Reductions to services prior to an eventual withdrawal

[markymark2000]

Strangely enough, busmen actually quite like running buses, especially with passengers on board . . . it always gave me a buzz watching a bus arrive with a full load of passengers, or even driving said bus!

This can be the big difference. If the operator is being run by proper bus people who are actively trying to make things work, you can generally tell as even where there is a reduction in services, you can normally tell that there is still a genuine care and attempt to make a route work. Not every manager in the industry is a 'bus person' at heart though and some management do thing extremely differently. Without wanting to start a separate discussion, we are seeing it at First Cornwall where the previous management compared to the current are complete chalk and cheese. Some management want to make certain figures look good, especially short term, some management seem happier to play a longer game and willing to invest to get money back etc etc. Essentially, I am saying that different management do things very differently and so while some management won't run down services, others will do (and have done on occasions). Perhaps it's just bad luck that I am not surrounded by the 'bus men' ran operators.

secondary services are...well secondary...and so allowed to decline until they can't be ignored.

So while it may not specifically come under managed decline, the decline is not being helped because of the lack of action by the operator. Also, in some cases, it may not be managed decline but carelessness which can cause decline such as poor journey planning data (if people can't plan journeys on the route, they are unlikely to make such journeys. The amount of companies currently uploading poor service data to bus open data is shocking) lack of any promotion (promotion can help the commercial core routes as well as the secondary routes) alongside some other things. If all avenues have been exhausted, of course there has to be a 'cut your losses' time, in some cases though, with some operators, there is a lot they could do to reduce the speed of decline.

 

[RT4038]

This can be the big difference. If the operator is being run by proper bus people who are actively trying to make things work, you can generally tell as even where there is a reduction in services, you can normally tell that there is still a genuine care and attempt to make a route work. Not every manager in the industry is a 'bus person' at heart though and some management do thing extremely differently. Without wanting to start a separate discussion, we are seeing it at First Cornwall where the previous management compared to the current are complete chalk and cheese. Some management want to make certain figures look good, especially short term, some management seem happier to play a longer game and willing to invest to get money back etc etc. Essentially, I am saying that different management do things very differently and so while some management won't run down services, others will do (and have done on occasions). Perhaps it's just bad luck that I am not surrounded by the 'bus men' ran operators.

Some management may not be allowed 'to play a longer game' by the owners of the business. Some management may well have been replaced by the owners because they were playing a longer game, and it isn't paying off (or not within the allowed timescale). At the root of this will be money.

such as poor journey planning data (if people can't plan journeys on the route, they are unlikely to make such journeys. The amount of companies currently uploading poor service data to bus open data is shocking) lack of any promotion (promotion can help the commercial core routes as well as the secondary routes) alongside some other things.

So what is causing this poor service data? Money for staff, software? You tell me. Promotions costs money - thousands of pounds of promotion takes a lot of extra £2 fares to pay for. Where is this money coming from?

 

[Deerfold]

So what is causing this poor service data? Money for staff, software ????? You tell me. Promotions costs money - thousands of pounds of promotion takes a lot of extra £2 fares to pay for. Where is this money coming from?

I'd have thought the bare minimum would be easy to read timetables on a website, even better at stops and on leaflets. Many companies don't manage that.

My local First site has routes just disappear from their list sometimes. Arriva's website seems to have had no user testing (though is slightly better than when the current version relaunched).

Local bus companies vary wildly.

Almost all companies I use now give little to no notice of changes to services to current customers as if they're determined to annoy them.

 

[Megafuss]

This can be the big difference. If the operator is being run by proper bus people who are actively trying to make things work, you can generally tell as even where there is a reduction in services, you can normally tell that there is still a genuine care and attempt to make a route work. Not every manager in the industry is a 'bus person' at heart though and some management do thing extremely differently. Without wanting to start a separate discussion, we are seeing it at First Cornwall where the previous management compared to the current are complete chalk and cheese. Some management want to make certain figures look good, especially short term, some management seem happier to play a longer game and willing to invest to get money back etc etc. Essentially, I am saying that different management do things very differently and so while some management won't run down services, others will do (and have done on occasions). Perhaps it's just bad luck that I am not surrounded by the 'bus men' ran operators.


So while it may not specifically come under managed decline, the decline is not being helped because of the lack of action by the operator. Also, in some cases, it may not be managed decline but carelessness which can cause decline such as poor journey planning data (if people can't plan journeys on the route, they are unlikely to make such journeys. The amount of companies currently uploading poor service data to bus open data is shocking) lack of any promotion (promotion can help the commercial core routes as well as the secondary routes) alongside some other things. If all avenues have been exhausted, of course there has to be a 'cut your losses' time, in some cases though, with some operators, there is a lot they could do to reduce the speed of decline.

This is true as well.

I remember Trent Barton of all operators NOT including the 141 route on its Network Map. Low and behold it was eventually withdrawn. Fair enough it's not a major route. But to not tell anybody about it is just careless.

 

[RT4038]

I'd have thought the bare minimum would be easy to read timetables on a website, even better at stops and on leaflets. Many companies don't manage that.

My local First site has routes just disappear from there list sometimes. Arriva's website seems to have had no user testing (though is slightly better than when the current version relaunched).

Local bus companies vary wildly.

Almost all companies I use now give little to no notice of changes to services to current customers as if they're determined to annoy them.

I can assure you I am well aware of the manifestations of it, but what is causing it, and how can it be fixed? (Particularly as this seems to be an issue over multiple bus companies and owning groups)

 

[markymark2000]

So what is causing this poor service data? Money for staff, software? You tell me.

The cause is mostly down to carelessness. Operators are already legally obligated to provide timetable, tracking and fare data to the UK Govt's Bus Open Data service so the bulk of the cost is already there. The only additional cost is to fix the errors which, if more care was taken in the first place, the errors wouldn't exist. Most operators use Ticketer's open data, the data which goes out into open data is generated by the operators own staff, normally a commercial team. Ticketer's portal is so easy to update the open data and can take minutes to sort. Given the same data is what the ticket machines use, you'd expect a bit more care to be taken as the same data helps depots keep on top of punctuality.

Arriva appears to have an issue with updating the stand information in bus stations when stands change. Surely that is a key bit of information which customers need to know; which stand to wait at to get their bus. First Potteries' open data still links to Crewe's old bus station which has been shut for a year. First Cymru appeared not to update their terminus in Cardiff City Centre on open data for well over a year to reflect its new stop. Cardiff Central Station Staff used to get inundated with questions about where to get the X2 bus from because First hadn't updated the data so journey planners sent them all to a closed bus stop; the actual stop was 300 metres away, up the road and around the corner. I could list so many but you get the idea.

Some operators are using a 3rd party to sort the data for them and some of these don't seem to be very good agents. One PTE kept not updating routes for their smaller operators. In another case, operators using one specific agent all have open data which shows timing points only; as a result, if someone uses a journey planner which uses only this data as its source and they wanted to travel between two stops located between timing points, they would be told to use another route or walk for however many minutes.

In reality, the bus may stop a minute away their start/end point. For example, if you got told you had to walk 15 minutes for a bus to make the journey and the overall journey is 30 minutes (45 min overall), you aren't going to use the bus if you can actually drive it in 15 minutes (in reality, the bus stop may be 3 minutes away and the bus journey take 25 minutes (28 mins overall)

The diagram below shows a map with open data from one operator; it shows only the timing points. If I want to start/end my journey at the red spot, I am not going to consider this route because it's nowhere near where I want to go. Would you believe me if I told you that where the red spot is, there is a bus stop, which this route serves every single hour from around 7.30am-5.30pm.



I think the service data is looked at the wrong way. Operators see it too much as its an administrative burden rather than seeing it as very cheap advertising (cheap given the reach). If someone makes the data correct, that data goes out to Google Maps, Bustimes and many other sites. It may seem like 'I have to change that stop code and make sure the stuff is all correct, no one cares' but with the places that data goes, it's seen by millions of people and encourages people.

Promotions costs money - thousands of pounds of promotion takes a lot of extra £2 fares to pay for. Where is this money coming from?

Promotions, can cost a lot but it depends how much you put into it and how far you take the promotion. You can get thousands of leaflets printed out so cheap these days (Vistaprint (not sponsored) is offering 20,000 A6 leaflets for £215). Or even doing basic things like if you have no proper notices to put up for passengers, stick a network map up or show off your ticket deals, especially monthly and direct debit deals which lock passengers in. Someone good at design could draw up a template, just edit the ticket prices as/when. It's an easy filler when there is no important updates. I'm not talking Alex Hornby style full rebrand or Arriva Sapphire everyone gets a new uniform etc etc, though that can help to increase passenger numbers. Sometimes small things that can go a long way.

Almost all companies I use now give little to no notice of changes to services to current customers as if they're determined to annoy them.

In my city, we have marathons which cause huge disruption to one of the biggest routes in the borough (listed on the BSIP as taking over 500,000 pax per year). During these races service is essentially suspended for a couple of hours (stuck in stand still traffic waiting for the road to reopen), there is never a single notice from Arriva about these changes. You are just expected to know. Stagecoach similarly, whenever there is road works in my depot, there is no service update posted, everyone is just expected to be psychic. If people can't be kept informed about diversions, they are going to lose trust in the bus network.

I agree with your other comments too.

 

[RT4038]

The cause is mostly down to carelessness.

Who is being careless? Why are they being careless, and why is carelessness continuing? Bearing in mind that this appears to be an issue over multiple operators and multiple owning groups?

Promotions, can cost a lot but it depends how much you put into it and how far you take the promotion. You can get thousands of leaflets printed out so cheap these days (Vistaprint (not sponsored) is offering 20,000 A6 leaflets for £215).

Yes, that is the printing cost. But leaflets don't just happen to be printed. What is the cost of researching the information, getting the artwork done and having it all checked for accuracy. What is the cost of distributing these leaflets to ensure that they are going to be seen by likely customers? How many extra £2 fares is this going to require just to stand still?

I think the service data is looked at the wrong way. Operators see it too much as its an administrative burden rather than seeing it as very cheap advertising (cheap given the reach). If someone makes the data correct, that data goes out to Google Maps, Bustimes and many other sites. It may seem like 'I have to change that stop code and make sure the stuff is all correct, no one cares' but with the places that data goes, it's seen by millions of people and encourages people.

I am not doubting that you are right, but why is this and how is it going to change?

 

[Megafuss]

Who is being careless? Why are they being careless, and why is carelessness continuing? Bearing in mind that this appears to be an issue over multiple operators and multiple owning groups?


Yes, that is the printing cost. But leaflets don't just happen to be printed. What is the cost of researching the information, getting the artwork done and having it all checked for accuracy. What is the cost of distributing these leaflets to ensure that they are going to be seen by likely customers? How many extra £2 fares is this going to require just to stand still?


I am not doubting that you are right, but why is this and how is it going to change?

Some operators just don't have enough commercial staff by design and that can lead to timeframes being squashed significantly, which then leaves to things being missed.

I can think of two examples within the same owner group.

One has an excellent, well staffed commercial team and marketing department. It's easy to see how they are very successful. They make a decent profit for what is a difficult area.

The other operator has a small commercial team by comparison despite having a similar network footprint and depot number and they clearly can't cope. They make a loss.

If the MD of that failing operator saw how many people the other operating company has in its commercial department, he'd have a fit. But he would also learn that having a fully functional commercial team can actually make you money!

 

[NorthernSpirit]

I'd have thought the bare minimum would be easy to read timetables on a website, even better at stops and on leaflets. Many companies don't manage that.

Maybe a minimum acceptable standard should be introduced to ensure that services are properly promoted so that they don't dwindle (through lack of patronage) to the point where they are withdrawn. What gets me is that some firms use the excuse of we don't have any spare capital to print anything, now if I was a shareholder I'd be heavily pressing for proper printed publicity both posters and timetable leaflets as this promotional push would bring in more capital thus reducing the risk of having a service withdrawn. Whilst at the same time please me as a shareholder as I'd be making some profit on my shares.


One thing I'll point out, the 900/901/902 Huddersfield to Hebden Bridge (MetroConnect Pennine) which was hourly prior to 2018. When the service was revised to run every 70 minutes I did initially think that the frequency was going to be cut to one bus every two hours maybe as a way to balance the books rather than looking at what was going on in Mythomroyd at the time. All that's changed with the routes is the extra running time which now leads to excessive waits at both Barkisland and Ripponden, maybe the timetable should be revised back to hourly but have an extra two minutes added on to the running time so that the end to end journey on the 901 is 55 minutes rather than the current 1 hour and 3 minutes and 1 hour 5 minutes on the 900 rather than the current 1 hour and 13 minutes.

 

[howstaff]

This can be the big difference. If the operator is being run by proper bus people who are actively trying to make things work, you can generally tell as even where there is a reduction in services, you can normally tell that there is still a genuine care and attempt to make a route work. Not every manager in the industry is a 'bus person' at heart though and some management do thing extremely differently. Without wanting to start a separate discussion, we are seeing it at First Cornwall where the previous management compared to the current are complete chalk and cheese. Some management want to make certain figures look good, especially short term, some management seem happier to play a longer game and willing to invest to get money back etc etc. Essentially, I am saying that different management do things very differently and so while some management won't run down services, others will do (and have done on occasions). Perhaps it's just bad luck that I am not surrounded by the 'bus men' ran operators.


So while it may not specifically come under managed decline, the decline is not being helped because of the lack of action by the operator. Also, in some cases, it may not be managed decline but carelessness which can cause decline such as poor journey planning data (if people can't plan journeys on the route, they are unlikely to make such journeys. The amount of companies currently uploading poor service data to bus open data is shocking) lack of any promotion (promotion can help the commercial core routes as well as the secondary routes) alongside some other things. If all avenues have been exhausted, of course there has to be a 'cut your losses' time, in some cases though, with some operators, there is a lot they could do to reduce the speed of decline.

AS RT4038 says, there's a much wider context at play than "traditional busman = good" vs "corporate ignorance = bad", both have a role to play and both suit difference circumstances. If a good well regarded manager ties up cash or investment funds in long term "slow burners" to bring middling services up by a few percent, they may could be preventing the same attention/investment being given to the big performers where it can make a noticeable difference in the short term. There's a huge amount of opportunity cost involved, even in the big groups with more borrowing power, economies of scale, and scope to cascade fleet around.

I agree entirely, there are routes that would do better with a good focus. But you need to remember how much of a peak in deadlines/work service changes can bring. The weeks from registration to go-live shoot by very, very quickly! That poor data isn't acceptable, but in some cases (tender rounds particularly being down to the wire and involving these struggling services) it's often that or nothing often to get it done in time. Hiring that extra person for the few busy weeks is quite a cost to add, particularly when you consider the training involved to get them up to speed.

I'd have thought the bare minimum would be easy to read timetables on a website, even better at stops and on leaflets. Many companies don't manage that.

My local First site has routes just disappear from there list sometimes. Arriva's website seems to have had no user testing (though is slightly better than when the current version relaunched).

Local bus companies vary wildly.

Almost all companies I use now give little to no notice of changes to services to current customers as if they're determined to annoy them.

This is a very fair bare minimum to set, it's shocking how poor some websites are. The fact that the large groups with their greater powers of investment and setting the specifications can't get it right is very worrying.

I think the service data is looked at the wrong way. Operators see it too much as its an administrative burden rather than seeing it as very cheap advertising (cheap given the reach). If someone makes the data correct, that data goes out to Google Maps, Bustimes and many other sites. It may seem like 'I have to change that stop code and make sure the stuff is all correct, no one cares' but with the places that data goes, it's seen by millions of people and encourages people.



Promotions, can cost a lot but it depends how much you put into it and how far you take the promotion. You can get thousands of leaflets printed out so cheap these days (Vistaprint (not sponsored) is offering 20,000 A6 leaflets for £215). Or even doing basic things like if you have no proper notices to put up for passengers, stick a network map up or show off your ticket deals, especially monthly and direct debit deals which lock passengers in. Someone good at design could draw up a template, just edit the ticket prices as/when. It's an easy filler when there is no important updates. I'm not talking Alex Hornby style full rebrand or Arriva Sapphire everyone gets a new uniform etc etc, though that can help to increase passenger numbers. Sometimes small things that can go a long way.


In my city, we have marathons which cause huge disruption to one of the biggest routes in the borough (listed on the BSIP as taking over 500,000 pax per year). During these races service is essentially suspended for a couple of hours (stuck in stand still traffic waiting for the road to reopen), there is never a single notice from Arriva about these changes. You are just expected to know. Stagecoach similarly, whenever there is road works in my depot, there is no service update posted, everyone is just expected to be psychic. If people can't be kept informed about diversions, they are going to lose trust in the bus network.

I agree with your other comments too.

You're right in saying a better approach to data is required. There absolutely is care taken in it, and frustration felt when it isn't correct - however - it's a lot more work to effect change than it may seem. There's examples across the country of what appears to be the same stop appearing in journey planners, because NAPTAN is not managed well enough to avoid duplication. This may then be missed because individual operators show it correctly (albeit with different NAPTAN/ATCO codes) and some journey planners are smart enough to merge it, or recognise a stop is deprecated and ignore it, others just show the mess to the customer. The level of complexity, and customisation across the different hardware & software varies wildly. Scheduling systems are expensive, complex and a huge sunk cost. Moving from one to another, or even another (more modern and capable) version is quite the undertaking, and so the improvements in these systems take time and effort to filter through.

I agree that promotion on the face of it is cheap, and the industry can do more of it. Consideration does need to be given though to what to do with the pallet from vistaprint once it arrives. To distribute leaflets to customers in a meaningful way either needs personal delivery, to a big effort with postage and packaging - even just to hit the community hubs. Stop notices are great, and I agree an abolsute minimum, but to keep them up to date (that network map with a few prices on becomes obsolete at short notice often) requires quick the support system. Asset management systems to do it well (timetable case size, shape, etc at each stop), bespoke timetable software to do it well (displaying the right routes and times), and a lot of tangible human input, printing, checking, cutting to size, installing - for tens of thousands of stops in a big city!

I'd fully support more use of printed material from promo companies, a "leaflet drop" is usually good value and with good returns.

Some operators just don't have enough commercial staff by design and that can lead to timeframes being squashed significantly, which then leaves to things being missed.

I can think of two examples within the same owner group.

One has an excellent, well staffed commercial team and marketing department. It's easy to see how they are very successful. They make a decent profit for what is a difficult area.

The other operator has a small commercial team by comparison despite having a similar network footprint and depot number and they clearly can't cope. They make a loss.

If the MD of that failing operator saw how many people the other operating company has in its commercial department, he'd have a fit. But he would also learn that having a fully functional commercial team can actually make you money!

Very important to consider.

Good commercial people add value quickly, usually, but do need to work well in the team. A smaller team that works well trumps a bunch of "Hornby types" who are brilliant in their own way but with strong views who don't necessarily agree or compromise. It's a lot to sink the cost of training someone in all the different systems, to discover in time the flair they showed in an interview isn't long lasting, and the talent coming through...doesn't seem to be coming through anymore.

As you say if you know the structures, and the people, you can see the difference in results quite clearly.

Maybe a minimum acceptable standard should be introduced to ensure that services are properly promoted so that they don't dwindle (through lack of patronage) to the point where they are withdrawn. What gets me is that some firms use the excuse of we don't have any spare capital to print anything, now if I was a shareholder I'd be heavily pressing for proper printed publicity both posters and timetable leaflets as this promotional push would bring in more capital thus reducing the risk of having a service withdrawn. Whilst at the same time please me as a shareholder as I'd be making some profit on my shares.

I'll fully support minimum standards, but this I feel is better applied to data. Get all the downstream systems (journey planners, at stop displays, etc) to work from one schema and apply it fully (theoretically they do, in reality they don't!) and set a national standard for at-stop information to be managed by the local authorities (so all services and operators can be included, and there's no boundary effect where adjacent villages in differing council areas have vastly different information). There's steps in the right direction here, but still miles to go.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Maybe a minimum acceptable standard should be introduced to ensure that services are properly promoted so that they don't dwindle (through lack of patronage) to the point where they are withdrawn. What gets me is that some firms use the excuse of we don't have any spare capital to print anything, now if I was a shareholder I'd be heavily pressing for proper printed publicity both posters and timetable leaflets as this promotional push would bring in more capital thus reducing the risk of having a service withdrawn. Whilst at the same time please me as a shareholder as I'd be making some profit on my shares.

You really think that shareholders are into the minutiae of how firms make their money? They're not

Think you may need to look up as to what capital expenditure actually is. Provision of timetables is not capital - it's operational (or revenue) expenditure

AS RT4038 says, there's a much wider context at play than "traditional busman = good" vs "corporate ignorance = bad", both have a role to play and both suit difference circumstances. If a good well regarded manager ties up cash or investment funds in long term "slow burners" to bring middling services up by a few percent, they may could be preventing the same attention/investment being given to the big performers where it can make a noticeable difference in the short term. There's a huge amount of opportunity cost involved, even in the big groups with more borrowing power, economies of scale, and scope to cascade fleet around.

I agree entirely, there are routes that would do better with a good focus. But you need to remember how much of a peak in deadlines/work service changes can bring. The weeks from registration to go-live shoot by very, very quickly! That poor data isn't acceptable, but in some cases (tender rounds particularly being down to the wire and involving these struggling services) it's often that or nothing often to get it done in time. Hiring that extra person for the few busy weeks is quite a cost to add, particularly when you consider the training involved to get them up to speed.

This is a top post!

People forget that the traditional busmen (whoever they are) are not immune to axing or cutting services, and it's not surprising. Why flog yourself (and spend 000s) on a declining service in the hope that you might achieve parity or modest growth, where the same expenditure could reap much greater returns?

This is a very fair bare minimum to set, it's shocking how poor some websites are. The fact that the large groups with their greater powers of investment and setting the specifications can't get it right is very worrying.

Agreed - the big three are awful whilst there are some excellent ones. I know the Arriva one was a "disappointment" to many of those in the Opcos (understatement for comic effect). Who knows how the user design was finalised?

 

[Deerfold]

One thing I'll point out, the 900/901/902 Huddersfield to Hebden Bridge (MetroConnect Pennine) which was hourly prior to 2018. When the service was revised to run every 70 minutes I did initially think that the frequency was going to be cut to one bus every two hours maybe as a way to balance the books rather than looking at what was going on in Mythomroyd at the time. All that's changed with the routes is the extra running time which now leads to excessive waits at both Barkisland and Ripponden, maybe the timetable should be revised back to hourly but have an extra two minutes added on to the running time so that the end to end journey on the 901 is 55 minutes rather than the current 1 hour and 3 minutes and 1 hour 5 minutes on the 900 rather than the current 1 hour and 13 minutes.

These routes are subsidised. My guess is the operator won't be eager to feed back that they could do more mileage for the current payment.

It's rather annoying that when they were hourly, they were timed to give good connections at Hebden Bridge with the B3 to Keighley in both directions. I used to use it a lot. With a 70 minute frequency, that connection is often dreadful.

 

[markymark2000]

Who is being careless? Why are they being careless, and why is carelessness continuing? Bearing in mind that this appears to be an issue over multiple operators and multiple owning groups?

Commercial teams normally or whatever equivalent there is at each operator.

I am not doubting that you are right, but why is this and how is it going to change?

Enforcement. Traffic commissioner is meant to fine operators who are not Bus Open Data compliant and those publishing wrong information. So far, only 1 operator has been brought to public inquiry over bus open data, that being Thandi Red though they had other issues so I think this was just another thing to add while they were there. Even so, the fine was pitful. £1500 for a bus operator is a pittance.

BODS failure leads financial penalty to be imposed by TC - routeone

A failure by Thandi Red Ltd to provide required location data to BODS without a reasonable excuse has led to a penalty of £1,500.

www.route-one.net

A failure by Smethwick-based Thandi Red Ltd to provide required location data for vehicles that operate the company’s registered services to the Bus Open Data Service without a reasonable excuse has led to it being ordered to pay a penalty of £1,500 by Traffic Commissioner (TC) Miles Dorrington at a Birmingham Public Inquiry.

I've been emailing operators with the issues and using the open data feedback and it's often ignored. Very rarely do I get results, I currently have about 100 feedbacks to datasets which haven't been resolved. Operators ignore it. Why act on something when theres no punishment for not acting on it.

Yes, that is the printing cost. But leaflets don't just happen to be printed. What is the cost of researching the information, getting the artwork done and having it all checked for accuracy. What is the cost of distributing these leaflets to ensure that they are going to be seen by likely customers? How many extra £2 fares is this going to require just to stand still?

Researching? Operators should know their fares. Artwork yes that's a cost. Checking for accuracy, send it to me, I'll check it for free haha.

Distribution, put it on buses. That's the cheap and easy win. As I say if you have more money available and think you can make more returns, you'd perhaps do a leaflet drop or flyers via royal mail.

The £2 fare is subsidised so I don't think that's the best thing to look at fare wise. You should be basing the fares required off the average income per passenger at normal rates, not the subsidised lower rates (of course a customer may pay £2 but how much extra is the government putting towards that? IF for example the Govt puts £1.50 to that fare, the fare you should be basing the 'additional fares' off should be £3.50 as that is the overall fare.

That poor data isn't acceptable, but in some cases (tender rounds particularly being down to the wire and involving these struggling services) it's often that or nothing often to get it done in time. Hiring that extra person for the few busy weeks is quite a cost to add, particularly when you consider the training involved to get them up to speed.

I agree with you on the tender side and so certainly I give some leniency to that however in far too many cases, even that isn't an excuse.

Hiring an extra person likely won't be the best approach if it is just to fix BODs, unless it's a big division or that person is able to be a floater and look over the data for all of the divisions.

You're right in saying a better approach to data is required. There absolutely is care taken in it, and frustration felt when it isn't correct - however - it's a lot more work to effect change than it may seem. There's examples across the country of what appears to be the same stop appearing in journey planners, because NAPTAN is not managed well enough to avoid duplication. This may then be missed because individual operators show it correctly (albeit with different NAPTAN/ATCO codes) and some journey planners are smart enough to merge it, or recognise a stop is deprecated and ignore it, others just show the mess to the customer. The level of complexity, and customisation across the different hardware & software varies wildly. Scheduling systems are expensive, complex and a huge sunk cost. Moving from one to another, or even another (more modern and capable) version is quite the undertaking, and so the improvements in these systems take time and effort to filter through.

NAPTAN is a pain in the behind and so I am certainly trying to put that right (I've got a map on the go of over 650 stops which I have found to be in the wrong place and I am trying to nudge local transport areas (LTA) to get their act together on this but the same issues seem to be being faced here. I know there is work going on behind the scenes at the DFT to help LTAs delete stops which may make it easier for them to monitor and maintain if they have less stops to deal with.

I think we can all accept there can be data issues at times, it's a lot of data we are dealing with however the least that I expect, and I think other people may feel the same, is that when the issue is reported to an operator, they take the time to fix it swiftly. Instead the reality is most operators seem to ignore it and hope it goes away or they blame their suppliers. For big groups, customer service staff tend to be worse than a GPs receptionists at getting through to the right people (It particularly grinds my gears when a certain big bus firm beginning with the letter F has a standard response of blaming other sites for giving the wrong information rather than acknowledging that their wrong information is due to poor data from themselves, which funnily enough is the reason I am contacting in the first place to tackle the root of the problem at it's source).

I agree that promotion on the face of it is cheap, and the industry can do more of it. Consideration does need to be given though to what to do with the pallet from vistaprint once it arrives. To distribute leaflets to customers in a meaningful way either needs personal delivery, to a big effort with postage and packaging - even just to hit the community hubs. Stop notices are great, and I agree an abolsute minimum, but to keep them up to date (that network map with a few prices on becomes obsolete at short notice often) requires quick the support system. Asset management systems to do it well (timetable case size, shape, etc at each stop), bespoke timetable software to do it well (displaying the right routes and times), and a lot of tangible human input, printing, checking, cutting to size, installing - for tens of thousands of stops in a big city!

There are many many levels of promotion and for me, right now, even bare minimum would suffice. The bar is so low that literally anything would be an improvement. Leaflets could be distributed on buses as the cheapest form of distribution. Especially if running in areas where there are no bus stop timetables. Of course that can go up as far as delivering leaflets to every house within 600m of the route. All money dependant.

Network maps and prices I said for on the bus as a poster holder filler, that should be much easier to control given almost all buses return to the depot each night and so these can be monitored much more easily. Cleaners take out the outdated posted and then in the morning, give every driver who takes a new bus out a new poster with the instruction of putting it in the holder. That sorts 95% of the fleet.

Actual bus stop timetables, they are expensive to create but if the council won't do it, as an operator, you need to work out if you want passengers or not. And then again, it comes down to how much effort do you want to put into it? At a minimum there is printing the normal timetable PDF, up a level may be highlighting the right times for the stop you are at if it's a timing point and there are levels there upto and including a full timetable including all other operators stops with maps and fares etc etc. In most cases, councils thankfully take upon the role of bus stop timetables or there is a specific agreement in place with the operator to delegate this task to them and both parties then agree to stick to the bargain. I don't think that there are that many instances, with the exception of Wales, where councils don't update the stop timetables and the task isn't officially delegated to bus operators.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Bus companies do have commercial teams but few have any idea what they are actually involved in doing. In making a relatively straightforward change, as opposed to the Arriva Bucks changes, there is a mass of work to do. The initial analysis of the travel data, the financial analysis, then looking at how any revisions (cuts or developments) will be undertaken - that's the researching that @RT4038 refers to. Then there's the scheduling, discussions with key stakeholders (like local authorities or trade unions), then any changes following those discussions. Then there's the working with the ops teams (e.g. are schedules achievable) and potentially arranging route learning, plus working with engineering if vehicle changes are required. Then the registration of said routes with TCs, and then you're busy with the promotion - updating websites, internal notices etc.

The idea that it's just a £200 job from Vistaprint is just not the case, and remember, these back office roles are essential but they are a cost, hence why they've been pared back even in the most enlightened of firms. Don't get me wrong - some firms are much worse than others and it really does irk me to irrelevant and out of date notices on buses, and many can do better. However, the idea that you're going to get a driver to start putting up notices... not gonna happen except with some small outfit where the driver is responsible for sweeping the bus out.

I might also add that sending a person round in a day to update all roadside publicity also doesn't come cheap, though many operators do go and do it. However, there's equally a number where operators are not permitted to put their publicity on council property (i.e. timetable cases, etc). In some cases, some operators just ignore it and put their timetables up but in other areas, operators are running tendered services at a bare minimum, they have no incentive to publicise and the council has precious little money to do so. Last week, I was cycling nearby and saw a timetable case in a village with the First bus times clearly shown - the service was withdrawn by First in 2015, tendered to a local firm but on a five not six day basis. Operator gets paid and it's not their job, but Somerset Council are skint so they won't do it.

As for the statement that it's whether a company wants the passengers... Well, it's a case of establishing whether the juice really is worth the squeeze.

As I've said, one of my good friends is a Commercial Manager with a major bus group OpCo. They and their team deal with all the above for hundreds of vehicles, and that's before all their other tasks such as management information reporting, dealing with customers and press, etc. They're a good firm that provide a decent service. I'm sure were I to ask them, they'd love a bigger team or more financial freedom to experiment, but they are all too well aware of how commercial success is measured.

 

[greenline712]

There is a lot to be said for all these viewpoints so far . . . perhaps I can add my four-pennorth?

I've done all of this over many, many years . . . planning the network, consulting with stakeholders (horrible word), finalising and registering timetables, scheduling and negotiating with drivers' representatives, producing leaflets and booklets, roadside publicity. I wasn't involved with BODS, but others tell me that the processes involved are not simple at all . . . often converting your data to BODS standards is mind-boggling at times.

Many "commercial" departments are actually a few schedulers and a couple of analysts . . . not much more. Their time is often fully taken up with their own tasks . . . "spare" time is rare. It is possible to use an agency to create timetable publicity; Pindar; PB Bus Marketing; Best Impressions and others . . . but they all cost money. There are also lead times to be considered . . . even these agencies have finite resources, and if you don't get in quick, you'll be at the back of the queue.

Back in the day, LCBS had four area teams of two publicity posters (plus a van for each team) . . . they could deal with a small-ish change themselves; any huge change would involve bringing in resources from adjacent areas. The cost was not small, but acceptable because bus-stop timetables was the only way . . . way before t'Internet!

Nowadays, operators will usually have a van with a couple of drivers made available just before route changes . . . even so, in times of staff difficulties, releasing these drivers can sometimes mean service cuts. How many stops per hour? If an element of cleaning and tidying up is included, then 8-10 stops per hour is pretty good going . . . I've done it!! {And I used to do much of it in my own time, because it was MY network . . . others aren't so committed}.

I think we're all agreed that publicity is key . . . but at north of £30K pa (including on-costs) for just one body, plus website design/updating, plus timetable booklet compilation and publication . . . the costs are not insignificant. Whether we like it or not, the accountants are in charge at many companies, and justifying expenditure is essential before actually spending the money. As Barry Doe has said over many years . . . better to fund 99 contracts and publicise them, rather than 100 contracts and no publicity.

In an ideal world . . . operators should, and could, do better . . . as could LTAs (qv Intalink, who charged £5 per stop to update timetables, and that was in 2015) but we're not in an ideal world.

 

[markymark2000]

that's the researching that @RT4038 refers to.

I believe it was meant in relation to promotional material, not researching for cuts. If I was incorrect, I shall leave it upto RT4038 to correct me and I would update my comments accordingly.

The idea that it's just a £200 job from Vistaprint is just not the case, and remember, these back office roles are essential but they are a cost, hence why they've been pared back even in the most enlightened of firms. Don't get me wrong - some firms are much worse than others and it really does irk me to irrelevant and out of date notices on buses, and many can do better.

It was said that you'd need to get a designer too to make a template. I've said many times that the amount of money and effort involved can vary from lower cost to high end.

However, the idea that you're going to get a driver to start putting up notices... not gonna happen except with some small outfit where the driver is responsible for sweeping the bus out.

No reason why it wouldn't work. A driver putting a single notice up on their bus at run out. It would have been unthinkable a few years back for a driver to clean their bus and then Covid hit and suddenly there were drivers working for the big firms whos duty it was to sit and sanitise buses. That may be unrelated but the point is drivers can do more than just drive a bus. It's not exactly asking them to fix the thing, it's a poster in a holder. Even so, however the notices go out now for warning of future changes, that gets done fine. My sole suggestion (other people may have expanded on it and you are welcome to respond to them accordingly) was a filler poster to promote fares or a network map rather than having empty poster holders or showing outdated info. Unless you're GoNorthEast, this information isn't going to be changing that often. Fares generally once per year (though some firms do it twice per year now!) and the network map generally once per year that will have a major change. Once it's there, it's there, it won't need changing every week.

often converting your data to BODS standards is mind-boggling at times.

Generally not as it's mostly automated through Ticketer for the majority of operators (data inputted into Ticketer is used for many other functions such as the ticket sales and schedule adherence. A number of others use agents for their data (some of the agents are better than others but the legal responsibility lies with operators to ensure the data is correct). Some operators can do BODS manually via the DFTs creator tool. My observations seem to suggest it's mostly a single agent who is an issue and operators using Ticketers open data which means not only is their timetable data wrong but also the data on the ticket machines, in depots and potentially even be leading to services being cut as no one is shown as boarding at a stop (Ticketer can show you people boarding at a specific stop as well as just fare stage) when in reality it's just that the stop has been missed from the system so it's never logged anyone using the stop. And yet, despite all of this, some companies such as First, have no care in the world. Dare it be said, it's a legal obligation too and failure to comply by providing correct data can lead to financial penalties and conditions against the operators licence......
Any operator struggling can email the BODS helpdesk or their agent who would be more than happy to assist operators in ensuring their data is up to date.

I think we're all agreed that publicity is key . . . but at north of £30K pa (including on-costs) for just one body, plus website design/updating, plus timetable booklet compilation and publication . . . the costs are not insignificant. Whether we like it or not, the accountants are in charge at many companies, and justifying expenditure is essential before actually spending the money. As Barry Doe has said over many years . . . better to fund 99 contracts and publicise them, rather than 100 contracts and no publicity.

The 30K figure you give looks like that would be for a higher end promotion and yes, if you go for full booklets I can see why they would cost more. I know firms who got hundreds of leaflets designed and printed for only a few hundred pound. If you want to spend a lot more you can but the most bare, basic promotion can be cheaper. Less effective but cheaper. That was my main point, promotion doesn't have to be going all out (though I think we all agree, this would be the best thing to happen), it can be done cheaper.
I agree that accountants may be in charge but then at the same time, shouldn't the accountants be aware that with the current state of decline due to the lack of marketing, they risk putting themselves out of a job. A ceased operator doesnt need accountants to justify expenditure.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I agree that accountants may be in charge but then at the same time, shouldn't the accountants be aware that with the current state of decline due to the lack of marketing, they risk putting themselves out of a job. A ceased operator doesnt need accountants to justify expenditure.

Again, this is a tired, hackneyed old trope about bean counters.

Bus company managers are switched on enough to know about expenditure, opportunity costs etc. However, they aren't produced in some cookie cutter factory - some will be more flamboyant, some more cautious. Some are frankly just better than others.

Another friend of mine also works for a major operator opco. Fanatical about buses as a kid, this was the only employment route they were ever going to follow. Has a preserved vehicle that they travelled on in their childhood, believes in buses, and is as hard nosed as they come in relation to profitability and investment. After all, most operators cease because costs outstrip revenue.

 

[Snex]

Arriva don't fully take into account day/weekly etc pass usage, or least they never seemed to. That is why when you look at almost all Arriva operations, evening trips were almost all funded by the local authority (see Shropshire, Telford, . Arriva run very few evening services commercially because the actual trips don't take much revenue, it's people using day tickets or returns. By contrast, Stagecoach did/does look at the evening trips and cross subsidise from the core daytime service and acknowledges overall usage including return/day ticket use using the logic that without the evenings, people are less likely to use the main daytime trips. It's no coincidence that in almost all Arriva stronghold areas, evening buses would be almost none existent if it wasn't for council funding.

Arriva use the same logic that Peoplesbus use in Merseyside for schools (and subsequently now Stagecoach do it but only because they bought out Peoplesbus operations). They run the morning school bus commercially, get all of the fares (which is all Merseytravels multi operator MyTickets), then the afternoon trips to get the kids home using their return/day ticket, those trips are all tendered as the operator has their money and ran with it.

Just curious, is this speculation or factual? Just interesting reading as Arriva Northumbria is almost the opposite, the whole network in South East Northumberland, bar a few minor routes are fully commercial, and I'd be fairly confident that the evening buses aren't making money and are being cross subsidised by their day time counter parts. Stockton, Redcar and Darlington is much of the same aswell, even known the last lost a few evening services on a Sunday recently but there's still evening services on most routes every other day. Durham, less so, admitably.

GoNorthEast (GoAhead) are the problematic company with those issues locally around here, Stagecoach being pretty much as you described.

 

[RT4038]

I think that both @TheGrandWazoo, @howstaff and @greenline712 posts both need reading very carefully, as they all raise pertinent points, which I will try not to go over again. I appreciate @markymark2000 is an enthusiast with a great deal of minutiae knowledge (and a frustration when any of this is wrong) but this needs to be tempered with reality.

I believe it was meant in relation to promotional material, not researching for cuts. If I was incorrect, I shall leave it upto RT4038 to correct me and I would update my comments accordingly.

It is a bit of both - your average bus company will (on the 80/20 principle) have 20% of really good routes and 80% not so good. There will not be the resources (financial or manpower) to look at all 80% at once.

Researching? Operators should know their fares. Artwork yes that's a cost. Checking for accuracy, send it to me, I'll check it for free haha.

You may well make flippant comment about 'Operators should know their fares' (or their routes) and of course there will be many staff who do. However, your pamphlet is going to be produced by Marketing people (operating or commercial staff often being fairly useless at producing artwork, and even if they are, will have their time already spoken for.). In my experience marketing people often do not understand the minutiae of the routes and fares - being handed a working or EBSR (Electronic Bus Service Registration) timetable and map and having to turn that into something intelligible to the public is often no simple task. It all takes time to produce it and check it. As for accuracy, I have lost count on the number of times boxes of leaflets have been thrown away because of simple mistakes that the uninitiated have failed to realise. Remember, nowadays few bus company admin / commercial staff actually use the product.

Distribution, put it on buses. That's the cheap and easy win. As I say if you have more money available and think you can make more returns, you'd perhaps do a leaflet drop or flyers via royal mail.

Well that is useful - please come and ride my bus, you can find all the information you need on the bus ...... Sorry, got to do better than that to get results from all this investment in marketing you've made.

No reason why it wouldn't work. A driver putting a single notice up on their bus at run out. It would have been unthinkable a few years back for a driver to clean their bus and then Covid hit and suddenly there were drivers working for the big firms whos duty it was to sit and sanitise buses. That may be unrelated but the point is drivers can do more than just drive a bus. It's not exactly asking them to fix the thing, it's a poster in a holder. Even so, however the notices go out now for warning of future changes, that gets done fine.

And I thought you were the one who wanted accuracy and consistency. Presumably you have a plan to send someone else out to make sure all the drivers had done what you asked during the 5 min walk round check plus this? Yes it will work in some places and not others.

Generally not as it's mostly automated through Ticketer for the majority of operators (data inputted into Ticketer is used for many other functions such as the ticket sales and schedule adherence. A number of others use agents for their data (some of the agents are better than others but the legal responsibility lies with operators to ensure the data is correct). Some operators can do BODS manually via the DFTs creator tool. My observations seem to suggest it's mostly a single agent who is an issue and operators using Ticketers open data which means not only is their timetable data wrong but also the data on the ticket machines, in depots and potentially even be leading to services being cut as no one is shown as boarding at a stop (Ticketer can show you people boarding at a specific stop as well as just fare stage) when in reality it's just that the stop has been missed from the system so it's never logged anyone using the stop. And yet, despite all of this, some companies such as First, have no care in the world. Dare it be said, it's a legal obligation too and failure to comply by providing correct data can lead to financial penalties and conditions against the operators licence......
Any operator struggling can email the BODS helpdesk or their agent who would be more than happy to assist operators in ensuring their data is up to date.

In my county of residence Ticketer is hardly used. The two main operators (about 96% of scheduled mileage) use other machines. I concur with @greenline712 that the process of interface between scheduling system to EBSR to BODS can be fraught with difficulty. One particular operator has had fairly major issues with this interface and has recently introduced an upgrade, but that doesn't seem to have solved everything. Even the data to their own journey planning website has been unreliable, with whole services missing.
There may well be issues with user carelessness/unfamiliarity/tasks that only need doing occasionally so get missed [updating date ranges for schools etc]
Errors in the data will probably also mean errors in the EBSR, so putting them right will involve the work of resubmission (at a cost) and Local Transport Authority proformas sought. Any operator receiving a long list of @markymark2000 issues will likely put them on the pile of 'to do' items when the timetable changes - if it means asking for NapTan changes and stuff it'll be even further down the pile, due to the amount of time needed to deal with them.
Things will gradually get better.

Enforcement. Traffic commissioner is meant to fine operators who are not Bus Open Data compliant and those publishing wrong information. So far, only 1 operator has been brought to public inquiry over bus open data, that being Thandi Red though they had other issues so I think this was just another thing to add while they were there. Even so, the fine was pitful. £1500 for a bus operator is a pittance.

We are very, very far away from Traffic Commissioners enforcing BODS accuracy, aside from operators wilfully refusing to supply information. The TCs have hardly any staff, and they are not going to be looking at this in any detail any time soon. In fact, I predict that the governance system will have changed before then.

To re-iterate - as @greenline712 has pointed out - not all bus company, or LA , staff are enthusiasts . Not all of them really understand the importance of the data, and some people are more conscientious in their work than others. Many of them won't use the product very much, if at all; if they do they probably know the timetables and routes so well that they don't use the data output. In both organisations they are no doubt well or over loaded with work, and have to prioritise. Your long lists may not be acted upon immediately. Money, and resource, is not readily available.

Yes, it is frustrating, but like eating an elephant, it has to be done in bite sized chunks.

 

[markymark2000]

Just curious, is this speculation or factual? Just interesting reading as Arriva Northumbria is almost the opposite, the whole network bar 2 routes, I believe, is fully commercial and I'd be fairly confident that the evening buses aren't making money and are being cross subsidised by their day time counter parts. Stockton, Redcar and Darlington is much of the same aswell, even known the last lost a few evening services on a Sunday recently but there's still evening services on most routes every other day. Durham, less so, admitably.

It is perhaps an example of management doing things differently. My comments predominantly come from the North West, Wales and West Midlands areas and when you go to most Arriva areas and look at the evening services, check what the council funds (information mostly via freedom of information requests) and they tend to match up pretty well.

Wales division, Chester 10, Wrexham 1 and 2, Rhyl 12 and 11M and possibly the Bangor 5 are the commercial routes. The rest are funded.
Merseyside most evening trips are funded in some way. The town of St Helens for example, a relative Arriva stronghold, most routes are tendered (the HTL evening only services and the 32/32A and 38A), under deminims payment (31/34/89/320/352), or under BSIP funding (329). Leaving the only commercial routes as the 10 and 10A. Many other examples scattered around Merseyside. Manchester, all evening buses are funded.
West Midlands area, only routes which run past 8pm which are commercial are Telford 4 and Tamworth 7E and 110

A new thread may be best as this would be a long post to post all of the sources as of course it involves a lot of different councils.

I appreciate @markymark2000 is an enthusiast with a great deal of minutiae knowledge (and a frustration when any of this is wrong) but this needs to be tempered with reality.

I have experience within the industry. I choose not to give my full professional background on this forum.

Well that is useful - please come and ride my bus, you can find all the information you need on the bus ...... Sorry, got to do better than that to get results from all this investment in marketing you've made.

This is the low effort end of the scale. As I have said repeatedly, you can scale up the effort all the way to full Alex Hornby route refreshing with liveries, roadshows and new uniforms etc etc. Any promotion is better than what is going on now!

It's also surprising how many people can pick up leaflets on the bus and use that to encourage them to make other journeys (such as they see evening journeys that they never knew existed or found it hard to get times for), they can also go home and use the leaflet to inform others. It's nowhere near as effective as posting to every household but it is a form of marketing which would work, especially on a low effort end. I am trying specifically to not say everyone should be doing all out marketing to promote a marginal route in decline because everyone would then be saying it can't be justified.

Presumably you have a plan to send someone else out to make sure all the drivers had done what you asked during the 5 min walk round check plus this?

Can drivers not be trusted to do anything these days? In operators that I have experience with (ranging from small firms to big operators), drivers would be more than capable of doing this sensibly after walkaround check. Use some logic on this, it's a network map and a fares poster, they only get updated about twice per year. You say it as if it's something that needs doing daily! I don't know why you are making a mountain out of this mole hill.

In my county of residence Ticketer is hardly used. The two main operators (about 96% of scheduled mileage) use other machines. I concur with @greenline712 that the process of interface between scheduling system to EBSR to BODS can be fraught with difficulty.

I don't know which area you are so can't of course go too far into that but as I have said, there are alternatives such as agents and while some operators may be doing things as you suggest, others will not be.

One particular operator has had fairly major issues with this interface and has recently introduced an upgrade, but that doesn't seem to have solved everything. Even the data to their own journey planning website has been unreliable, with whole services missing.
There may well be issues with user carelessness/unfamiliarity/tasks that only need doing occasionally so get missed [updating date ranges for schools etc]
Errors in the data will probably also mean errors in the EBSR, so putting them right will involve the work of resubmission (at a cost) and Local Transport Authority proformas sought.

Depends how the data is created in the first place and how it is created. For operators doing things the way you explain, yes things may be more complex. In other cases, less so. As I have said, I have done BODS for operators and bar one or two hiccups, I could create the data pretty easily.

Any operator receiving a long list of @markymark2000 issues will likely put them on the pile of 'to do' items when the timetable changes - if it means asking for NapTan changes and stuff it'll be even further down the pile, due to the amount of time needed to deal with them.

Not really. Generally it's not longer lists, It's route X does/doesn't serve stop 1 [stop name and ATCO/NAPTAN code] or sometimes it's routes wrongly listed as not for public use (for Ticketer operators, this is solved within a minute by finding the service and then clicking a checkbox. Other methods may take longer). It's proven how easily these can be fixed with firms like Falcon Buses and D&G fixing issues within a day. Centrebus however until recently, their datasets hadn't been updated in months. That wasn't a 'this route has this issue', it was a '70% of the data is incorrect' sort of thing. The very few instances I have given a fuller list, about 50% have been resolved quickly and I am now working with the operator to resolve the others.
NAPTAN stuff I report separately to the council, no point informing operators of a missing stop as you say, they will just be reporting to someone else.

The situation seems to be the difficulty getting through to the right people. once you are through to the right people, one of two things happen. Either 1, they are fixed quickly, or 2 they are indefinitely ignored (irrespective of timetable changes).

We are very, very far away from Traffic Commissioners enforcing BODS accuracy, aside from operators wilfully refusing to supply information. The TCs have hardly any staff, and they are not going to be looking at this in any detail any time soon. In fact, I predict that the governance system will have changed before then.

I understand. You asked how is it going to change and enforcement is the only solution which will see real results in my opinion. May not be practical with how things are right now but that is what will be needed eventually as the softly softly approach has stopped working. Given Traffic Commissioners want to start using BODS as evidence of operators reliability, it's in their best interests to get a grip on BODS compliance as that will make some of their other goals easier to achieve.

In both organisations they are no doubt well or over loaded with work, and have to prioritise. Your long lists may not be acted upon immediately. Money, and resource, is not readily available.

For BODS/Naptan, if it was done right first time, there wouldn't need to be money or resources used fixing the issues. Ongoing maintenance, especially NAPTAN, is minimal, there only becomes a longer list if it's been neglected or updated really poorly (Unless someone suddenly moves all of the bus stops in a council area, then I can see why there may be an issue!)

 

[howstaff]

Researching? Operators should know their fares. Artwork yes that's a cost. Checking for accuracy, send it to me, I'll check it for free haha.

Distribution, put it on buses. That's the cheap and easy win. As I say if you have more money available and think you can make more returns, you'd perhaps do a leaflet drop or flyers via royal mail.

Research has to go into it to make it worthwhile, if you can do it in depth and consider sociodemographics, competition, and travel demand, then create a meaningful/relevant flyer and hit the very specific targets you want you'll do well! If you just stick some fares info on the network map, and leave it on the bus, you've missed the mark in most cases as they know enough about your fares and services to become a customer already. It's a bit like when takeaways sticking menus in the delivery bag, pointless for a regular customer, and for a sporadic customer it's just needless clutter, and if they still have it by the time they come to order again the Set Meal for One (or Day Ticket) contains different foods and at a different price, and the Salt & Pepper Spring Rolls (or particular route they wanted) are discontinued. (Is that a good metaphor I worked hard to think of one?! )

The 30K figure you give looks like that would be for a higher end promotion and yes, if you go for full booklets I can see why they would cost more. I know firms who got hundreds of leaflets designed and printed for only a few hundred pound. If you want to spend a lot more you can but the most bare, basic promotion can be cheaper. Less effective but cheaper. That was my main point, promotion doesn't have to be going all out (though I think we all agree, this would be the best thing to happen), it can be done cheaper.
I agree that accountants may be in charge but then at the same time, shouldn't the accountants be aware that with the current state of decline due to the lack of marketing, they risk putting themselves out of a job. A ceased operator doesnt need accountants to justify expenditure.

Actual bus stop timetables, they are expensive to create but if the council won't do it, as an operator, you need to work out if you want passengers or not. And then again, it comes down to how much effort do you want to put into it? At a minimum there is printing the normal timetable PDF, up a level may be highlighting the right times for the stop you are at if it's a timing point and there are levels there upto and including a full timetable including all other operators stops with maps and fares etc etc. In most cases, councils thankfully take upon the role of bus stop timetables or there is a specific agreement in place with the operator to delegate this task to them and both parties then agree to stick to the bargain. I don't think that there are that many instances, with the exception of Wales, where councils don't update the stop timetables and the task isn't officially delegated to bus operators.

Responding out of turn to stay on the marketing angle - the 30k figure is the cost of the person - without considering good quality printing kit (outsourcing is great until you need urgent short runs to replace vandalised timetable cases), the van they need to be in to get around, the software to make the timetables (if you're going to do it, may as well do it properly), etc. TGW's comment about the juice being worth the squeeze is bang on. I agree that at stop timetables is a good minimum to aim for, but I say this from an accessibility of information point of view not a commercial one, how many people really (i.e. and how much revenue do they represent) are going to vote with their feet because at stop timetables or on bus poster cases are not maintained? Miniscule numbers in the grand scheme of things.

And as for the council vs operator A vs operator B business, it's petty, very very petty. There's good examples out there yes, but also a matching set of bad ones - with operators naturally feathering their own nest...let an operator design the multi-operator PTE map and look who's services are most prominent, trust everyone to put up their own timetables and watch them cover each others, withdraw a service and never take the timetables down because why waste the fuel.

-----

And in broader response to points raised...

The structure inside businesses is not the best it can be, it never is. As much as we'd all "love to get our hands on it and sort it out", we can't as we're playing with peoples lives and can't magically upskill, remotivate, relocate and so on. As has been said marketing people are often marketing people, and don't know the ins and outs of the commercial/planner-y/bus world. You probably don't want them to, as it's probably better to find a person who can "do marketing" well (in it's broadest sense) and hold their hand on the minutiae. But it's a drain on resources compared to the theoretical perfect bus marketer.

Commercial teams are small and busy because overheads are pared back for sure, but also a challenging lack of talent, it does need more resource (i.e. people) to solve the issues, but where on earth do they come from? I left the industry for that reason, keep squeezing a very good commercial team and watching them pop leads to a much bigger challenge than the little things it can help. There are good people coming through, but not enough. Likewise with drivers or cleaners taking a more active role in the marketing and presentation of information, in the nicest possible way it's hard enough to get them to do their own job properly! The mimimum wage cleaner working until 0300 has no interest whatsover in looking at posters, no disrespect indended to them and their vital role, but there can't be many people seeing that shift pattern and mucky, physical work as their dream job.

A good and fair comment being made by a few posters is that many people involved in all this don't use the product, at all or as much as they should. This is a reasonable criticism, and more should be done about it. You can't force people to commute by bus (indeed in a regional role for a big operator you often can't if you wanted to) but more should be done to see things through the passengers eyes and funnel feedback through from customers, colleagues and local stakeholders.

And finally from me...this is a well reasoned debate, politely put, from people who care deeply about a subject they're knowledgeable about - from all posters. Thank you, and long may it continue.

 

[Dai Corner]

I'm retired from a career in IT and business analysis with an interest in public transport and would consider sorting out the NAPTAN database, static and dynamic timetable displays and other data in my city for minimum wage or perhaps just expenses.

But would the Council and local operators engage me to do that?

 

[RT4038]

I'm retired from a career in IT and business analysis with an interest in public transport and would consider sorting out the NAPTAN database, static and dynamic timetable displays and other data in my city for minimum wage or perhaps just expenses.

But would the Council and local operators engage me to do that?

Have you put such a proposition to them?

 

[Dai Corner]

Have you put such a proposition to them?

Well, no, as the thought only came to me as I was reading this thread yesterday.

I'd be interested to hear from any enthusiasts/retirees who've done anything like this though.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I have experience within the industry. I choose not to give my full professional background on this forum.

Sorry but we don't need to know your CV or linkedin profile. There are plenty of people who, like @greenline712 can clearly allude to their experiences. I decided my life lay elsewhere, but in the past, have had full P&L responsibility for multiple cost centres/operations, been responsible for managing financial performance, as well as production of and meeting key performance indicators.

It's also surprising how many people can pick up leaflets on the bus and use that to encourage them to make other journeys (such as they see evening journeys that they never knew existed or found it hard to get times for), they can also go home and use the leaflet to inform others. It's nowhere near as effective as posting to every household but it is a form of marketing which would work, especially on a low effort end. I am trying specifically to not say everyone should be doing all out marketing to promote a marginal route in decline because everyone would then be saying it can't be justified.

That can happen but the circumstances are perhaps more specific. For instance, will someone on the Morpeth to Ashington service pick up a leaflet that might encourage them to travel on the Northumbrian Coast services. Possibly yes - they are already a bus passenger so encouraging them to travel on a leisure basis is a useful means of promotion. However, if a non bus user going to pick up a leaflet... No, but as I say, there is an argument for it.

However, take the Morpeth to Ashington service itself... Not a killer service but decent enough. I'm not convinced that leaflet drops or even putting leaflets for it on that service, nor neighbouring routes (Blyth to Ashington) will move the dial appreciably. In short, it's a case of knowing where to fight your battles, and getting the best return for your efforts.

I would point out that Arriva's promotion of its Northumbrian Coast services is pretty woeful, and could be better.

Can drivers not be trusted to do anything these days? In operators that I have experience with (ranging from small firms to big operators), drivers would be more than capable of doing this sensibly after walkaround check. Use some logic on this, it's a network map and a fares poster, they only get updated about twice per year. You say it as if it's something that needs doing daily! I don't know why you are making a mountain out of this mole hill.

Once again, it begs the question as to whether you have actually managed staff? I have and being honest, some drivers are great and would readily do it, and some just won't. Do you think that a supervisor amongst trying to sort out missing drivers, delays, breakdowns etc is also going to pop out and check that Dave has put that notice on 15289?

I don't know what your industry experience is and, with regard to forum rules, don't want you to post anything that will identify you. However, the question is posed because it doesn't sound like you have commercial experience and have had to deliver results?

A good and fair comment being made by a few posters is that many people involved in all this don't use the product, at all or as much as they should. This is a reasonable criticism, and more should be done about it. You can't force people to commute by bus (indeed in a regional role for a big operator you often can't if you wanted to) but more should be done to see things through the passengers eyes and funnel feedback through from customers, colleagues and local stakeholders.

Very insightful comments from @howstaff. It really should be that the management teams should get out for a half day or whatever and experience what the customer does, and tries to put themselves in the minds of the customer. They won't see every thing - they might not get the bus with the torn seat covering or the internal ad for a long finished promotion or service, but you can gain quite the insight.

Every so often, I will treat myself to a day ticket and sample an area. As much as I enjoy the scenery passing the window, and the architecture or social interest of the places I visit, I'm also a keen observer of the nature of bus operation in a poor man's Roger French sort of way. It's amazing what you see when you start looking, and it is something that you'd like your operational and commercial teams to do as best practice. As you say, when you have limited overhead, it's easier said than done.

 

[nw1]

This can be the big difference. If the operator is being run by proper bus people who are actively trying to make things work, you can generally tell as even where there is a reduction in services, you can normally tell that there is still a genuine care and attempt to make a route work. Not every manager in the industry is a 'bus person' at heart though and some management do thing extremely differently. Without wanting to start a separate discussion, we are seeing it at First Cornwall where the previous management compared to the current are complete chalk and cheese. Some management want to make certain figures look good, especially short term, some management seem happier to play a longer game and willing to invest to get money back etc etc. Essentially, I am saying that different management do things very differently and so while some management won't run down services, others will do (and have done on occasions). Perhaps it's just bad luck that I am not surrounded by the 'bus men' ran operators.

Could we see the difference in these attitudes in First (Southampton) versus Bluestar? The former appeared to run down the service while the latter, one year in, have made no cuts yet and if anything are increasing frequency on some routes. Under Bluestar we've also seen introduction of vehicles to some routes at peak times to maintain the off-peak frequency, which is very much against the beancounter outlook on life.

Looking at the Minehead comment above, and their bizarre abandonment of clockface timetables on some routes, are First one of the more regressive or bean-counterish operators in general in fact?

 

[Dai Corner]

Looking at the Minehead comment above, and their bizarre abandonment of clockface timetables on some routes, are First one of the more regressive or bean-counterish operators in general in fact?

The Taunton-Minehead 28 is subsidised and the new timetable may be all Somerset Council can afford.

Which brings me back to the remark I find myself making in all threads like this. The service offered on most rural bus services has much more to do with how much the politicians will pay than who owns or manages the operator.

 

[820KDV]

This has been a very interesting thread to follow as someone just completing 20 years at a Local Transport Authority, which was preceded by 14 years with a subsidiary of a small group which during that time became a large group.

Whilst I am sure examples exist, I can't think of instances where operators have deliberately reduced services as a tactic to withdraw them. But I can think of examples where that might be perceived as being so. One route I know well which has prospered since receiving Government Kick-Funding in 2004 has suffered with increased congestion over the intervening 20 years. The company has added several extra vehicles to the cycle to maintain the frequency, but there was a point where the MD said that any further traffic congestion couldn't be covered by an additional bus as the revenue just wasn't there. He proposed either cutting a double run to the main stop in one town and using a less useful alternative which was on line of route, or omitting the extension to the railway station in the final town. On the outside that might look like a cut, what were the operator to do? In the end neither was necessary, but it came close, and even now is no doubt a risk to the service.

Or, when we were short of drivers (yes, even 25 years ago we were short) we looked at loadings and at the willingness to work rest days and discovered that revenue was significantly lower on Saturday afternoons, while drivers were less keen to do overtime on Saturdays. So frequencies were reduced after a "normal" morning timetable. A cut? Or a way of preserving resources to run the busy weekday service?

There have been comments about publicity, perhaps without an understanding of where the industry / LTAs are. My authority used to produce area booklets, but in the years of austerity the choice was to either keep paying keep production costs including a full time officer, or keep a service running. Maybe the wrong choice was made, unless you happened to live in the village which would have gone without its bus service that is.

Don't get me started about NaPTAN inaccuracies, they annoy me as much they annoy anyone, but getting them sorted is not so much an up hill struggle but a vertical cliff. Now, it shouldn't be, but no one else sees it as important, so they always find something else to do. And because it has been left for so long, getting gradually more and more inaccurate it is very hard to show how vital this is now the need for accuracy has grown, and will continue to do so.

With company websites, no doubt people think there is a vast resource behind them, but having been involved in the early stages of one of the big groups putting timetables on their website 20 odd years ago, it was left to a fairly simple file sharing programme which would let the scheduler populate the website at the touch of a button. Nice theory, but far from reality once you understand how the same basic timetable needs specific variations to work best for the Registration, the duty cutting software, the bus boards, the roadsides and then the website. Yes, the same data, but needing to correctly show slightly different things to different people. the web was a vast new marketing opportunity, done at almost zero cost, with the often weird results we are all too familiar with.

The Taunton-Minehead 28 is subsidised and the new timetable may be all Somerset Council can afford.

Which brings me back to the remark I find myself making in all threads like this. The service offered on most rural bus services has much more to do with how much the politicians will pay than who owns or manages the operator.

I suspect that this is the truth here. In my area we aren't currently under pressure to cut, although we all wonder how close such demands might be. In our case it seems to be the opposite. Of course Councillors want value for money, but they do seem to want to support our rural buses. Yes, they like Digital Demand Responsive Services, the marketing by the various software suppliers has been very powerful here, aided by DfT's excitement for it, but they also recognise that while some fixed routes could go DRT, many shouldn't. And what is more surprising to me is that they are coming round to the idea that funding extra journeys on commercial routes can achieve better results in terms of number of passengers served per pound spent, and that a bit of support now will enhance commerciality in a few years time as well as helping with reducing emissions and congestion.

Pretty radical stuff, but its seems that they are looking at how we are spending our BSIP2 (formerly BSIP+) funds as a mix of supporting the extra costs of the existing contracts and adding mileage to commercial routes. Improving Sunday frequencies, adding weekday capacity and even introducing a Sunday service on a route which hasn't had one since long before de-regulation among the list of projects.

OK, we're now well away from 'cuts before withdrawal' territory, but to return to the actual topic here, when things don't add up something has to be done. However, at the same time you can be pretty sure that when circumstances allow operators and LTAs want to grow, and most will try their hardest to do so. But never forget that there is a very, very fine line between the few extra crumbs which aid growth and the removal of a few crumbs which starts the decline.

 

[howstaff]

Whilst I am sure examples exist, I can't think of instances where operators have deliberately reduced services as a tactic to withdraw them. But I can think of examples where that might be perceived as being so. One route I know well which has prospered since receiving Government Kick-Funding in 2004 has suffered with increased congestion over the intervening 20 years. The company has added several extra vehicles to the cycle to maintain the frequency, but there was a point where the MD said that any further traffic congestion couldn't be covered by an additional bus as the revenue just wasn't there. He proposed either cutting a double run to the main stop in one town and using a less useful alternative which was on line of route, or omitting the extension to the railway station in the final town. On the outside that might look like a cut, what were the operator to do? In the end neither was necessary, but it came close, and even now is no doubt a risk to the service.

An apt point here in that congestion has the dual effect of increasing costs (extra bus in the cycle, more paid hours per trip) and decreasing revenue (a slower journey is less palatable to customers). I've heard this said before from passengers who have the view that the bus company is deliberately slowing down the journey to justify withdrawal when the reality is the challenges of congestion are causing the withdrawal risk. Quite how they're expecting the intentional slowing of journeys to work (make fare stage fag breaks mandatory?) I'm unsure!

There have been comments about publicity, perhaps without an understanding of where the industry / LTAs are. My authority used to produce area booklets, but in the years of austerity the choice was to either keep paying keep production costs including a full time officer, or keep a service running. Maybe the wrong choice was made, unless you happened to live in the village which would have gone without its bus service that is.

A fair comment from "the other side" to what many of us here have experienced, whilst we all know that rural areas/operators/authorities have it worse the loss of a service is clearly felt far more when it cuts a village off, as opposed to forces urban passengers to walk to the main road. Whilst it feels like better publicity can be self funding (and maybe is overall, very hard to say), it's still an easy cost to cut when you need to cut, because the impact is harder to quantify then a service cut.

I suspect that this is the truth here. In my area we aren't currently under pressure to cut, although we all wonder how close such demands might be. In our case it seems to be the opposite. Of course Councillors want value for money, but they do seem to want to support our rural buses. Yes, they like Digital Demand Responsive Services, the marketing by the various software suppliers has been very powerful here, aided by DfT's excitement for it, but they also recognise that while some fixed routes could go DRT, many shouldn't. And what is more surprising to me is that they are coming round to the idea that funding extra journeys on commercial routes can achieve better results in terms of number of passengers served per pound spent, and that a bit of support now will enhance commerciality in a few years time as well as helping with reducing emissions and congestion.

Pretty radical stuff, but its seems that they are looking at how we are spending our BSIP2 (formerly BSIP+) funds as a mix of supporting the extra costs of the existing contracts and adding mileage to commercial routes. Improving Sunday frequencies, adding weekday capacity and even introducing a Sunday service on a route which hasn't had one since long before de-regulation among the list of projects.

A laudable position to be in, well done to all involved! Supportive politicians at all levels can make a whole world of difference.

 

[greenline712]

i do appreciate we may have wandered off-topic a bit, but in my view usefully so. The comments from @820KDV are especially of interest, coming from someone who started at an operator and moved across to "the other side" . . . I went from operating to scheduling via a fairly convoluted route, but that meant that I, like @820KDV, have a proper understanding of both sides . . . and that can make for a better job all round.

I also had to make a hard call about Saturday afternoon buses on one of my routes . . . I cut the frequency back after about 1500, as that saved a duty and adversely affected few passengers . . . sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture.

I thought that Route 28 (Taunton-Minehead) was commercially operated, with support for evening journeys . . . having said that, i can't find any reference either way. The 45 minute frequency feels like an operator-sponsored change . . . we can afford 5 buses on the route, not 7 . . . what is the best we can do?
I've also been in that situation . . . sometimes the cut in frequency is simply the only solution, other than complete withdrawal . . . it's the lesser of two evils.

Concerning publicity . . . I would always publicise effectively rather than run that extra route that carries mainly fresh air. I appreciate that the internet is an easy solution, but some communities have poor coverage, and the printed timetable is the best overall solution that actually works!
And yes . . . interfacing from a scheduling program to ESBR, to marketing, to bus stop times, to the ticket machine and now BODS isn't always simple . . . in one case, many years ago now, I got so fed up with the interface to another program that I typed it in again!! Ridiculous, but actually the quickest and most accurate way.

And if LTAs are, at last, coming to the conclusion that BSIP monies can be best spent on providing "top-up" journeys, rather than sexy DRT schemes that simply don't reach the passengers effectively (qv Roger French passim), then Hurrah!! Hang on though . . . isn't this what the Transport Act 1985 set up? The circle returns . . .