Yes, the GTR contract moves from GoAhead London to Abellio London on 1st April 2024.
People have had this argument elsewhere. Despite some parts of the business having been rebranded, it is still Abellio on the company house records and the operators license registration.
You need to replace the word "despite" with "because". The DfT is very keen on retendering 'affiliated' contracts.
Yes, it's still very much Abellio London. Brand new buses are being delivered with Abellio fleetnames, and as you say the legal names are still Abellio.
Very much likely to be the case, just as GoAhead London use operators far and wide now to provide rail replacement.
Yeah Arriva Road Transport Services still do Northerns rail replacement. They're very good at sourcing coordinators....not so good at sourcing buses though
Unlikely as the contracts are bid for quite low. Operators that I have spoken to who work for the West Midlands area, they were under Abellio/Transport UK Group and are about to be under Stagecoach and they have all said the new pay rates from Stagecoach are shocking. Similarly operators who have done Avanti work were under CMAC and now they have moved to First Travel Solutions and they have all said that FTS rates are shocking in comparison to what it was. They are forced to cut corners or only take on First work where it links up to another job somewhere.
Yes but the thing is most Arriva coordinators are clueless or don't turn up. I know a number of coordinators for other operators who have had to teach Arriva staff how to do the job because they have been sent out on their second shift, on their own to stupidly big stations which are far larger than the person can safely handle. I know I can't say too much but if people heard just some of the stories with Arriva coordinator, their ability to source staff is not as good as you may think. A huge amount of jacket fillers.
For blocks which are pre planned with a decent amount of notice don't go as badly. It goes sour in some specific areas where PSVAR compliance is an issue and in some cases, it's lack of notice from the TOC about the work (until you work in the provision of rail replacement, you don't understand how often TOCs 'forget to request buses'). For emergency buses, that is very difficult as it seems that no one likes to answer the phone and with coach companies the way they are, they don't tend to have any slack. Drivers hours are all locked in from about the week before with almost no potential for any additional work. That is before you consider the fact many coach operators seem to not want to answer the phones outside of office hours and almost no one has spare drivers just waiting for work. As I say, operators are pretty tight on driving hours and so even a 2 hour emergency job in the evening can mess up a school contract the next day.
| Avanti West Coast | First Travel Solutions |
| C2C | EnsignBus |
| Chiltern | Stagecoach (Changed a few months ago) |
| Cross Country | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
| East Midlands Railway | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
| Greater Anglia | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
| Govia Thameslink Railway | Currently GoAhead, Moving to Abellio/Transport UK Group in April 2023 |
| Grand Central | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
| Great Western Railway | First Travel Solutions |
| Hull Trains | First Travel Solutions |
| LNER | Stagecoach |
| Lumo | First Travel Solutions |
| Merseyrail | Arriva Merseyside |
| Northern | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
| Scotrail | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
| Southeastern | Go Ahead London |
| South Western Railway | First Travel Solutions |
| Trans Pennine Express | First Travel Solutions |
| Transport for Wales | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
| West Midlands Railway | Previously Abellio/Transport UK Group, just transferred to Stagecoach |
Agree with all that. In your table above Southeastern is currently GoAhead London, but I understand being retendered.
First (GWR) have had the same issues in my area.
Thank You.
Agency/casual drivers by the rail replacement provider seems to be exclusive to GoAhead. Abellio, Arriva and FTS seem to sub contract everything to another bus operator. Does Abellio have a good amount of casual or agency drivers for their TFL Rail Replacement?
Very common for Stagecoach Rail Replacement, First Travel Solutions, Arriva Road Transport and CMAC to push out emails and phone calls to their network of tiny / small / medium sized suppliers at all hours of day and night to try to cover the work they've won but don't have the capacity for, or which is coming through from TOCs on urgent notice. No doubt some of the others do it too. Sometimes the same tiny supplier using a free email address and who have only one or two vehicles end up working for multiple of the groups.
They will cover it awarding work to themselves if they can! For example First Manchester depot in Oldham working for First Travel Solutions on TransPennine Express jobs.
First buses tend not to cover much rail except for in in the Great Western area. Oldham depot and I think South Yorkshire depots do a little bit but not huge amounts. Arriva I don't think ever get their own buses out anymore except for perhaps on their TFL blocks. Abellio I think are the same, they only use their own buses when it's on TFL blocks. West or East Midlands blocks which run into London are contracted out still, they aren't covered by themselves.
Down here in Sussex the only company that seems to run emergency rail replacements is actually Ensignbus, the 2 times i've seen E-rail replacement at East Grinstead on both occasions it has been Ensignbus vehicles that have turned out. On planned stuff Go-Ahead London seem to operate a lot of services and i'm seeing less coach operators turning out recently, although admittedly I haven't seen rail replacements around as often. I've only seen minibuses turn-up a few times, twice on East Grinstead-Oxted stoppers and once on a Three Bridges-Lewes run of all things.
Unlike most operators, emergency rail replacement is a significant part of the Ensign business. As it is very difficult for other operators to cover emergency jobs, Ensign do a lot of it - anywhere up to 100 miles away from base. I think it must be quite profitable - and, they make it quite profitable for the drivers too. To answer the question above, First Travel Solutions currently has no involvement withc2c rail replacement.
Thank you. I wasn't sure with the takeover of Ensign whether that contract would move to corporate First.
How on earth did I forget Greater Anglia. Oops. Thank you
There is, of course, nothing to prevent Abellio continuing to use GoAhead as a subcontractor for work in the relevant areas.
That didn't last long if that's the case. They only took over from Arriva in May!
