West Yorkshire "Enhanced Partnership Plus" proposal

[mattb7tl]

It's hilarious how poorly the anti-franchising campaign is performing. Tweets getting thousands of interactions but absolutely no support, that isn't changing with the posters being hung up!
I find it also interesting that the things they brag about were literally executed by the combined authority and yet they made it difficult the entire way.
I don't think they should be bragging about green buses either because has anybody heard from Wakefield? Nope.
Won ZEBRA funding, went silent, and at the moment, it seems there's absolutely no electric infrastructure currently being installed or planned and no vehicles on order.

 

[M803UYA]

It's hilarious how poorly the anti-franchising campaign is performing. Tweets getting thousands of interactions but absolutely no support, that isn't changing with the posters being hung up!
I find it also interesting that the things they brag about were literally executed by the combined authority and yet they made it difficult the entire way.
I don't think they should be bragging about green buses either because has anybody heard from Wakefield? Nope.
Won ZEBRA funding, went silent, and at the moment, it seems there's absolutely no electric infrastructure currently being installed or planned and no vehicles on order.

Quite. When you see the dreadful *service* Arriva provides in Yorkshire it's hard to see why they're bothering to fight to preserve the operation. Franchising couldn't be any worse than the mobile scrapyard Yorkshire folk have to endure from Arriva on a daily basis. What have they done since the last new buses arrived? 15 year old junk from Merseyside in place of 11 year old junk shipped away.

It's not like they're in an unprofitable area for running buses - the income levels of locals are such that there is plenty of demand for bus travel.

 

[RT4038]

Quite. When you see the dreadful *service* Arriva provides in Yorkshire it's hard to see why they're bothering to fight to preserve the operation. Franchising couldn't be any worse than the mobile scrapyard Yorkshire folk have to endure from Arriva on a daily basis. What have they done since the last new buses arrived? 15 year old junk from Merseyside in place of 11 year old junk shipped away.

It's not like they're in an unprofitable area for running buses - the income levels of locals are such that there is plenty of demand for bus travel.

You won't get anything different from Arriva until ownership changes, apparently in April. The current owners do not want to invest.

 

[Andyh82]

It's hilarious how poorly the anti-franchising campaign is performing. Tweets getting thousands of interactions but absolutely no support, that isn't changing with the posters being hung up!
I find it also interesting that the things they brag about were literally executed by the combined authority and yet they made it difficult the entire way.
I don't think they should be bragging about green buses either because has anybody heard from Wakefield? Nope.
Won ZEBRA funding, went silent, and at the moment, it seems there's absolutely no electric infrastructure currently being installed or planned and no vehicles on order.

It’s no surprise though is it

Do you want the current situation or do you want a perfect utopia where every bus is brand new, never cancelled and runs dead on time and every route runs every 5 minutes down every road in the county Who’d say no!

The publicity also conveniently ignores that some of the benefits of franchising could or does already happen now (Greener buses - First Leeds have pretty much replaced the whole fleet, Bus Priority - not sure why this could happen with franchising but couldn’t now?) and ignores any possible negatives (will the budget to fund loads of improvements last forever even if passenger numbers don’t grow?)

Don’t get me wrong, the buses round here do need a kick up the backside, but I’ll still believe it when I see it.

 

[MCR247]

It’s no surprise though is it

Do you want the current situation or do you want a perfect utopia where every bus is brand new, never cancelled and runs dead on time and every route runs every 5 minutes down every road in the county Who’d say no!

The publicity also conveniently ignores that some of the benefits of franchising could or does already happen now (Greener buses - First Leeds have pretty much replaced the whole fleet, Bus Priority - not sure why this could happen with franchising but couldn’t now?) and ignores any possible negatives (will the budget to fund loads of improvements last forever even if passenger numbers don’t grow?)

Don’t get me wrong, the buses round here do need a kick up the backside, but I’ll still believe it when I see it.

I would imagine because there is no guarantee that any investment in Bus Priority will be used long term.

 

[Deerfold]

It was originally stated that tap on tap off would be from day 1. I can't find the quote right now but I will try and find it. Tap on isn't happening until 2025 (which is funny considering that it's something which is in a lot of other areas and operators have delivered it). They also promised better live information for passengers and that hasn't been delivered. In fact, the app is full of ghost buses so it tells people a bus is coming but it doesn't exist, it's just placing a bus where it thinks it should be.

A new era begins for Greater Manchester's buses - with you in the driving seat

"In the old world that we are leaving behind, if you are standing at a bus stop and your bus doesn't turn up or is late, there's just nothing you can do because the private operators have had the run of the road. They have been able to suit themselves. In this new system, the buses have to work...

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

I think it's a little early to call it a broken promise after 2 months - presumably they're having to use an assortment of different systems and getting them to work accurately together. It'll take a bit longer to sort out.

The rest of the things are just failures of the system rather than broken promises (reduced service on Vantage V1 in the evening so they could move the resource elsewhere, ticket machines that hardly work. Reliability couldn't be much worse. There's now a shed load of agency drivers who in many cases don't know much other than the very specific route they are shown and so they can't help customer as much with general enquiries and it's harder for diversions as they don't know the area. The new buses were riddled with issues like the next stop information not working).

If nothing improves, you'll have a point. But they can't magic up drivers from nowhere, instantly.

 

[mattb7tl]

It’s no surprise though is it

Do you want the current situation or do you want a perfect utopia where every bus is brand new, never cancelled and runs dead on time and every route runs every 5 minutes down every road in the county Who’d say no!

The publicity also conveniently ignores that some of the benefits of franchising could or does already happen now (Greener buses - First Leeds have pretty much replaced the whole fleet, Bus Priority - not sure why this could happen with franchising but couldn’t now?) and ignores any possible negatives (will the budget to fund loads of improvements last forever even if passenger numbers don’t grow?)

Don’t get me wrong, the buses round here do need a kick up the backside, but I’ll still believe it when I see it.

The general public are more forgiving than most think with frequencies and fleet ages. Keighley is an example. I've heard plenty of positive comments on the shuttles and brontes. Care and keeping up with design trends and colours is more important than age. Companies need to start doing mid-life refurbishments more often.
As for funding, we must remember how absurdly high the profit margins are for First West Yorkshire and Arriva Yorkshire. Usually being somewhere around 10-13%, which is substantially higher than any other authority considering franchising. We have the most profits to dip into to provide better services, and with firsts outdated view on evening services, I bet we will see a magnitude of evening and night improvements

 

[BradK2017]

The general public are more forgiving than most think with frequencies and fleet ages. Keighley is an example. I've heard plenty of positive comments on the shuttles and brontes. Care and keeping up with design trends and colours is more important than age. Companies need to start doing mid-life refurbishments more often.
As for funding, we must remember how absurdly high the profit margins are for First West Yorkshire and Arriva Yorkshire. Usually being somewhere around 10-13%, which is substantially higher than any other authority considering franchising. We have the most profits to dip into to provide better services, and with firsts outdated view on evening services, I bet we will see a magnitude of evening and night improvements

Going off First's latest accounts (link at bottom of this post) posted 5 days ago, their profits stand at 4.5mill for this past year, last year was only 2.9Mill what compared to pre-covid when they was making 8-10mill a year is a big reduction - I think you might be overestimating how big the pot of money will be you can dip into

Company House Link: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01990370/filing-history

 

[Brooke]

Going off First's latest accounts (link at bottom of this post) posted 5 days ago, their profits stand at 4.5mill for this past year, last year was only 2.9Mill what compared to pre-covid when they was making 8-10mill a year is a big reduction - I think you might be overestimating how big the pot of money will be you can dip into

Company House Link: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01990370/filing-history

This inspired me to look at a few years of accounts. 6% margin before tax in the most recent accounts, versus 22% back in 2011 for example. Quite an erosion!

 

[Tetchytyke]

Going off First's latest accounts (link at bottom of this post) posted 5 days ago, their profits stand at 4.5mill for this past year, last year was only 2.9Mill

It’s the easiest game in the world to make your subsidiary look like it’s losing money. “Admin and finance charges” sent upstream to the parent company are always the real place to look. Go North East are playing the same trick, and Arriva have been doing it for years with inflated management fees going back to Berlin.

 

[paulmch]

So the companies are saying that if West Yorkshire go for their plan, they'll fully electrify, offer pre-0930 ENCTS travel, have a loyalty programme and simplify their fare structure. It's all so cynical - perhaps if they'd been focussing on improving their service to this level in the first place then franchising wouldn't be necessary in the first place! A phrase about getting off the pot springs to mind...

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It’s the easiest game in the world to make your subsidiary look like it’s losing money. “Admin and finance charges” sent upstream to the parent company are always the real place to look. Go North East are playing the same trick, and Arriva have been doing it for years with inflated management fees going back to Berlin.

That's as maybe, but not seeing First making a huge amount of money per se.

So the companies are saying that if West Yorkshire go for their plan, they'll fully electrify, offer pre-0930 ENCTS travel, have a loyalty programme and simplify their fare structure. It's all so cynical - perhaps if they'd been focussing on improving their service to this level in the first place then franchising wouldn't be necessary in the first place! A phrase about getting off the pot springs to mind...

I think it's too little, too late. This was the problem with OneBus in Greater Manchester, and by that time, the die was cast. Really, the bus industry needs to be getting its act together in other parts of the country whilst it can.

 

[markymark2000]

I think it's too little, too late. This was the problem with OneBus in Greater Manchester, and by that time, the die was cast. Really, the bus industry needs to be getting its act together in other parts of the country whilst it can.

It doesn't matter what the public wanted anyway, the consultations are biased to push you to answer a certain way and even if they don't get the answer they want, as per TFL has proven in their consultations, they will do it anyway. The consultation is just a tick box exercise, especially given the political stance of the people who are in power, they don't seem to take any consultation responses into consideration. What matters is someone's political career.

 

[Deerfold]

It doesn't matter what the public wanted anyway, the consultations are biased to push you to answer a certain way and even if they don't get the answer they want, as per TFL has proven in their consultations, they will do it anyway. The consultation is just a tick box exercise, especially given the political stance of the people who are in power, they don't seem to take any consultation responses into consideration. What matters is someone's political career.

Do you not think the public in Greater Manchester wanted franchising? You do know that franchising has only been made possible by a Conservative central government?

TfL don't change everything after consultations, but they do make some changes based on responses. How well do you think political careers will go if they go against the will of the majority of voters?

 

[markymark2000]

Do you not think the public in Greater Manchester wanted franchising?

Not as much as it was suggested and even less so if they weren't such sheep and looked at the facts rather than looking at the drivel that Burnham was feeding them all. Too many clueless people had a say and wanted public buses because the bus sometimes runs late and stupid things like that and genuinely believed that public buses would be on time all of the time (as evidenced since September, the reliability is worse than under private firms). Far too many sheep in Manchester. Burnham could say the sky is purple and people would believe him. That is how he got support for franchising.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It doesn't matter what the public wanted anyway, the consultations are biased to push you to answer a certain way and even if they don't get the answer they want, as per TFL has proven in their consultations, they will do it anyway. The consultation is just a tick box exercise, especially given the political stance of the people who are in power, they don't seem to take any consultation responses into consideration. What matters is someone's political career.

It's not even that.

They HAVE to go to consultation legally so it is a tick box, but they can't simply skew it or else they'll be open to legal challenge. That is in the Act.

However, the consultation is almost meaningless, and for the following reasons. You're asking the general public whether they want the status quo, or something that might be potentially better and that there's no jeopardy for them. So how do you think people vote? I've drawn the parallel with the Brexit vote - do you want an imperfect reality, or the sunlit uplands? How do you think people will vote?

Similarly, the consultation on the Manchester congestion charge... The opportunity to pay more tax or not... How do you think people will vote?

With Manchester and elsewhere, I think that people may adopt the view of "well, it can't be any worse than it currently is". My concern is that it is a oversimplistic approach in that paint the buses yellow, or verona green or whatever, introduce flexible ticketing and that's it. Build it and they will come, when the real challenges are about road space and land use, crippling congestion, etc

 

[markymark2000]

Deleted to help mods

 

[GusB]

This thread is discussing the proposals for West Yorkshire. Please stay on topic.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The rules for consultation are laid out in the legislation. They can be open to legal challenge if they don't follow the rules - again this is stated in the legislation.

We've yet to see the West Yorkshire consultation. However, they are essentially putting out a choice between the status quo, and a change for the better. Not difficult to read what might be the choice of the general populace.

Should also be mentioned that in recent years, the situation has been getting progressively worse in some parts of West Yorkshire. Now again, some of that can be attributed to the improvement of local rail services. In much the same way as the statistics on bus patronage in GM were presented without mentioning the impact of Metrolink, you can point to some corridors being affected in West Yorkshire. However, if you're someone living in Halifax, or Batley, or various other towns, then you've seen services very much pared down by First and Arriva. In those areas, people won't need much convincing of the "well, it can't get much worse" argument.

Also, you say there are too many sheep. The fact is that there are always many people who simply don't have the passionate interest to undertake a mass of research. No-one on this forum is typical. Most people are too busy or simply not interested enough to wade through evidence etc and people are always swayed by simplistic messaging. That's how marketing works!

 

[Tetchytyke]

That's as maybe, but not seeing First making a huge amount of money per se.

£100M group operating profit, £67M spent on share buybacks, and First reporting their overall Bus Division margin has risen from 4.8% to 7.1%. That’s not a business that’s struggling.

Of course, as we’ve seen in West Yorkshire, some of this has been achieved by First dropping anything that’s of borderline profitability.

in recent years, the situation has been getting progressively worse in some parts of West Yorkshire. Now again, some of that can be attributed to the improvement of local rail services.

Local rail in West Yorkshire hasn’t really improved in the last 20-25 years though. Local rail in West Yorkshire has largely stayed static, the last real improvement was the Airedale/Wharfedale electrification and that happened 30 years ago now. There’s been areas of real regression in the rail network too, e.g. Bradford to Ilkley, Huddersfield to Wakefield. So there isn’t that context to explain why First and Arriva have basically shredded their local networks.

In Leeds First are still pretty ok. But outside Leeds they’ve regressed so far that, for instance, the last bus from Huddersfield to Bradford is now at 2218. The last bus from Halifax to Cleckheaton is now 1834. 1834, in a metropolitan county!

Anything that’s of borderline profitablilty was dropped long ago. Which is the other thing- WYPTE are already paying out huge amounts in subsidy to maintain a vaguely functioning network on evenings and weekends. Bringing the core services- the ones that First and Arriva still deign to operate- under WYPTE control will simply offset that subsidy. The scare tactics of franchising costing more taxpayer money doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

First and Arriva have regressed so far that I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can believe their promises to repair the bus network in West Yorkshire.

 

[Deerfold]

£100M group operating profit, £67M spent on share buybacks, and First reporting their overall Bus Division margin has risen from 4.8% to 7.1%. That’s not a business that’s struggling.

Of course, as we’ve seen in West Yorkshire, some of this has been achieved by First dropping anything that’s of borderline profitability.


Local rail in West Yorkshire hasn’t really improved in the last 20-25 years though. Local rail in West Yorkshire has largely stayed static, the last real improvement was the Airedale/Wharfedale electrification and that happened 30 years ago now. There’s been areas of real regression in the rail network too, e.g. Bradford to Ilkley, Huddersfield to Wakefield. So there isn’t that context to explain why First and Arriva have basically shredded their local networks.

In Leeds First are still pretty ok. But outside Leeds they’ve regressed so far that, for instance, the last bus from Huddersfield to Bradford is now at 2218. The last bus from Halifax to Cleckheaton is now 1834. 1834, in a metropolitan county!

Anything that’s of borderline profitablilty was dropped long ago. Which is the other thing- WYPTE are already paying out huge amounts in subsidy to maintain a vaguely functioning network on evenings and weekends. Bringing the core services- the ones that First and Arriva still deign to operate- under WYPTE control will simply offset that subsidy. The scare tactics of franchising costing more taxpayer money doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

First and Arriva have regressed so far that I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can believe their promises to repair the bus network in West Yorkshire.

Quite. I suspect the problems will be with routes run by Transdev where they're already pretty well run and various routes run over the county boundary. People won't see an improvement in service and integration may be more complicated.

When visiting back home I get caught out with large gaps in service on routes that used to be amongst the most frequent in the country outside major cities (Halifax - Sowerby Bridge was 16+bph from First plus 5 an hour on TJ Walsh - now there's 7.5 oddly spaced buses an hour - only 3.5 of those from First) , Halifax - Ripponden down from 3bph along the main road to 1.5bph with just 0.5 of that from First).

Sowerby Bridge used to have an evening service every 15 minutes combined across several routes. Now the last bus before a reasonable 2315 from Halifax is 2235 and before that 2115, 2120, 2120 and 2145 - a reasonable number of buses, but no attempt to provide a better service between them.

And of course those drops in frequency and disappearance of late buses (Ripponden's last bus is 2 hours earlier than it was a few years ago with the one before being 2 hours before that) stop buses being an easy or automatic option. If I still lived there I'd probably be driving by now. But, having moved to a Transdev-run area my bus travel mostly still works well until I return to Bradford or Halifax.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

£100M group operating profit, £67M spent on share buybacks, and First reporting their overall Bus Division margin has risen from 4.8% to 7.1%. That’s not a business that’s struggling.

Of course, as we’ve seen in West Yorkshire, some of this has been achieved by First dropping anything that’s of borderline profitability.

Ok, the group made £100m. Now look the figures. How much did First Bus make? What did First West Yorkshire make? You're saying they've deliberately under-reported the profits that the OpCo has made so how much has one OpCo in one part of the business really made in your estimation?

It may not be struggling now but even the margins it is now reporting are not huge. Mind you, they are compared to the massive losses of the late 2010s!

Local rail in West Yorkshire hasn’t really improved in the last 20-25 years though. Local rail in West Yorkshire has largely stayed static, the last real improvement was the Airedale/Wharfedale electrification and that happened 30 years ago now. There’s been areas of real regression in the rail network too, e.g. Bradford to Ilkley, Huddersfield to Wakefield. So there isn’t that context to explain why First and Arriva have basically shredded their local networks.

In Leeds First are still pretty ok. But outside Leeds they’ve regressed so far that, for instance, the last bus from Huddersfield to Bradford is now at 2218. The last bus from Halifax to Cleckheaton is now 1834. 1834, in a metropolitan county!

Anything that’s of borderline profitablilty was dropped long ago. Which is the other thing- WYPTE are already paying out huge amounts in subsidy to maintain a vaguely functioning network on evenings and weekends. Bringing the core services- the ones that First and Arriva still deign to operate- under WYPTE control will simply offset that subsidy. The scare tactics of franchising costing more taxpayer money doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

First and Arriva have regressed so far that I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can believe their promises to repair the bus network in West Yorkshire.

Local rail may not have been transformed but the fact is that the changes made in the past continue to filter through. Hebden Bridge - 2012/3 736k journeys but 813k in 2019/20, Horsforth went up from 960k to 1096k in the same period. Garforth went up 10% in about 5 years from 2012. That might be a reflection of car drivers moving to rail as congestion grows but that impacts the bus operators.

I won't defend Arriva. I've been clear on that in various other threads about what I feel about that business. A trip last year to West Yorkshire highlighted how bad things were in places such as Dewsbury and Batley, and out in the Hemsworth vortex. So don't try to paint me as some apologist for them. First has been marginally better though whilst decent enough in Leeds, I fully accept that they've outwardly been disinterested in places like Halifax. Part of that is a lack of ambition - can't be denied. The other thing is that bus networks don't exist in a vacuum - they also reflect the relative affluence and economic health of an area. Places like Dewsbury are really depressed on the high street. That's also a factor.

However, my point on all franchising is that simply painting the buses red, or yellow, or verona green won't change things. Nor will the interavailability of ticketing that some folk become almost priapic with excitement. With Metro, you're thinking... don't build a bus station in Heck but work with the local authorities and get the tackling of the inherent problems with congestion. And yes, you might want to stick it to the bus barons and reduce their exorbitant margins from 8% to 4%. That might pay for the odd later bus but it will barely pay for the extra level of administration.

 

[Andyh82]

The example of Dewsbury is a good one, like you say the bus network has declined but the decline of the town centre, the poor affluence of people who live there and the demographics will have all added to that

Will the franchised network increase the service back to previous levels in this area, and if they do, how long do they fund it if there is hardly any growth, which I very much doubt there would be.

 

[Tetchytyke]

However, my point on all franchising is that simply painting the buses red, or yellow, or verona green won't change things.

And yes, you might want to stick it to the bus barons and reduce their exorbitant margins from 8% to 4%. That might pay for the odd later bus but it will barely pay for the extra level of administration.

First and Arriva’s abandonment of evening and weekend services has left WYPTE with huge administrative overheads already. All those tenders don’t contract themselves. There is no extra level of administration with franchising: thanks to First and Arriva WYPTE are doing most of the procurement work already. And with the current regime WYPTE get 56 days notice that a service is getting pulled, so there’s no stability either.

First in their recent investor publicity make a virtue of the fact they have cut their network by more than 3m miles. Those 3m miles are now passed to local authorities for them to pay for instead.

Traditionally the more marginal services on main routes would be funded out of the profits from the main daytime service- Stagecoach and Transdev still do this to a greater extent. But not in West Yorkshire: First and Arriva take the cash and pack up at teatime.

So you’ve got First and Arriva taking their 8% home and then WYPTE are having to pay the independent operators’ 4% from taxpayer money instead of daytime revenue. Throw it all into one contract, though, and WYPTE will be in a much stronger financial position.

Will much change? Depends what you mean by change. It certainly wouldn’t be a utopia, but it will be a much more stable network and better value for the taxpayer.

The example of Dewsbury is a good one, like you say the bus network has declined but the decline of the town centre, the poor affluence of people who live there and the demographics will have all added to that

Poorer areas are generally better bus territory though. People don’t have cars but they still need to go to the doctors, go to the shops, go to work.

I can’t speak for Dewsbury but I can speak for Halifax. The town centre is plenty busy in the evening and the big multiplex cinema is literally right opposite the bus station. But if you go for a 7.30pm screening at the cinema the last First buses will have gone by the time you get out. It’s ridiculous. Great for taxis though, which is why you can’t move for private hire taxis in Halifax and Bradford.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

First and Arriva’s abandonment of evening and weekend services has left WYPTE with huge administrative overheads already. All those tenders don’t contract themselves. There is no extra level of administration with franchising: thanks to First and Arriva WYPTE are doing most of the procurement work already. And with the current regime WYPTE get 56 days notice that a service is getting pulled, so there’s no stability either.

First in their recent investor publicity make a virtue of the fact they have cut their network by more than 3m miles. Those 3m miles are now passed to local authorities for them to pay for instead.

Traditionally the more marginal services on main routes would be funded out of the profits from the main daytime service- Stagecoach and Transdev still do this to a greater extent. But not in West Yorkshire: First and Arriva take the cash and pack up at teatime.

So you’ve got First and Arriva taking their 8% home and then WYPTE are having to pay the independent operators’ 4% from taxpayer money instead of daytime revenue. Throw it all into one contract, though, and WYPTE will be in a much stronger financial position.

Will much change? Depends what you mean by change. It certainly wouldn’t be a utopia, but it will be a much more stable network and better value for the taxpayer.

The difference between letting out some contracts, and a full franchising and management structure, is huge. If they have huge admin overhead now, I'd be wondering why.

As for First reducing mileage (it was 17 million miles not 3 million), they have said that's realigning against demand. Those miles won't have passed to local authorities necessarily either - the vast majority of that is through a widening of headways. A 15 min headway goes to every 20 mins - that's a 25% cut. As for your 8% - work out the numbers and see. If First is turning over 125m in West Yorks, how much are you going to get for your new world?

The reality is that getting what you are after means more external funding. At least in Manchester, they are getting some of that.

Poorer areas are generally better bus territory though. People don’t have cars but they still need to go to the doctors, go to the shops, go to work.

I can’t speak for Dewsbury but I can speak for Halifax. The town centre is plenty busy in the evening and the big multiplex cinema is literally right opposite the bus station. But if you go for a 7.30pm screening at the cinema the last First buses will have gone by the time you get out. It’s ridiculous. Great for taxis though, which is why you can’t move for private hire taxis in Halifax and Bradford.

That is a common misnomer. Poorer areas are better bus areas... Not these days. If people aren't economically active, they won't travel unless they have a need. What we've seen is in places like Buttershaw and Seacroft, even the superstores have moved in.

I really do think that Arriva in particular (but First is culpable too) has been complacent. First has been lamentable in marketing and service delivery in Calderdale; slapping on some green Calder Connect fronts was a sop in an area that probably did have some latent demand waiting to be released. However, it's the idea that it's merely the ownership model that's the problem, that bothers me. And that it can somehow be self-funding by sticking it to those barons... It simply isn't

 

[Mwanesh]

£100M group operating profit, £67M spent on share buybacks, and First reporting their overall Bus Division margin has risen from 4.8% to 7.1%. That’s not a business that’s struggling.

Of course, as we’ve seen in West Yorkshire, some of this has been achieved by First dropping anything that’s of borderline profitability.


Local rail in West Yorkshire hasn’t really improved in the last 20-25 years though. Local rail in West Yorkshire has largely stayed static, the last real improvement was the Airedale/Wharfedale electrification and that happened 30 years ago now. There’s been areas of real regression in the rail network too, e.g. Bradford to Ilkley, Huddersfield to Wakefield. So there isn’t that context to explain why First and Arriva have basically shredded their local networks.

In Leeds First are still pretty ok. But outside Leeds they’ve regressed so far that, for instance, the last bus from Huddersfield to Bradford is now at 2218. The last bus from Halifax to Cleckheaton is now 1834. 1834, in a metropolitan county!

Anything that’s of borderline profitablilty was dropped long ago. Which is the other thing- WYPTE are already paying out huge amounts in subsidy to maintain a vaguely functioning network on evenings and weekends. Bringing the core services- the ones that First and Arriva still deign to operate- under WYPTE control will simply offset that subsidy. The scare tactics of franchising costing more taxpayer money doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

First and Arriva have regressed so far that I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can believe their promises to repair the bus network in West Yorkshire.

How much did UK bus make. Most of that money was made in The USA where they have a vast school bus empire.

 

[Man of Kent]

There is no extra level of administration with franchising: thanks to First and Arriva WYPTE are doing most of the procurement work already.

Yes there is. The consultation documents quote 70 extra staff at a cost of approximately £3m per annum.

 

[Andyh82]

Great for taxis though, which is why you can’t move for private hire taxis in Halifax and Bradford.

Could it actually be the opposite?

There are hardly any buses because taxis are so widely available?



I agree however that First and Arriva have been very complacent. You could probably count proper marketing campaigns that they actually followed through over the last 20 years on one hand. There have been various branding attempts where they paint something with a different front or whatever, stick a plain text page explaining it on the website and that is basically it.

Calder Connect being a good example - paint a green front on various buses, do nothing else, and then a few years later phase it out

 

[Tetchytyke]

The reality is that getting what you are after means more external funding. At least in Manchester, they are getting some of that.

Any significant increase from the status quo will require additional funding, of course it will. But that isn’t what I’m saying. I’m saying that taking control of the daytime service helps pay for the evening and weekend service that First and Arriva have abandoned, and helps pay for a last bus 45 minutes later than First now run.

However, it's the idea that it's merely the ownership model that's the problem, that bothers me.

The ownership model is the problem, though.

We see it time and time again in the bus industry that the private operators will take the money from the core daytime service on a route then dump the ‘marginal’ early/late/Sunday service on a route on the taxpayer. Look in Bradford, First have pretty much packed up and gone home by 9pm, the only later buses you’ll see now are on WYPTE tenders, or Transdev Keighley.

I’m picking on First but Arriva do this. And I well remember Stagecoach Newcastle in the John Conroy days and the games he played; handing marginal services over for tender and then registering them as commercial if he lost the tender.

Competition was supposed to prevent this, operators would run the more marginal stuff to protect ‘their’ route, and we’ve all seen how successful that wasn’t.

But that’s not to say all private operators are rubbish and that franchising is a sunlit upland. There’s a lot of headwind whichever model you choose.

And it’s fair to say that we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if West Yorkshire’s dominant operators were of the calibre of, say, Go-Ahead’s Brighton and Hove or Oxford Bus Company.

I really do think that Arriva in particular (but First is culpable too) has been complacent

It’s not complacency, it’s deliberate strategy. Why would you run the marginal stuff at the beginning and end of the day when you can simply dump the cost on the taxpayer instead?

Halifax is where I know so I come back to it as an example. But the shredding of the network there is not complacency, it’s that they don’t give a toss and haven’t done for years.

As above, if they had given a toss we’d probably not be having this conversation. Tracey Brabin is smart, she wouldn’t be fixing something that worked.

The consultation documents quote 70 extra staff at a cost of approximately £3m per annum.

WYCA’s annual expenditure on transport is £131.4m. An extra £3m is neither here nor there.

 

[Man of Kent]

WYCA’s annual expenditure on transport is £131.4m. An extra £3m is neither here nor there.

I'm not sure what the figure is comprosed of - I suspect it includes concessionary reimbursement - but in the context of the current bus subsidy budget of circa £25m, it is quite a chunk.

I will note that the cost of subsidised services was around £17m in 2018/19, but a global pandemic, higher costs and lower passenger numbers are far from unique to West Yorkshire.