, not the industry who have to work within certain parameters). They speak green, but they don't act it. They enjoy stick politics (extra charges for driving) but mostly dislike carrot politics (incentivising people to use buses; the £2 fare cap is a welcome exception though that is only temporary).

 

[Lewisham2221]

I think that it still is a good money making business. The difficulty is that the barriers to entry are quite high and the costs involved mean it's a large risk for an individual. The issue with buses right now is that the costs versus reward is not worth is against other types of work. Why tie up a bus in running a local service when instead you can buy a cheap coach and do rail replacement. I know a few newer firms who would just rather put their money into cheap coaches and throw them all on rail. Easy money.

Service work is much more difficult than it once was and that is down to a lot of issues with concessionary reimbursement and unsupportive councils when it comes to running buses.

It's a good money making business if you're in an area where you can pretty much guarantee enough bums on seats. Which, unfortunately, excludes most of the country.

Even so, every attempt at getting onto a First corridor has resulted in not too good things.

Not sure what you mean by "resulted in not too good things" but I can think of at least 4 examples of D&G competition getting rid of First on a corridor within the past decade.

Subsidies can't have reduced on an overall level. More routes are supported then have ever been supported

If you include covid related funding, yes, you're right. In terms of good old fashioned Local Authority support for evening and weekend services and buses for rural and underserved areas? Absolutely not.

There has been numerous examples over time and it has been said numerous times on this forum how Arrivas route viability calculator makes more routes unviable than have to be and then they do death by 100 cuts to make any replacement route even less viable again. Chester - Runcorn 21/X30 was proof of this. Both buses did pretty well. Arriva cut the 21 back to Helsby to push more people onto the X30. The X30 got overcrowded at the Chester end so much so that many elderly who were being forced to stand daily, chose not to travel instead. The 21 was essentially useless as it covered over the area which not as many people travelled (people tended to travel up to Runcorn or down to Chester, not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things did local journeys)

"pretty well" does not necessarily mean profit making, though. It's been well discussed over the years since ENCTS was brought in that a bus full of pensioners does not equal a profit making bus.

Sorry, who said 3 hour round trip? Also the £3 per journey can certainly be done depending on the route type, especially more infrequent routes where day/week/month/annual tickets don't exist or are sold in very small numbers.

Just an example. I still don't see any route ever achieving an average fare per passenger of £3 - especially one that's so infrequent that period tickets aren't offered!

Yes people left the industry but there were a lot of other issues too such as the Department for Transport being slow at processing licences and then not having vehicle MOT slots available etc etc. People leave all the time but no one knew exactly how many people would leave at the end of Furlough and operators were expected to ramp up services very quickly. No one thought about the logistics of making it all work, they just wanted it to work. Right now though, I agree some pay was far too low but there is no way that some of the fare rises are justified to the current level (bearing in mind, some fares were extortionate already) because of pay and conditions. Certainly not by firms like Stagecoach. Smaller firms perhaps but not big groups.

Drivers wages aren't the sole factor influencing fare rises though...

Certainly not no but if you have a huge retail park which is bringing in millions of people each year, as a company, you should be trying to incorporate that into the network? Instead no. It's out of the way, it's not how things have been done previously. They refuse to run it. You can see the difference as for example Merthyr Tydfil has Cyfarthfa Retail Park which was opened around 8 years ago and a number of buses divert through to serve the park and there are often people sat there waiting for the bus. Broughton Retail Park near Chester often has passenger waiting for buses. Only a small diversion into the retail park and if anyone were to change that, there would be quite a bit of uproar locally. And the bus stop isn't even in the best location, but still very well used. The point being, where operators try to serve some of these out of town retail parks, it can work out really well for them and where historically (even if it is only a few years Pre Covid), this was a commercial risk and it paid off, now no one will give anything a chance. They want routes to be profitable within 30 minutes of the route starting up and almost no operator makes any attempt to listen to passengers to see where they want to go. It's a common theme in the industry.

I don't entirely disagree with you here. Although anything which adds to the PVR requirement is probably going to be a red flag for operators. Unfortunately, many of these retail parks result in horrendous traffic congestion (to the levels that even a really good bus service in unlikely to resolve) which makes them even less attractive to bus operators.

You make it out like operators are innocent in all of this and they are stuck in the middle of a rock and a hard place. Many operators are just as much to blame for the declining passenger numbers as Gov and Councils are

Not at all. Operators absolutely could do some things better. Continuing to run loss making journeys isn't one of them though.

 

[noddingdonkey]

It's a catch 22. People won't use the bus until it has a reputation for being reliable, punctual and convenient. Pulling journeys means the service is less convenient.

Lightly loaded off peak trips should be a loss leader, show the person who uses the bus to go for a drink on an evening or weekend that the service is reliable and can be trusted to get them to work. My experience is that the off peak trips are even less likely to be punctual without the excuse of traffic congestion.

 

[RT4038]

But that has always been unrealistic. In my lifetime that I remember (I've observed buses since 1984 and used them since 1986) buses have never loaded that well throughout the day, at least where I've lived (rural, small town, and small city southern England). Only London and other metro areas would regularly load that well, I suspect.

So, if it has always been unrealistic, then something else must have changed, such as the costs, and the relationship between costs and fares (both paid in cash and ENCTS reimbursement).

The difference now seems to be that it's increasingly politically unacceptable to support buses which don't pay their way.

Not so sure that it is ever so different now to 30 years ago, except that the funding stream is just not there anymore, with Adult and Child Social Care and Special Educational Needs statutory responsibilities taking priority.

The answer here is for the government to provide proper support to local authorities and bus operators to enable socially neccesarry services to be maintained.

With so many diverse calls on the available funding, I don't think this is realistic - after all, in most areas of the country the private car is the main form of transport, so how many bus services are really 'socially necessary' to all but a few as a niche?

 

[markymark2000]

Not sure what you mean by "resulted in not too good things" but I can think of at least 4 examples of D&G competition getting rid of First on a corridor within the past decade.

I've already explained (as have others), competition against First often leads to First flooding the corridor to wipe out competition. D&G are competing against First where they can see that First will give up easily and in an area which is well known for First giving up!

If you include covid related funding, yes, you're right. In terms of good old fashioned Local Authority support for evening and weekend services and buses for rural and underserved areas? Absolutely not.

No, Local authority support too. There has been some cuts to funding but also a lot more routes are receiving support, especially now, as firms are saying routes aren't viable and councils don't want to lose long standing routes. Yes a lot of it is due to covid but now companies are saying it's not viable, councils jump in.
Cheshire West now fund more of the Eport-Guilden Sutton 26 (gone from deminims funding to full tender), the Northwich 4, Winsford 7 and evening trips on the 84 which they never used to fund.
Cambridgeshire is funding a lot more routes as Stagecoach vastly reduced it's commercial network.
Merseyside is now funding more routes than they ever were as HTL threw in their commercial routes (which were only commercial because Merseytravel told them to run them commercially as they couldn't be seen to be supporting routes with that high usage. Come Covid, HTL threw them in and now they're tendered).
TFGM (Manchester) is funding more routes as Diamond threw their toys out of the pram and cancelled almost everything. Consequently forcing TFGM to pay up for the routes.

Theres just 4 examples. There will be plenty more out there. Yes in some cases some other routes may have been reduced in a bid to balance the books but on the whole, more routes are getting support from councils as firms have started to revamp the networks with the new passenger demand and as government funding reduces.

Not at all. Operators absolutely could do some things better. Continuing to run loss making journeys isn't one of them though.

'Some things better'..... Operators could do A LOT OF THINGS BETTER! Far too many lazy operators about. People are in a race with Red Group and the dodgy West Mids independents to see who can be the worst operator!

As Noddingdonkey has said though, you have to run some loss leaders to get people onto the bus. You have to distribute revenue in a better way and spread it out over the trips. If a route isn't carrying anyone, yes fair, withdraw it. If however you have a trip which is carrying a good number of passengers bus isn't taking much money, you should look at what tickets are being accepted as if this is mostly day tickets/returns, this revenue needs to be properly distributed. I believe Arriva was one of the worst for not distributing revenue properly, especially as they started removing returns in favour of having more day tickets. This is how so many core Arriva routes have no evening service and if they do, it is often funded by the council as Arriva want each trip to make the money and not have to distribute revenue from other trips.

 

[ChrisC]

It's a catch 22. People won't use the bus until it has a reputation for being reliable, punctual and convenient. Pulling journeys means the service is less convenient.

Lightly loaded off peak trips should be a loss leader, show the person who uses the bus to go for a drink on an evening or weekend that the service is reliable and can be trusted to get them to work. My experience is that the off peak trips are even less likely to be punctual without the excuse of traffic congestion.

In many areas, outside of large cities, the days of being able to use the bus to go for a drink in the evening or anytime on a Sunday disappeared years ago. Certainly where I live, we lost our evening buses 10 years ago and haven't had a Sunday service for almost 20 years. Perhaps this may also have had a small part to play in the decline in evening trade at some out of town pubs. Recently I had been out for a walk one day and was returning home by bus late afternoon. There were quite a number on the bus who were obviously returning from an afternoon in the pub. These people in the past would traditionally have done this in the evening, but can no longer do this as there are no evening buses.

On my local bus route, which serves a number of villages, I have noticed that the buses into town late afternoon are very lightly loaded. This is probably the case on many routes where the buses stop running by 7pm. People won’t use buses travelling into a large town or city, late afternoon or early evening, if there is no bus to return on. I like to go to the theatre and concerts but don’t use the last bus into town at 6.40pm because the 10.30pm bus back was withdrawn along with all other evening services 10 years ago.

 

[RT4038]

In many areas, outside of large cities, the days of being able to use the bus to go for a drink in the evening or anytime on a Sunday disappeared years ago. Certainly where I live, we lost our evening buses 10 years ago and haven't had a Sunday service for almost 20 years. Perhaps this may also have had a small part to play in the decline in evening trade at some out of town pubs. Recently I had been out for a walk one day and was returning home by bus late afternoon. There were quite a number on the bus who were obviously returning from an afternoon in the pub. These people in the past would traditionally have done this in the evening, but can no longer do this as there are no evening buses.

On my local bus route, which serves a number of villages, I have noticed that the buses into town late afternoon are very lightly loaded. This is probably the case on many routes where the buses stop running by 7pm. People won’t use buses travelling into a large town or city, late afternoon or early evening, if there is no bus to return on. I like to go to the theatre and concerts but don’t use the last bus into town at 6.40pm because the 10.30pm bus back was withdrawn along with all other evening services 10 years ago.

There comes a point where the surplus on daytime services can no longer pay for the provision of evening services. Bus companies are well aware that their withdrawal may well affect the daytime loadings too, but the savings made will likely offset that. Many evening services in rural areas were economically hopeless by the 1960s, and increased car ownership, supermarket alcohol sales, TV & Video, and abolition of licensing hours (which often meant the one decently loaded last trip disappeared) have rendered evening services financially worthless on all but the most urban of routes, or into city hotspots.

 

[Applepie356]

Buses were never meant to be profitable, they were supposed to provide a service to the public, regardless if it’s a loss making journey or not.

Sadly it’s up to the private businesses to decide if the route runs based purely on profitability, not whether there is a need for it.

We only have the government to blame for the lack of support for bus services. Some councils are willing to foot the cost of some bus services but not all of them sadly.

 

[Lewisham2221]

I've already explained (as have others), competition against First often leads to First flooding the corridor to wipe out competition. D&G are competing against First where they can see that First will give up easily and in an area which is well known for First giving up!

Congratulations! You've managed to contradict yourself within two sentences. How can First (or any other operator for that matter) simultaneously flood a corridor whilst also giving up on it?

No, Local authority support too. There has been some cuts to funding but also a lot more routes are receiving support, especially now, as firms are saying routes aren't viable and councils don't want to lose long standing routes. Yes a lot of it is due to covid but now companies are saying it's not viable, councils jump in.
Cheshire West now fund more of the Eport-Guilden Sutton 26 (gone from deminims funding to full tender), the Northwich 4, Winsford 7 and evening trips on the 84 which they never used to fund.
Cambridgeshire is funding a lot more routes as Stagecoach vastly reduced it's commercial network.
Merseyside is now funding more routes than they ever were as HTL threw in their commercial routes (which were only commercial because Merseytravel told them to run them commercially as they couldn't be seen to be supporting routes with that high usage. Come Covid, HTL threw them in and now they're tendered).
TFGM (Manchester) is funding more routes as Diamond threw their toys out of the pram and cancelled almost everything. Consequently forcing TFGM to pay up for the routes.

Theres just 4 examples. There will be plenty more out there. Yes in some cases some other routes may have been reduced in a bid to balance the books but on the whole, more routes are getting support from councils as firms have started to revamp the networks with the new passenger demand and as government funding reduces.

Which rather highlights the issue quite nicely, no? They are no longer funding evening and weekend services (I remember when vast numbers of timetables would carry notes along the lines of "Sunday journeys operate with financial support from xxxx Council" or "evening journeys are operated by xxxx Operator under contract to xxxx Council") because they need to use that money to prop up more substantial daytime services which used to be commercial but were about to be thrown in completely. A rather bleak outlook.

'Some things better'..... Operators could do A LOT OF THINGS BETTER! Far too many lazy operators about. People are in a race with Red Group and the dodgy West Mids independents to see who can be the worst operator!

Some. A lot. Either way they still need to make a profit.

As Noddingdonkey has said though, you have to run some loss leaders to get people onto the bus. You have to distribute revenue in a better way and spread it out over the trips. If a route isn't carrying anyone, yes fair, withdraw it. If however you have a trip which is carrying a good number of passengers bus isn't taking much money, you should look at what tickets are being accepted as if this is mostly day tickets/returns, this revenue needs to be properly distributed. I believe Arriva was one of the worst for not distributing revenue properly, especially as they started removing returns in favour of having more day tickets. This is how so many core Arriva routes have no evening service and if they do, it is often funded by the council as Arriva want each trip to make the money and not have to distribute revenue from other trips.

I don't disagree about running trips as "loss leaders". The problem is, these days, most daytime services aren't generating enough profit to sustain any such losses.

There comes a point where the surplus on daytime services can no longer pay for the provision of evening services. Bus companies are well aware that their withdrawal may well affect the daytime loadings too, but the savings made will likely offset that. Many evening services in rural areas were economically hopeless by the 1960s, and increased car ownership, supermarket alcohol sales, TV & Video, and abolition of licensing hours (which often meant the one decently loaded last trip disappeared) have rendered evening services financially worthless on all but the most urban of routes, or into city hotspots.

Precisely this.

Buses were never meant to be profitable, they were supposed to provide a service to the public, regardless if it’s a loss making journey or not.

I very much doubt that the enterprising businessmen of the 19th and early 20th centuries were operating bus services out of the goodness of their own hearts. Of course they were supposed to be profitable. Obviously, in those days, they no doubt found it rather easier to make a profit.

Sadly it’s up to the private businesses to decide if the route runs based purely on profitability, not whether there is a need for it.

That's how the commercial market works, yes. Same with any business.

We only have the government to blame for the lack of support for bus services. Some councils are willing to foot the cost of some bus services but not all of them sadly.

I can't disagree with this. Local authorities (and their planning departments) are not without blame either.

 

[markymark2000]

Congratulations! You've managed to contradict yourself within two sentences. How can First (or any other operator for that matter) simultaneously flood a corridor whilst also giving up on it?

What I said was 'often it will lead to flooding'. That doesn't mean always! That means more often than not. I also could have phrased my second sentence better.
The majority of the time, First will flood a corridor to get rid of competition. What D&G tend to do most of the time is fill gaps in the timetable, like they did on the 32 where D&G ran the opposite half hour to First. Like D&G did with Arriva on the Crewe 38, ran pretty much opposite Arriva so that people could enjoy a more even service. Even now on the 7A which D&G has just introduced, the times are in the middle of Firsts times to provide an even 15 minute frequency rather than compete and go 5 minutes ahead of First and steal all of the passing trade. D&G aren't competing as such. They are just gap fillers. D&G know where First are giving up and are getting a small foot in the door so they are better equipped to take on the whole thing if First does continue it's downfall of the Potteries. If D&G tried to compete against the 25 though, First would flood the corridor and get rid of D&G sharpish.

The only current example of D&G competing is on the 84X and they don't seem to be doing a good job at that, certainly not winning if the loadings I have seen are anything to go by.

Which rather highlights the issue quite nicely, no? They are no longer funding evening and weekend services (I remember when vast numbers of timetables would carry notes along the lines of "Sunday journeys operate with financial support from xxxx Council" or "evening journeys are operated by xxxx Operator under contract to xxxx Council") because they need to use that money to prop up more substantial daytime services which used to be commercial but were about to be thrown in completely. A rather bleak outlook.

Evening and Sunday routes are not as common as they once were, I agree. However you have to look at some of the towns these days as well. The number of towns becoming 9-5 towns is rising significantly and so the demand for evening buses isn't as high as it once was. Also with more and more venues having late night alcohol licences, there is no longer a curfew as such of when people will return home, people go home throughout the night rather than everyone being kicked out of the pub at 11pm (or whatever time the curfew was back in the day). Sundays can be an interesting one. It depends on the demographic of the route. Areas with more older people tend to have less demand for Sunday services as older people tend to stay in more on Sundays. It's much harder to plan routes as well as peoples journey patterns are different. The start and end destinations are much more spread out as there isn't going to/from school or commuting to/from work. People are going to more leisure based places or visiting friends/family. You can't plan a route to suit most people on Sundays. If the demand was there, the buses would run more on Sundays.

The problem is, these days, most daytime services aren't generating enough profit to sustain any such losses.

Depends on how the accounting is done. Anything can make a loss if you mess around with some accounting.

 

[Lewisham2221]

ENCTS has a lot to answer for IMO. Buses full of pensioners on free passes don't make a profit due to the reimbursement levels. Cash single fares can be artificially inflated to boost the ENCTS reimbursement, at the expense of higher fares putting off regular fare paying passengers. Killed a lot of 11pm/post-11pm last buses.