Europe looks ahead...

[Falcon1200]

Also, on a transport forum, it's not really a surprise to see that people are pro public transport. However, in the wider world, bus priority and restrictions on private car use ARE controversial. I mean everyone wants less congestion and better air quality but how many fancy giving up their cars to achieve it....?

A valid point; I am sure that if asked, many motorists would like more money spent on public transport, just not their money, and not for them to use but other people, to make their own car journeys easier !

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

That's of course true, but it does help delivering better services as conditions can be set to operators and operators can be forced to run on unprofitable hours, just like with railway franchising, and should help reduce the subsidy needed for evening services.

However, that works on the assertion that there are substantial profits being made by bus companies in the UK. They aren't and haven't been for several years. And of course, in the UK, rail operators have been free to innovate albeit to a minimum service level. That isn't what is being proposed; this is akin to the European model of a fixed management fee, possibly open book or closed book, and you merely provide a service against an agreed budget.

I wouldn't say the Netherlands is doing a good job in discouraging car use. Parking is only outrageously expensive in Amsterdam and slightly less so in Utrecht and The Hague, but in the rest of the country prices are quite low. Actually, I was surprised by the high prices in the UK! There is no congestion charge anywhere in the country and the proposals for a road pricing scheme are just a distance-based price, so that doesn't do anything about it either.

I didn't specify Netherlands. In Copenhagen, they have followed a very subtle policy of removing on-street car parking so that it physically becomes more difficult to use a car in the city. Couple that with better cycling and public transport...

I agree you should do it where it is useful, but looking at the UK now, it is so fragmented. There is a lot of potential for making connections work at stations. That will mean public transport is a good option for more people and will thus help in changing the modal split. It isn't the silver bullet, but it is an important first step as you make many more destinations viable. Next steps can be ticketing, funding etc

Don't disagree with this in a general sense and would be happy to see improved connectivity. However, as I keep saying, it really isn't the biggest issue affecting the UK's buses.

I used to live in Bristol and see visit regularly. Temple Meads station is peripheral so yeah, we can terminate services there but it would make no sense. Same for Leicester and Leeds and Swansea. Cardiff used to have a superbly located bus station next to the station....it was sold for development.

Franchising works as good as the conditions and requirements set in the tender. But it at least gives the authorities more control over the conditions. I don't fully understand the rest of your comment. I do know integration can help to solve traffic problems by making public transport to be a better alternative and thus makes it possible to not use a car. These measures don't need to cost much, it is just more coordination than currently is the case.

My point is that when franchising is implemented in Manchester, and I don't doubt it will, it will be showcased as a transformational success by the politicians involved, irrespective of anything else... a bit like Brexit!

Manchester does at least have the Metrolink and as a consequence, many parallel bus services have already disappeared. It is one of the slightly comic aspects in that the politicians point to how much bus patronage has fallen yet much of that is because Metrolink has grown! I digress... The fact is that all the current transport network costs £x with this involving bus operators, Metrolink, rail operators etc. There are promises that fares will reduce and the main part is removing any penalties for interchanging...

However, the cost isn't going to change markedly.

• Operator margins, in general, are now not much more than in the franchise world
• Operating costs have been much reduced over the last 35 years as staff terms and conditions have been eroded
• Overbussing and competition has all but disappeared since the bad days of the late 80s and early 90s
• Duplication with other modes has largely disappeared - see the reduction on Eccles New Road or Washway Road

So either you are going to cut direct links and disadvantage passengers, or you have more revenue support. You don't have to look too far to see that in London, pre Covid, that as soon as the revenue support has reduced, so has the service and so has the ridership.

Meanwhile, Manchester has had a referendum on congestion charging (no surprise - it was rejected) and nothing is done to rectify the issue of car use.

My issue is that you can't do things in isolation. I'd suggest there is already a number of people who could commute into Manchester via Metrolink from neighbouring towns except they don't fancy being on a slow bus with no priority to get into Bury before changing. Instead, in the UK, and it's not just Manchester, that we can do things on the cheap and in isolation and that if you have integrated ticketing, all will be good in the world - it's only part of the picture and whilst laudable, there are other priorities not least for those people in places where the bus is the sole means of local transport.

 

[DanielB]

However, that works on the assertion that there are substantial profits being made by bus companies in the UK. They aren't and haven't been for several years. And of course, in the UK, rail operators have been free to innovate albeit to a minimum service level. That isn't what is being proposed; this is akin to the European model of a fixed management fee, possibly open book or closed book, and you merely provide a service against an agreed budget.

Not really, it actually works the other way around. In the Netherlands before tendering bus companies also were not profitable at all, they were making significant losses and heavily subsidised.
Tendering made the bus companies more creative: they didn't continue running a bus somewhere just because it ran there for the past 20 years, but instead they started looking into where passengers were coming from and going to and optimized their networks to that. Combined with the requirements set by the provinces this resulted in growing ridership as there was a bus where passengers wanted to travel and new groups of passengers were attracted as well.
Thus, the continuous decline of public transport in the late nineties had transformed in rapid growth before COVID struck early 2020.

And it's not really that the companies are making much more profit now: the actual saving is in more or equal public transport being offered whilst less subsidy is paid out. The surprising thing is actually that when an area is tendered for the second time money is still saved.
And yes: there are also things going wrong... bus companies have been winning franchises resulting in serious losses (as they handed in a low bid to secure an interesting franchise). Two years ago there has also been a case of fraud, but usually the franchises are set up in such a way the customer wouldn't suffer from those mishabs.

There is a trend going on however to reduce the size of franchises, which is the result of stakes becoming that high for operators (which then must win to avoid losing a significant chunck of the revenue) that tendering resulted in operators going to court when they disagreed with the descision of the province.

 

[biko]

However, that works on the assertion that there are substantial profits being made by bus companies in the UK. They aren't and haven't been for several years. And of course, in the UK, rail operators have been free to innovate albeit to a minimum service level. That isn't what is being proposed; this is akin to the European model of a fixed management fee, possibly open book or closed book, and you merely provide a service against an agreed budget.

As @DanielB has explained, Dutch bus operators have that freedom. The requirements mostly are that certain places needed to be connected to the network in some way or another.

Temple Meads station is peripheral so yeah, we can terminate services there but it would make no sense. Same for Leicester and Leeds and Swansea.

Peripheral locations don't help integration indeed, but there are still options. For example, a potential solution is to let a service terminate at the railway station and continue as another service which can be reached by travelling through the city centre. That's what happened in my city for example for many years with the local services and recently they did this with regional services. Those towns are situated at the railway station side of the city centre and buses didn't have a good way to serve the city centre. Now, the buses continue as a service to towns the other side of the city via the city centre. So now all passengers have direct connections to both the railway station and the city centre. I am pretty sure this should be at least partly possible in the cases you mention. Integration and franchising can help by promoting these kind of continuations.

My point is that when franchising is implemented in Manchester, and I don't doubt it will, it will be showcased as a transformational success by the politicians involved, irrespective of anything else... a bit like Brexit!

Manchester does at least have the Metrolink and as a consequence, many parallel bus services have already disappeared. It is one of the slightly comic aspects in that the politicians point to how much bus patronage has fallen yet much of that is because Metrolink has grown! I digress... The fact is that all the current transport network costs £x with this involving bus operators, Metrolink, rail operators etc. There are promises that fares will reduce and the main part is removing any penalties for interchanging...

However, the cost isn't going to change markedly.

• Operator margins, in general, are now not much more than in the franchise world
• Operating costs have been much reduced over the last 35 years as staff terms and conditions have been eroded
• Overbussing and competition has all but disappeared since the bad days of the late 80s and early 90s
• Duplication with other modes has largely disappeared - see the reduction on Eccles New Road or Washway Road

So either you are going to cut direct links and disadvantage passengers, or you have more revenue support. You don't have to look too far to see that in London, pre Covid, that as soon as the revenue support has reduced, so has the service and so has the ridership.

Meanwhile, Manchester has had a referendum on congestion charging (no surprise - it was rejected) and nothing is done to rectify the issue of car use.

My issue is that you can't do things in isolation. I'd suggest there is already a number of people who could commute into Manchester via Metrolink from neighbouring towns except they don't fancy being on a slow bus with no priority to get into Bury before changing. Instead, in the UK, and it's not just Manchester, that we can do things on the cheap and in isolation and that if you have integrated ticketing, all will be good in the world - it's only part of the picture and whilst laudable, there are other priorities not least for those people in places where the bus is the sole means of local transport.

Integration doesn't necessarily mean cutting direct links, it means that a more integrated view is used to make decisions, so the overall benefits and disadvantages can be seen. The current system only looks at the current bus passengers and doesn't look at the whole system. Some interventions might reduce overall the amount of money required, others might cost more money, but there might be some overall benefits to the system why the money is justified.

Franchising makes sure things can be looked at on a higher level and thus not in isolation. The most important question for the case of Manchester will be whether they will have an overall vision and set the right requirements for the franchising process to make the most of the opportunity. Of course it will help if they set some money aside, but even without money there might be some quick wins.

 

[DanielB]

Integration doesn't necessarily mean cutting direct links, it means that a more integrated view is used to make decisions, so the overall benefits and disadvantages can be seen.

To add to this a nice example from the area where I live: at peak hours there are actually more buses per hour (10) between Amersfoort and Utrecht than there are trains (6 per hour). Integration here isn't about truncating buses from the outer districts at Amersfoort central station, but instead those buses continue via direct routes to Utrecht where they serve areas further away from Utrecht central station.
So integration is applied here as a way to offer as many useful connections without just running parallel to the railway. Passengers taking the 202 bus from Nieuwland district in Amersfoort therefore can choose what suits them best: when they want to go to Utrecht city centre they change for a train at Amersfoort station, but when they are going to Utrecht Science Park they just stay on the bus and avoid a detour to their destination.

 

[johncrossley]

Peripheral locations don't help integration indeed, but there are still options. For example, a potential solution is to let a service terminate at the railway station and continue as another service which can be reached by travelling through the city centre. That's what happened in my city for example for many years with the local services and recently they did this with regional services. Those towns are situated at the railway station side of the city centre and buses didn't have a good way to serve the city centre. Now, the buses continue as a service to towns the other side of the city via the city centre. So now all passengers have direct connections to both the railway station and the city centre. I am pretty sure this should be at least partly possible in the cases you mention. Integration and franchising can help by promoting these kind of continuations.

That is very clever. I'm sure this could be useful in smaller to medium sized towns especially. The examples of Bristol and Leicester given by @TheGrandWazoo are big cities with probably 50 or more routes going to the city centre. What I've noticed when looking at public transport maps in some of the bigger cities in Europe is that the routes are typically not so centralised. You still have many routes going to the city centre but not necessarily the same parts of the city centre, meaning that many people would have to change to get to the part of the city centre where they actually want to go to. So you might have to change to get to the main railway station. But you don't pay extra so it isn't such a problem. In Britain you nearly always have to pay extra to change buses, even if it is the same company. You can get around this with day tickets or Plusbus tickets but that is still often more expensive than a direct bus.

Big cities in Europe often also have quite a few routes that don't go near the city centre at all. British bus companies don't like to operate many of these services as they are less or not profitable. They are only operated if there is a significant place on the route, such as a hospital. Even then, some of those routes are only operated because they are subsidised. That means that, in general, if you don't want to go to the city centre you nearly always have to go through the city centre. Again, making such journeys by bus are made even less attractive because you have to pay extra to change buses. In any British city there are few, if any, places that you can't get a direct bus to the city centre. Even if a suburb or housing estate is awkwardly located, for example not on a direct road to the city centre, it still gets a direct connection. So British city centres have a lot of routes, probably more than comparable cities in other countries. It would be interesting to see the total distance operated by bus/tram in a British city compared to similar sized cities in mainland Europe.

 

[DanielB]

That is very clever. I'm sure this could be useful in smaller to medium sized towns especially. The examples of Bristol and Leicester given by @TheGrandWazoo are big cities with probably 50 or more routes going to the city centre.

It works in bigger cities as well. Take Utrecht for example, which is even slightly bigger than Leicester and has about 32 bus routes (and three trams) serving the central station which is in the middle of the city centre.
Most of those routes are either local or come from nearby towns and a big chunck of them runs from a town or neighbourhoud on one side of the city centre via station and city centre to towns and neighbourhoods on the other side. (see this overview)

The other point you're mentioning can be seen in Utrecht as well: there's a secondary network to almost the entire Utrecht province radiating out from the Utrecht Science Park for example. That area is served by another 13 routes, many of which are also through-routes by the way.
Very practical way of avoiding the city centre by the way. Some five years ago, when I was working in an office area at the southern side of Utrecht, I occasionally took the bus with just one change at the Science Park which was actually slightly faster than taking a train and changing onto a local bus at the central station. The only reason I took the train more often was that it was less critical at which time I left work, as with 20 departures per hour there were multiple options to be able to catch the same train.

 

[dutchflyer]

Just a minor note; IN the UK-in the time when there were 2 big BUS conglomerates, one was NBC=national bus company, they started-long before this was done in NL, with what was then called MAP; market analysis project-which was exactly what you describe as being done in NL-years later.
Most of the Amersfoort-Utrecht peak hour buses do not compete at all with trains-they run from Art to the UIThof University centre and even take many passengers from trains coming into Amf to shorten their trip-the other way it train to Utrecht central, then the new tram. The surviving direct line is mostly to serve Zeist (a ´town/big village´ of some 50k + people with a distant station shared with Driebergen) with both ends.

 

[RT4038]

My reaction was to the post that the UK could not tender a set of routes as happens in the Netherlands because culture is different and therefore the interest of the transport authority would be different from the passengers. I simply cannot see why that would be the case in the UK but not in the Netherlands. Compactness, densities etc don’t have anything to do with how the tendering system is organised. A good tendering system, both containing bus and train, or just buses but with higher scoring for good connections should also be possible in the UK, independent of what type of area it is. The conditions of the tender are just different.

Incidentally, I started this part on tendering by mentioning the tender in my local area. This is also a semi-rural area with a larger city in it, but around it just villages and small towns. Most frequencies are hourly. The province wrote in the conditions that a certain list of villages/towns need to be connected at least every hour on weekdays, but also that at some stations buses need to have connections in a certain direction. If you want to maintain a commercial incentive, you can just add that the operator will receive a certain percentage of the revenue.

The main reason that the culture is different between The Netherlands and the UK (as far as bus public transport is concerned) is that there is no culture of bus subsidies in the UK (or at least not at the level of continental Europe). There is no appetite in this country to increase bus operating subsidies; on the contrary, reduction is more of a policy. The bus companies have been optimising their routes for maximum commercial advantage for the last 35 years. Whilst this might cause, in some areas, some inefficiency in the provision of subsidised socially necessary services whilst not competing with the commercial routes, elimination of this is unlikely to provide sufficient funding for the additional resources required to improve integration.

Trying to let a franchise on the basis of increasing coverage and connectivity, with no extra funding on the table, is likely to get no bidders. Most Local Authorities (Transport Authorities) want to make savings on the current bus subsidy levels (as they are under severe financial pressure in other sectors, particularly Education and Social care). These Transport Authorities have no desire to take on the financial revenue risk of bus services, and if they did I can easily imagine the politics of which areas get which level of services resulting in the more popular routes getting service reductions in order to use funds/resources to improve low density/rural coverage. I know that would happen because that is what happened in the previously regulated era, and my experience of Transport Authorities in the modern era does not indicate any change. In my local Transport Authority area there are no practical opportunities to reduce bus services by connecting with rail service.

There is no real operational reason why Integration could not be introduced in the UK, aside from the unreliability of services, both road and rail, in making connections work. There are, however, formidable cultural and political barriers to funding the fares reform and additional resources required to achieve the Integration and to resolve the root causes of the unreliability.

 

[ashkeba]

I beg to disagree where they are imposed in areas where public transport is too infrequent to be usable on a "turn-up-and-go" basis. Bus lanes are a poor use of available road space if bus frequency is less than 10 buses per hour. Restrictions on car use per se (as distinct from polluting vehicles, whether bus or car) should only be introduced where public transport provision is good. One compromise solution is park-and-ride so that major town/city centres aren't clogged up with traffic, but people can drive from their residence to a convenient site with good parking facilities to change to public transport for the last few miles into the town/city centre.

How are you going to get 8 or 9 buses ab hour along any moderately busy road without priority measures?

And isn't park and ride an enforced change and a really bad one only usually serving city centres?

 

[daodao]

How are you going to get 8 or 9 buses an hour along any moderately busy road without priority measures?

A balance has to be struck between different vehicle types, and if the bus service is not sufficiently frequent, it is not appropriate to prioritise that service over all other road users (bicycles/cars/taxis/vans/lorries). It is desirable to concentrate bus services on selected radial corridors to make best use of bus lanes where they are established.

And isn't park and ride an enforced change and a really bad one only usually serving city centres?

Using park and ride facilities is not an "enforced" change. It encourages folk from outlying areas, of their own free will, not to drive into town centres on congested inner urban corridors and use expensive central car parks, by providing them with an easy-to-use cheaper and attractive alternative. It reduces the need to run infrequent uneconomic poorly patronised bus services into outlying districts and utilises public transport for what it is best suited - high capacity and high frequency transit on major corridors. It is a "win win" option.

Where specific bus services are operated, they are generally only provided (and needed) Mon-Fri 7-19, plus often Sat 08-18 and occasionally for a shorter period on Sundays depending on shop opening hours (restricted to 6 hours by the Sunday trading laws). In Manchester, it is largely provided free at Metrolink stops such as Ladywell, Sale Water Park and Parrs Wood, with patrons using the all day tram services to get into the city centre, although I have used the one at Parrs Wood to travel to Ladywell to visit Hope Hospital, when I lived/worked in Macclesfield. Similarly I have parked at Malin Bridge and the Hawthorns to travel into central Sheffield and Birmingham respectively by tram.

If there is a rail link from the "park and ride" facility, the last segment is often quicker than by road. If it is by bus, the inner urban road is likely to be less congested and there are often multiple bus stops in the town centre to enable the traveller to get closer to his/her intended destination.

Generally, people have no need or desire to visit (typically run down and decrepit) inner urban areas; the town centre is their primary destination. How many non-residents would want to visit places like Hulme, Moss Side, Gorton, Openshaw, Harpurhey or Newton Heath in Manchester?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Integration doesn't necessarily mean cutting direct links, it means that a more integrated view is used to make decisions, so the overall benefits and disadvantages can be seen. The current system only looks at the current bus passengers and doesn't look at the whole system. Some interventions might reduce overall the amount of money required, others might cost more money, but there might be some overall benefits to the system why the money is justified.

Franchising makes sure things can be looked at on a higher level and thus not in isolation. The most important question for the case of Manchester will be whether they will have an overall vision and set the right requirements for the franchising process to make the most of the opportunity. Of course it will help if they set some money aside, but even without money there might be some quick wins.

I know what integration means....

The fact is that there is a view espoused by some that Franchising = Integration = Ultimate Solution and that will act as a silver bullet, and usually pointing to Europe when, in reality, they point to the same three countries (i.e. Denmark, Netherlands, Germany) and fail to identify that it doesn't happen in isolation - it requires a fundamental mindset shift in terms of capital investment, revenue support AND how you approach the issue of car usage, and prioritise other modes e.g. bus, cycle, tram.

The Manchester proposals, and what we are likely to see follow them, don't follow that approach. There is no revenue support and the argument is that this will be generated by "savings" that, aside from well worn and largely discredited tropes on bus baron margins, overbussing and on-road competition, cannot explain how this will be achieved. And it still doesn't tackle some of the fundamentals that impact public transport perception and usage in the UK.

Peripheral locations don't help integration indeed, but there are still options. For example, a potential solution is to let a service terminate at the railway station and continue as another service which can be reached by travelling through the city centre. That's what happened in my city for example for many years with the local services and recently they did this with regional services. Those towns are situated at the railway station side of the city centre and buses didn't have a good way to serve the city centre. Now, the buses continue as a service to towns the other side of the city via the city centre. So now all passengers have direct connections to both the railway station and the city centre. I am pretty sure this should be at least partly possible in the cases you mention. Integration and franchising can help by promoting these kind of continuations.

First thing - if a bus arrives as a 37 and departs as a 42 but in essence it is the same physical bus, all that is being done is to create the illusion of two separate services to influence passengers to physically change even though they don't need to? Am I reading this right?

Secondly, it still doesn't address the problems affecting bus services in UK cities. As I used Bristol as an example earlier, then I will again. Yes, you could have buses terminating at places like Bristol Parkway (BPW) station and indeed, the new Metrobus service will eventually get to serve the station soon; note - the planning/access delays for this were much greater than those experienced when they built a new multi storey car park there! Yet the fast link via the Metrobus route to the city centre has been running for three years yet it hasn't been able to access BPW and that's not the bus companies' fault!

Moreover, in other parts of Bristol, you could have services working on that basis as you describe but frankly, the glue pot traffic in Bristol simply precludes reliable bus operation.... Like I say, it's about getting the fundamentals right! This is the Metrobus route from the West into Bristol - you can park in it between 1000 and 1630 - what does that tell you about bus priority on a multi-million pound project!

Fare integration, modal integration.... they aren't bad things. No-one is saying otherwise but for crying out loud, the UK can't get the simple things right. Integrating bus, tram and rail fares without the fundamentals of service reliability being in place is like getting a new fitted kitchen when the roof leaks!

 

[daodao]

The Manchester proposals, and what we are likely to see follow them, don't follow that approach. There is no revenue support and the argument is that this will be generated by "savings" that, aside from well worn and largely discredited tropes on bus baron margins, overbussing and on-road competition, cannot explain how this will be achieved. And it still doesn't tackle some of the fundamentals that impact public transport perception and usage in the UK.

I agree with much of what your have written. The Manchester franchising proposals won't deliver what their proponents hope for and anticipate and will just lead to massive council tax hikes for no real benefit. There seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of people from the European continent about how different the UK is in so many different ways.

 

[thaitransit]

Integrated Fares and to some extent connecting buses and coaches from railway stations are common especially on the Vline network in Victoria Australia.

Its very much a one stop shop for public transport information and fares in Victoria and similar in NSW. The area within 200km of Sydney and Melbourne operates with Integrated Fares and contactless smartcards to pay.

Beyond this traditional paper single and return tickets exist but they are always including any connecting coaches

 

[biko]

The main reason that the culture is different between The Netherlands and the UK (as far as bus public transport is concerned) is that there is no culture of bus subsidies in the UK (or at least not at the level of continental Europe). There is no appetite in this country to increase bus operating subsidies; on the contrary, reduction is more of a policy. The bus companies have been optimising their routes for maximum commercial advantage for the last 35 years. Whilst this might cause, in some areas, some inefficiency in the provision of subsidised socially necessary services whilst not competing with the commercial routes, elimination of this is unlikely to provide sufficient funding for the additional resources required to improve integration.

I wouldn't call this a cultural difference, but more a political wish to do everything as cheap as possible. Actually, that happens over here as well, but fortunately the social care is handled by a lower layer of government than public transport and thus they don't directly compete for the same budget.

I don't have any idea about the numbers, but franchising should reduce costs of running parallel competing services (probably not a huge amount as you say) and by integrating, sometimes some savings can be made. The direct cost of simple integration is maybe a little higher running cost by diverting a route. If buses already serve a station, it is just mainly about coordinating time tables. That shouldn't cost a fortune. Improving information on connections should also be part of it.

With additional funding it of course becomes possible to improve a lot more. Franchising is just an important first step which makes coordination and integrated decisions possible. With some investments, it can then be possible to for example improve reliability on the most important corridors and thus reduce travel times and connection times.

I know what integration means....

The fact is that there is a view espoused by some that Franchising = Integration = Ultimate Solution and that will act as a silver bullet, and usually pointing to Europe when, in reality, they point to the same three countries (i.e. Denmark, Netherlands, Germany) and fail to identify that it doesn't happen in isolation - it requires a fundamental mindset shift in terms of capital investment, revenue support AND how you approach the issue of car usage, and prioritise other modes e.g. bus, cycle, tram.

The Manchester proposals, and what we are likely to see follow them, don't follow that approach. There is no revenue support and the argument is that this will be generated by "savings" that, aside from well worn and largely discredited tropes on bus baron margins, overbussing and on-road competition, cannot explain how this will be achieved. And it still doesn't tackle some of the fundamentals that impact public transport perception and usage in the UK.

As I replied above, funding is of course a good way of improving the system, but there are also quick wins possible if there is more coordination (in other words integrated decision making). Cheap things like improving information availability, rerouting some routes a little to improve connections, retiming around major stations etc.

And by the way, investment in bus infrastructure is not only great and perfect over here. It really depends on the local authority. My local one has invested in dedicated bus bridges and routes, but others do very little and try to save money every year. But still buses do connect to trains, making it possible to travel from smaller places to most of the country. The travel times are not as good though in those areas as buses become stuck in congestion.

First thing - if a bus arrives as a 37 and departs as a 42 but in essence it is the same physical bus, all that is being done is to create the illusion of two separate services to influence passengers to physically change even though they don't need to? Am I reading this right?

No, in those cases it can just be marketed as one service throughout and the destination becomes <other neighbourhood> via railway station and city centre.

Moreover, in other parts of Bristol, you could have services working on that basis as you describe but frankly, the glue pot traffic in Bristol simply precludes reliable bus operation.... Like I say, it's about getting the fundamentals right! This is the Metrobus route from the West into Bristol - you can park in it between 1000 and 1630 - what does that tell you about bus priority on a multi-million pound project!

I agree that is ridiculous policy. It is a strange and confusing policy and doesn't work for the motorists that want to park and neither for the buses! This does clearly show the mindset of British local authorities needs to change as well.

 

[johncrossley]

Part time bus lanes are an oddity. I've only seen them in the UK and Ireland. However London has just converted many if not most of its bus lanes to 24 hour operation which is a step forward.

 

[DanielB]

Part time bus lanes are an oddity. I've only seen them in the UK and Ireland. However London has just converted many if not most of its bus lanes to 24 hour operation which is a step forward.

We've got a few in the Netherlands as well, mainly on narrow bridges where the middle of three lanes is bus lane in peak direction or an additional lane for all traffic.

The fact is that there is a view espoused by some that Franchising = Integration = Ultimate Solution and that will act as a silver bullet, and usually pointing to Europe when, in reality, they point to the same three countries (i.e. Denmark, Netherlands, Germany) and fail to identify that it doesn't happen in isolation - it requires a fundamental mindset shift in terms of capital investment, revenue support AND how you approach the issue of car usage, and prioritise other modes e.g. bus, cycle, tram.

Well, we've had pro-car governments here for many years with several budget cuts for public transport in the past decades. The entire goal of franchising was cost saving.
And the railways have several issues due to lack of budget: on several routes there's no possibility to increase frequencies anymore due to bad foundations.

So actually the situation is less different than you're thinking.

 

[johncrossley]

I would have thought running buses in the Netherlands would be particularly unprofitable because so many short distance trips are done by bike. So you don't get so many people who have no choice to use the bus like in Britain.

 

[DanielB]

That's indeed the case: buses have a lot of competition by bikes. This brings additional challenges, but the main target for bus companies is not to get people off their bike as it's both considered sustainable transport.

The competition however is also season dependent: in winter obviously less people cycle to work/school. That's why we have something like a summer timetable with reduced frequencies.

 

[Austriantrain]

There seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of people from the European continent about how different the UK is in so many different ways.

The only significant difference between the UK and most places on the continent is the amount of taxes voters are willing to pay for public transport or more generally for public services, the willingness to accept state regulation/interference and more generally a different cost/benefit-outlook.*

And I don’t mean to belittle this difference. It is perfectly legitimate in a democracy (even though I might not share this preference). And it also explains everything else in this thread.

Because, on everything else, the UK is not very different from the continent (or vice versa) - the UK is not the American Midwest. With other political preferences, you would have our public transport system, or we would have yours.

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*As an example for a different cost/benefit outlook: RT4038 has argued on this thread that since Modal Split in Germany and the UK is similar, this validates the UK approach. That is an entirely reasonable view. But: Even if the data were accurate I would still want a different policy: having to buy a new ticket everytime I board a different bus is so utterly absurd to me (and guaranteed to put me off using buses at all) that I would willingly pay more taxes to change the system.

Another example:

Here in Austria (tiny compared to the UK), we are currently building three major tunnels: Brenner (55 km, shared with Italy), Semmering (27 km) and Koralm (33 km as part of a 130 km completely new line encompassing several other long tunnels). While not everybody is happy with it, political support is near universal.

In the UK, a new line, mostly in tunnel, between Manchester and Marsden (less than 30 km) is seen by many as a fantastical stretch.

And I am not saying who is right or wrong, it’s just that the political outlook - not the facts on the ground though - couldn’t be more different.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I agree with much of what your have written. The Manchester franchising proposals won't deliver what their proponents hope for and anticipate and will just lead to massive council tax hikes for no real benefit. There seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of people from the European continent about how different the UK is in so many different ways.

The UK isn't that different from say the Netherlands (which is, like us, primarily a country of house dwellers with similar densities). It is typical English exceptionalism to say we have to do things differently.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Part time bus lanes are an oddity. I've only seen them in the UK and Ireland. However London has just converted many if not most of its bus lanes to 24 hour operation which is a step forward.

Parts of central London where I cycle around still have part-time bus-and-taxi lanes; it's not the case that they've all been switched to round-the-clock operation. (In some cases it would be very difficult to do that, since they're on major shopping/business streets which have to have deliveries, and which currently rely on out of hours, or middle of the day access. (In the case of smaller independent businesses, where deliveries during the night wouldn't be an option, and there's no access other than through the front of the shop [there are plenty of places like that!], a switch to 24-hour bus lanes, or even all-the-working-day restrictions, would leave them unviable.)

Another example:

Here in Austria (tiny compared to the UK), we are currently building three major tunnels: Brenner (55 km, shared with Italy), Semmering (27 km) and Koralm (33 km as part of a 130 km completely new line encompassing several other long tunnels). While not everybody is happy with it, political support is near universal.

In the UK, a new line, mostly in tunnel, between Manchester and Marsden (less than 30 km) is seen by many as a fantastical stretch.

And I am not saying who is right or wrong, it’s just that the political outlook - not the facts on the ground though - couldn’t be more different.

Surely part of the difference is that the Brenner and Semmering routes involve serious mountains - the only way to get a more direct route, with higher line speeds, is to bore a bloomin' great tunnel! (Koralm is perhaps a slightly different situation, with two significant and relatively close Austrian cities not - surprisingly - currently having any direct rail link; so starting from scratch now it makes sense to do something more sophisticated than would have happened if the route was built a century or more ago.) Manchester to Marsden, on the other hand (where part of the route already is in a tunnel) lends itself to the possibility of improvements which are less costly, by ironing out bits of the current route rather than boring a new tunnel the whole way.

 

[Austriantrain]

Surely part of the difference is that the Brenner and Semmering routes involve serious mountains - the only way to get a more direct route, with higher line speeds, is to bore a bloomin' great tunnel! (Koralm is perhaps a slightly different situation, with two significant and relatively close Austrian cities not - surprisingly - currently having any direct rail link; so starting from scratch now it makes sense to do something more sophisticated than would have happened if the route was built a century or more ago.) Manchester to Marsden, on the other hand (where part of the route already is in a tunnel) lends itself to the possibility of improvements which are less costly, by ironing out bits of the current route rather than boring a new tunnel the whole way.

That wasn’t my point though. The point was that we, in a very small country, will happily build three major tunnels at once and you will get cold feet over a single one.

I am not including HS2 with its tunnels because demography-wise, even the North of England has a very large population compared to Austria - there is nothing remotely comparable to Greater London here.*

*The cities connected by the Koralmbahn - a completely new line longer than Liverpool-Leeds would be - are Graz (280.000 people) and Klagenfurt (100.000). Obviously Vienna will profit as well, but that also has only about 2m people.*

 

[johncrossley]

Parts of central London where I cycle around still have part-time bus-and-taxi lanes; it's not the case that they've all been switched to round-the-clock operation. (In some cases it would be very difficult to do that, since they're on major shopping/business streets which have to have deliveries, and which currently rely on out of hours, or middle of the day access. (In the case of smaller independent businesses, where deliveries during the night wouldn't be an option, and there's no access other than through the front of the shop [there are plenty of places like that!], a switch to 24-hour bus lanes, or even all-the-working-day restrictions, would leave them unviable.)

It seems they are mostly on TfL managed roads.

How do they make deliveries in other countries?

 

[Austriantrain]

It seems they are mostly on TfL managed roads.

How do they make deliveries in other countries?

Here, wherever there are traffic restrictions, there will be exceptions for deliveries, sometimes limited to specific time-slots (eg large parts of the center of Vienna are pedestrianized, but delivery to shops is possible in the mornings).

 

[johncrossley]

Here, wherever there are traffic restrictions, there will be exceptions for deliveries, sometimes limited to specific time-slots (eg large parts of the center of Vienna are pedestrianized, but delivery to shops is possible in the mornings).

So they allowed to park in the bus lane to make deliveries?

 

[Austriantrain]

So they allowed to park in the bus lane to make deliveries?

Depends on location, but very well possible if there is no separate parking lane. Would probably be allowed sometimes between 9 and 12 am, so outside the peaks.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The UK isn't that different from say the Netherlands (which is, like us, primarily a country of house dwellers with similar densities). It is typical English exceptionalism to say we have to do things differently.

It is and it isn't - sorry if that seems like abject fence sitting.

In terms of population density etc, it's fair to say that Dutch cities are not much difference from UK cities. In fact, Eindhoven is the same population as Leicester and is less densely populated. So in terms of some of the physical geography, it isn't that different.

However, in terms of physical infrastructure, it is a world away. And that is largely due to cultural differences. We don't have the same approach to public spending and investment. We have also pursued a much more, arms length approach to state involvement - evident by how the railways developed in the UK.

Now you can say it is English exceptionalism or whatever but it still does not get away from those uncomfortable truths. I mean, how many of the Covid inspired road closures and pedestrianisations that appeared in mid 2020 are still in place now.... I suggest very few. We just think in different ways.

I passionately believe in public transport but I'm not seeing anything that addresses the fundamental issues - the promotion of the private car and levelling the playing field for public transport.

 

[johncrossley]

It used to be assumed in the 90s and earlier that British people weren't interested in their rail network. The British rail network was one of the worst in Europe. But that has vastly improved after having billions poured into it in the 2000s. Even in more recent years with the constraints of the financial crisis, rail did far better than buses. There has been significant replacement of rolling stock. Arguably there was too much spending on new trains, as new, sometimes inappropriate, homes had to be found for cascaded rolling stock. Branch lines are not being closed and instead there are some new lines being built. The willingness to spend public money on trains is not that different to the rest of western Europe.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The willingness to spend public money on trains is not that different to the rest of western Europe.

In some ways we are more willing to spend on rail, but rather than on big projects on improving what is there. But what we are unwilling to spend on is bus outside London, despite this carrying far more passengers than rail.

So they allowed to park in the bus lane to make deliveries?

There is of course a huge difference between allowing loading from bus lanes and allowing parking in them. Sometimes the former is unavoidable, but the latter is always avoidable, people just need to be less bone idle and walk from the nearest proper car park. Small laybys available for loading and blue badge parking also help, plus for short stops outside the kind of places where you only park for a very short time e.g. newsagents and takeaways.

To be fair to the UK, London does tend to provide such laybys on Red Routes but they are rare elsewhere.