OnThisBus

I’ve just watched an advert for Uber on the telly. It was one of those mini-epics that pulls at certain heartstrings. In it, the ever-busy career Mum manages to get home via our hero in the driving seat of the cool mini-cab (if I can call it that) in time to see her offspring. You can do it all with Uber. There’s no doubting the power of this disrupter. I use it on occasion. It’s ridiculously simple and fun to watch, as the little Uber car on your screen cruises the streets to where you’re waiting. No faff.

Buses are so yesterday, aren’t they? Driven by surly, burly blokes, regularly late, with routes that go on forever, and populated by dodgy losers who have no other transport options.

We know at least some of the above isn’t always true. But over the last 40-odd years, the bus industry has allowed this hugely damaging perception to evolve, barely threatening to seriously rewrite the narrative.

It’s hugely challenging to turn the ship around. An often hostile press easily finds ever-willing “wronged” passengers and local politicians who can spot a voting opportunity at a hundred yards (especially around local council election times) to paint a picture of the damned, waiting for a perpetually-late or non-existent service. Yet the industry itself has to take at least part of the blame for where we now find ourselves. For too many years, there’s been an undercurrent of “take it or leave it” from too many parts of the bus world. An “understanding” that many of it’s customers have only one choice – and they’ll have to be back tomorrow, despite the rubbish service. This doesn’t exist everywhere, but I still see too much of it. It isn’t explicitly termed, but it’s definitely there.

Uber has come pretty quickly to the table. So has the upsurge in cycling. A resurgence in light rail is popular. The bus industry, despite being on a downward trajectory for far too many years, now finds itself not only increasingly challenged, but faces a fight for it’s very existence in coming years, if it’s not careful.

There’s lots to overcome. Operators aren’t in control of their entire “offer”. We might like to compare a bus operator with a supermarket – and it’s often interesting – but Tesco has absolute control of everything you experience, once you walk through the door. A bus operator has virtually no control over the one thing that dominates people’s bus experiences – reliability. Congestion is costing us dear. And another USP of the Uber experience is that they can often dodge jams by turning off down side roads, etc. Another is the commercial bus operator’s whole business plan. The concessionary bus pass is a terrible mess, from a funding perspective. It’s social benefits are priceless, but it’s back office funding streams are hugely disruptive. And finding drivers is increasingly challenging. We’re never going to really get over the fact that the hours can be anti-social, but do we value drivers with remuneration that reflects the professional, often challenging role of the driver? I’m no accountant, but huge pay rises won’t be possible, and again the business model won’t allow it – but when you see some operators “proudly” advertising rates that don’t even get near shelf-stackers in budget supermarkets, you have to ask who is going to be attracted to that?

Bleak? From one side of the mountain, maybe. Insurmountable? Not on your nelly.
Challenging, it might be, but the industry needs to big itself up. Like it’s never done before.

There’s a lot of good practice around. The UK Bus Awards highlights much of this, and I genuinely bristle with pride when I read the booklet of winners every year. The industry I love as a passenger CAN and DOES get it right. The winners get their five minutes of fame in the local press – and that’s where it ends. The trick is to get that feelgood feeling into the mainstream at every opportunity, every day, every week, every month. A co-ordinated mega-push that says that this isn’t a down-trodden industry, providing services of last resort, but a vibrant mover of people that is efficient, attractive and value for money. It is relevant to people’s daily lives. It deserves a serious spot in people’s mobility plans, alongside rail, alongside Uber.

There will be the inevitable ridicule. But look at “Britain Runs On Rail” as a campaign. It says “we’re proud”. People might hiss at stories in the Metro of “commuter hell”, but here is a definitive lesson in positiva from another part of the public transport World.

The bus industry has many a great story to sell. But there is no campaign that is co-ordinated to string it all together. And certainly not one that builds on something like “Catch The Bus Week”, which, for all it’s great intentions, still feels ultimately like a novelty week that ends with everyone taking a huge sigh of relief and agreeing to do it all again, same time, same place, next year.

The bus world needs to stop feeling sorry for itself, stop the underlying arrogance that says “take it or leave it”, and start shouting and letting it all out, so that people who currently don’t “bus” might – just might – start thinking about trying it.

And that’s where operators also need to try like never before to make every journey one that people leave, thinking, “yeah, using buses is part of me, part of my regular routine”. It’s one mega-package that needs the following all on board;
– Senior managers
– Middle managers
– Drivers
– Other staff
– Politicians
– Councillors
– Passengers – as champions of the cause

But more to the point, it needs the commitment – both financially and in hearts and minds – to keep on hammering away for the long-term.

If there’s been suggestions from within the bus industry that industry body CPT hasn’t been banging the drum loudly enough, then it’s time for it to provide the wherewithal to emulate the likes of the FTA.

Buses. Are. People. They have been since the days of horses dragging them through the streets. But today’s buses largely have an image problem. It’s time for an endearing campaign to make them relevant once again to the masses. Shout, bus industry. Shout. Let it all out.

I’m waiting for a 256. Or is it a 16?

Over a week ago, National Express West Midlands renumbered loads of their Black Country services. The possible rights or wrongs of all of this were discussed in the previous blog, but what is clearly evident is that many of the bus stop flags are still displaying the old regime, even if the timetables have been changed.

Does this matter? In my view, yes. Wholeheartedly. To current non-bus users, buses often represent confusion. This big renumbering project – taking out route numbers dating right back to 1928 – is apparently based on simplification. I’m not averse to that, and I don’t lazily dismiss the concept. But if we’re going to do it, let’s at least get it right straight from the off.

One day after the changes, I found myself, randomly, in Wolverhampton bus station. I visited the travel shop. On display were numerous “old” timetables, showing old, now defunct, route numbers. Of two brand new routes, there were none.

I returned to the scene of the crime 6 days later. Much the same (although I did manage to acquire the new routes timetable). (A mini-whinge with a friend who works at Transport for West Midlands will hopefully sort this misedemeanor).

Another friend in the pub tells me that the renumbering and slight re-routing off-peak of his local route has left him and his elderly father without a direct route to the local hospital, off-peak. To say he’s spitting feathers does a disservice to feathered species everywhere. And to add insult to injury, the new part re-route only has one formal bus stop on it. Efforts to hastily arrange “hail & ride” has resulted in inevitable confusion, with some drivers playing ball and some not.

And what of the poor local Councillors here, who campaigned for this new section of route? What is needed is a new series of stops along the new route, but I’ll bet at least half of my life savings that wherever they want to site new stops will be met by resistance by some local residents – and that will leave a conundrum for said local councillors. A fascinating spectator sport.

But there’s a serious point to all of this. There’s been a long lead-time into this revision. Users and locals were rightly consulted on the changes, but the outcome has seen certain ideas clearly not thought through.

It’s potentially damaging. If the whole idea of giving Dudley’s buses “a new identity” was the plan, some of the execution of it hasn’t worked well.

The best bus operations run on true partnership between operator and authority. We have, on the face of it, a good partnership here in the West Midlands, but it clearly isn’t top of the league yet. The route changes were registered in time, but still the flags weren’t changed on time – and in numerous examples – appear that they won’t be for some time yet.

There is also anecdotal evidence that some buses themselves were in service on day one still displaying old route numbers – how were they even available for the driver to select?

I asked a senior industry figure if there is any evidence that the increasingly popular exercise of “simplifying” route numbers down to 1 or 2 digits actually brings increased patronage. His reply was that when he’d done it, it was normally accompanied with other measures, such as new vehicles and timetable/route changes, so the act of just changing route numbers on it’s own doesn’t, in his view, have any documented evidence one way or the other.

Whether we do this or not, and for whatever reasons, the industry needs to be on the ball and ready – from the first journey on the first day. There will be enough angst amongst existing users, without having to confuse potential new users too. Tesco’s wouldn’t have misleading information about their products over a week after they changed them – why is the bus industry being sloppy about this?

Transport for West Midlands / West Midlands Combined Authority owns and controls the infrastructure. So much so, they won’t even let the operators inside the timetable cases at stops and shelters to put up information for passengers. They also charge operators for changes that they make. Nowt up with that, in principle, and if they had a monster project such as this, they should bill the operator accordingly – but for goodness sake, get the job done on time. To their credit, the actual timetables at stop all seem to have been done – but there are now numerous examples of them not marrying up with what is on the flag.

We’re back to the ever-present argument of the bus industry needing to present a product that is relevant to people. With my finger stuck in another pie, I’ve been trialling some taxi products recently. I can’t emphasise enough how easy it’s been to order a cab through a mobile app, and how hassle-free and quick the whole experience has been. It’s still more expensive, but the trade-off is simplicity and efficiency. The bus industry needs to be relevant to people’s mobility needs. Anything that causes unnecessary confusion is a big bullet in the foot.

(*with respect to Lene Lovich – Google if you’re too young….)

You’d expect me to base my lottery numbers on lucky bus route numbers – and of course you’d be right. But this weekend – Sunday 2nd September 2018, to be precise – the Dudley area of the Black Country sees the biggest shake up of routes and numbers since I can ever remember. So my lucky route numbers become defunct.

A minor detail. But it’s anything but minor for the good folk of the Black Country. Hell, I’ve just spent the best part of an hour in the pub explaining some of it to an unsuspecting mate, who often takes his elderly father to hospital and has just found out that his bus will no longer run past the top of his road off-peak – and he’s none too impressed.

There’s always winners and losers whenever this happens. “Why?” he opines to me, screwing up the remains of his scratchings packet, as if the perpetrators of this demon act were inside it. He even eyeballs me, as if I’m somehow responsible (hey, don’t blame the messenger). I’m reminded of the scene in Dudley bus station, but a few weeks ago, when the bus station supervisor was surrounded by a gaggle of hardened women bus users as she explained the changes.

“who thinks of these changes? I bet it was a man”, shouted one of them. When I offered my opinion that that was a “tad sexist”, I thought she was coming at me with a brolly. I scarpered and caught the long bus home from another stand…

There is a serious point to all of this.

Much of the West Midlands urban area has been subject to these “area reviews” over the last decade or so. Dudley was actually first in 2008, but it wasn’t radical with the numbers like this one. In the ones that followed in other areas, the three digit route numbers were replaced by one and two digit alternatives. The reason consistently given being that people find it easier to remember one and two digit numbers, rather than three. There’s also a comment doing the rounds that areas that have been thus treated have seen an increase in patronage. Now, given that virtually every corner of the West Midlands has had one of these reviews, and overall patronage continues to fall, I’m struggling to square the circle on that. The 246 – once home to classic Midland Red D9 workhorses, and known to countless generations of local folk – becomes the 6. The 120 – trundling between Dudley and Birmingham since 1928, even before Dudley had a zoo – will be the 12. 276 becomes 7, X96 the 8. 255/6/7 all morph into 15/16/17. There are new routes, and routes chopped in half. Winners and losers abound. And bits of paper stuck to bus shelters, flapping in the wind and torn down by the local yob fraternity because Transport for West Midlands doesn’t trust it’s biggest operator National Express enough to let it have keys to put them inside the timetable cases. I digress…

I’m not sure I believe all this stuff about three-digit numbers being the offspring of the devil. It’s going down like the proverbial diesel-powered lead balloon, locally. We know for a fact that some of the route numbers that we’re losing on Sunday have been around since the halcyon Midland Red days of 1928! “Everybody knows the numbers”, cries my pub mate, still crushing the scratchings packet. True. And maybe there’s a sense of “they’ll get used to it”, whilst the bigger prize of new users is up for grabs.

It’s actually very neat now. There are numbers 1-20 across the area. And, actually, removing my hat of nostalgia, time does move on, and nothing is forever. Example: A recent similar exercise in South Birmingham has seen buses between Birmingham City Centre and the QE Hospital renumbered X20/1/2 and new posh Platinum vehicles used. This is an easier way to remember how to get to and from the QE, rather than the clunky old 98 number (and even worse, 636 before it – although these services no longer stop outside the main entrance because of the erratic parking and traffic flow there).

So I’m not rigidly against renumbering bus routes. Journeys change, routes evolve, and the bus industry has to always look at ways to make itself relevant to it’s potential audience. Us cynical old farts who loiter around the bus world think we know it all, but if I’ve learnt one thing following a recent trip overseas with a group of young people, it is that the bus industry needs to be relevant. Other modes are rapidly creeping in, but the bus can play a part in a true multi-modal offering.

Simplicity is the key. Imagine not so long ago if I was at the QE Hospital. I want to get back to the City Centre. Taxis are plentiful. So are trains nearby. Buses, as an alternative look clunky. They’re stuck in the traffic near the main entrance, it has a number I can’t quite remember, and when I get on, it’s exact fare or nothing. Hell, I’ll just pay for a taxi. Now, although the buses are a short walk away, they aren’t stuck in the traffic, becoming unreliable, they have posh seats with extra legroom, wi-fi and all the other bells and whistles, and an easy to remember set of numbers: X20/X21 & X22. I can pay as a one-off with my debit card – quick, easy, no hassle. With a turn up and go frequency, hey, I might just give it a go!

So whilst us historians cry over our 1928 bus guides and lament the passing into history of route numbers our mothers and grandmothers would have recognised, maybe we ought to at least accept that it’s finally time for a new brush to sweep clean and start again, if only to try and help the bus industry try to become relevant to an audience yet to try it.

Otherwise, the bus risks becoming a historical artefact in itself.

A very clever move by Stagecoach to propose bringing 105 electric zero-emission buses to Manchester.

Mayor Burnham has been vocal in suggesting that Manchester should be a trail-blazer for new powers to control the City’s buses, whilst the industry, unsurprisingly, has mostly pointed out that partnership is the quickest, cheapest way to bring an improved bus service.

Stagecoach is playing a positive game – it was the first operator in Manchester to introduce contactless ticketing last year, and now the proposal for the fleet of clean, green machines. Compare with the hardball approach of First, who state they won’t buy any new kit until the outcome of the direction of travel regarding franchising is known (apparently by the end of 2018).

The Mayor is also putting aside £11.5m to explore a business case for Manchester franchising alongside “other options that could improve bus services” in the region. That’s a not insignificant amount of cash.

Of course it’s all political. Stagecoach are effectively saying “we can bring major improvements without all this franchising malarkey” – and it’s a fair argument. If air quality is the current major concern, with thousands of premature deaths every year linked to it in major urban areas, Stagecoach are offering a quick and easy method to address this, with no long drawn-out political shenanigans. Now, suddenly, the Mayor is under pressure to justify spending millions looking at options to replicate London, just as London starts to take a nosedive with it’s own bus network. And, by the way, Stagecoach’s proposal dwarfs the London Mayor’s own proposal for 68 new electric buses in the capital.

The Mayoral game in our urban centres is a fascinating watch. Whilst Andy Burnham waxes lyrical about plans to control Manchester’s buses (with no discernible comment I’ve seen about tackling traffic congestion, by the way), his counterpart in the West Midlands Andy Street is going down an alternative route – even if that means beginning to paint the buses all the same colour. The purists of the paint booth may be horrified, but there are bigger fish to fry here. Street has the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022 – and he wants a legacy. Transport figures large on the agenda.

There are plenty who argued that City-Region Mayors with their newly-found powers could only go down the franchise route for real improvement. Who’s going to argue against Andy Street delivering those improvements under a remaining deregulated environment? And, back in Manchester, could Stagecoach’s irresistible march to greater improvement mean that this northern powerhouse remains in a deregulated bus world? By all means, paint the buses orange again, if it makes some people happy, but I reckon the privatised bus world is maybe, just maybe, getting a bit of it’s mojo back…

In a fairly anonymous Council building on an industrial estate just outside Kidderminster, a crowd had gathered. It was standing room only as Traffic Commissioner Nicholas Denton held his Public Inquiry into the affairs of Diamond Bus.
Diamond has had issues with it’s Kidderminster area operation. I’ve only been to a few Public Inquiries, but I’ve never been to one with this many of the public in attendance. Maybe they were expecting some sort of gladiatorial event, but of course it doesn’t work like that.

Nevertheless, TC Denton did make reference to the amount of public interest in the Inquiry, and in the subsequent decision, referred to his Office receiving “large numbers of complaints” about the Kidderminster operation.
Details of the Inquiry and subsequent decision have already been published, but what about the wider issue of how bus services are regulated by the Traffic Commissioner, and how the public interest is served?

Kidderminster, as an example, is typical of many a mid-sized town in the UK these days. The former carpet-making community has seen retail decimated by internet shopping and, like so many other towns, is dominated these days by a rather huge Tesco – and rather huge car park to cater for it. Once part of the mighty Midland Red empire, Kidderminster’s bus operation latterly ended up within FirstGroup, who sold it – along with nearby Redditch depot – to Rotala, hence Diamond are the main operator in the area today. It appears not to be great bus territory. Local estates surround the area, and the town’s railway station (awkwardly positioned by the Victorians half way up a steep hill) has regular services into Birmingham one way and Worcester the other. It isn’t easily servable, and thus cars dominate the scene – even though their drivers are paying a premium to park there. Elsewhere, just down the road is the town of Stourport, which attracts many Black Country folk – in their cars – when the sun comes out. Gridlock ensues, and Diamond’s blue buses become the victims, often unpredictably.

Underlying all of this are often low-ish frequencies. Only the problematic route 3 – referred to in the inquiry, and ironically passing the back of the Traffic Commissioner’s head during the hearing – has anything like an attractive frequency (every 15 minutes). The rest of Kidderminster’s bus network has half hourly, hourly and less than that on it’s routes. The problem is laid bare if a journey on these routes doesn’t operate. Do other operators in other areas with higher frequencies have similar issues, but the public aren’t adversely affected because another one arrives soon after, and thus avoids the TC’s radar?

The Traffic Commissioner standard is 95% of journeys operating within the “window” of no more than 1 minute early and up to 5 minutes late. Thus there is a 6 minute “window” to get it right. In the passenger interest? I would say so. During the Inquiry, TC Denton made regular reference to it. Following much deliberation between the company and DVSA (who monitored 1443 services), the agreed figure of compliance was 91% – still below the 95% standard. But here’s something. Next door in the (admittedly often more congested) Transport for West Midlands area, the average is apparently 82% compliance.
Recently, Coach and Bus Week reported the case of Stagecoach in South Wales, who also found themselves in front of their Traffic Commissioner, Nick Jones. They too had been suffering from non-compliance, which at one point was as low as 47% on two routes in the Cardiff area. This had further risen up to 93%, but was still below the accepted standard.

In Diamond’s case, the Traffic Commissioner issued a fine of just over £9000, also referring to a clause in the Transport Act which allows compensation to be beneficial to passengers, maybe in the form of free or reduced travel. The TC decided that this should apply to route 3. The company is deciding whether to appeal the Traffic Commissioner’s decision.

What does the consumer – the bus user in this case – take from all of this?

In the case of the dreaded route 3, Diamond argued that it effectively ran at around 80% compliance. What to do? Continue to attract the attention of the TC and his bulging postbag, or dump the route altogether and leave users with no service? The Traffic Commissioner said that he didn’t accept excuses about traffic congestion being worse on specific days, and that the 95% compliance rate takes account of this. As a user, I’d like to agree – but I see for myself from the top deck of my local services how bizarrely random the traffic seems to be these days. Take my local services. They are scheduled for different running times at different times of the day, but even these are subject to the increasing vagaries of congestion. What should take 12 minutes to my nearest town can often take double that – and often without any discernible reason. When local politicians wave glossy brochures about the future of our towns and cities and proclaim new transport plans will provide public transport systems to be proud of, I seem to endlessly sit on my bus services stuck in never-ending traffic, without any sort of plan to effectively tackle this. I sound like a cracked record, endlessly repeating my mantra, parrot-fashion, that the bus really is part of the answer, if only it could shine and bypass this endless, polluting line of cars. But to do that takes real political guts. Motorists have votes, and rival would-be politicians are always the people’s friend when it comes to votes via attacks on hard-working citizens in their cars.

There’s no doubt Diamond has had it’s problems in Kidderminster. And it’s entirely correct that the industry regulator – the Traffic Commissioner – has a role to play in looking after passenger interests, including the setting of standards that users can expect the operator to function by.

But if we’re happy to wheel the operators in for a grilling and consequent fine for poor operation, should we at the very least expect others in the game to face their responsibilities too? I didn’t see the Local Authority being questioned about what they intend to do about keeping the highway clear when the sun comes out and loads of Brummies turn up in Stourport for an ice cream. I didn’t see any local Councillors being asked about what ought to happen about local congestion, the effect it has on bus users and on operators trying to provide a reliable service.

No one comes out of this smelling of roses. The operator has it’s reputation pulled through the hedge backwards. The user stands at the bus stop with no sign of the bus. One industry friend of mine – a former bus company owner – suggested to me that the Traffic Commissioner standards may not be fit for purpose. I would suggest they probably are, but there needs to be a process of looking at the much wider picture of just how much traffic congestion – and it’s often wide vagaries – plays in non-compliance. That will require further resource , political will, and shine a light on just how much the public sector does or doesn’t do when it comes to keeping the highway flowing.

Chances?

Communication is always key. Transport doesn’t do enough of it, in a face-to-face sense.

In blogs passim, I’ve wondered why, when rail passengers are used to voices on tannoys announcing late-running services with accompanying excuse, bus passengers in bus stations aren’t afforded the same information. After all, someone, somewhere knows a service isn’t going to run.

Today, on a non-descript trip to and from Dudley, I came across not one, but two examples which bucked this trend.

In Dudley bus station, there were more folk than usual milling around the stand for my bus home. Not one, but two of the three services that use it had missing journeys. Now, as is the norm, not a tabard in sight, save for a gaggle of drivers about 100 metres away in the parking area. Enter the bus station manager. I know her well, as she also works in Stourbridge. She’s one of a rare breed who gets stuck in with the general public and tries to help. Today, she’s trying to find out what happened to the 127 (delayed due to an incident near Birmingham, as it happened – not that National Express West Midlands’ Twitter feed let us know…). Dudley is actually blessed with another helpful soul – a National Express West Midlands Inspector who is also happy to interact with passengers. It seems wrong to christen them “The Old School” – but I mean that in the nicest possible way; it almost seems a lost art of human being interacting with other human being via the use of speech.

Not only did our Bus Station Manager find them a “live” answer, she also asked if they were aware that the service was radically changing next month. Virtually all of them weren’t. She had booklets to give out, and 20-plus questions to answer, from newly-anxious passengers. She handled it admirably, before disappearing briefly to get a new stock of booklets.

The Dudley area is seeing one of the biggest upheavals to it’s services in years in September 2018. Many services are being renumbered, and routes are changing. NX West Midlands buses are scrolling information on their digital destination blinds. It’s a clever move, but I’m shot back down to earth immediately via a Facebook post that brutally comments on the truth – most regulars won’t even look at the front of the bus. Only geeks like me take a passing interest. Getting information through to the travelling public is challenging. My experience working on the railway is that you make tannoy announcements, flash screens and put signs up – but still some people aren’t aware.

But with around 3 weeks to go to this explosion of bus service molten lava, I’m slightly alarmed at the lack of awareness amongst a lot of the travelling public that any of this is happening. This is why the human touch is so important. And local knowledge. It’s clear our Bus Station Manager knows her patch. So with various questions flying in, she answers them all with confidence. Try that with someone in a call centre 50 miles-plus away. One rapidly-overheating woman bellows “Who thinks of all of these changes? Must be men!” I sheepishly challenge her and declare that “that’s rather sexist” and prepare for some part of the weekly shop to come flying past my head. All that is forthcoming is a loud Harrumphh.

My bus has disappeared. On a 20-minute frequency, one is missing. So there are more people than usual hanging around my stop. The next journey arrives, and everyone piles on. Our driver – from Diamond – seems the more jovial sort. The conversation on this Clapham omnibus is about the missing service. Folk are less than complimentary. Down the road at the local hospital, he pops his head around the cab and enquires about the missing bus. “I thought there were more of you than usual”, he quips. There’s a brief conversation about how the supposed vehicle to be used had disappeared off the bus station with “Not in Service” showing. Our man is intrigued. He says he’ll ring the garage and find out. Despite this slightly delaying our service, he has a conversation (whilst parked up, I must add). It isn’t clear what the outcome is (I’m sitting at the rear), but the previously baying mob now break out into spontaneous applause. In all my years of bus travelling, I’ve rarely seen the passengers clap a bus driver.

It makes me think. He could easily have kept his head down, but he interacted and tried to help. Like our Bus Station Manager earlier.

The public can be a fickle lot sometimes. Frustration with public transport problems can often boil over. But I’d like to think these 2 small examples today helped the travelling public in a way that a Twitter feed or a leaflet couldn’t. We haven’t all become robots.

Not just yet.

**UPDATE**

Not long after I wrote this blog, I received a communication from Management at National Express West Midlands. In it, it was explained how they were imminently about to start a big publicity push around the Dudley area to promote the changes. Here is what they said:

The go live date for information release was deliberately today – both for staff and drivers – to try to ensure consistency and so that inaccurate and incomplete messages weren’t released (as best we could prevent). From today, the customer guide is available in all Travelshops and destination displays have been reprogrammed to show changes specific to individual routes. ALL bus stops affected are due to have a poster affixed to them with detail of changes at that specific stop. Mitie are putting these up for us, and these should be done this week. There are something like 1500 stops so it may take some time!

We had around 6 of us out today in Dudley and Merry Hill talking to both customers and drivers & handing out the customer guide. We’ll be in West Bromwich and Oldbury tomorrow and Wolverhampton on Wednesday.

In the week before and week after the change, there will be around 20 staff deployed at key locations to assist customers – including the major hubs and interchanges.

The Travelshop staff have all been briefed, so should be in a reasonable position to help answer questions.

Timetables have all been proofed and printed. 5 are now in the shops and I’m assured the remainder will be in later this week, which is a big improvement on what often happens!

There will be a /Dudley dedicated page on the website going live tomorrow with all timetables linked.

A colleague is doing some bus station posters to further draw peoples’ attention.

Any other thoughts, please let us know !

 

 

 

 

A friend tells me his elderly father wanted to peruse the Argos catalogue the other day. Fair enough.

So off he trotted down to his nearest store to pick one up. They usually sit on a huge pallet outside the front door. But when he arrived, there lain none.

“Ah”, says the Assistant “as soon as they appear, people swarm on them”. My friend’s Dad, in his 80s, can “always go online”, comes the advice. He isn’t online.

Is there a subliminal message for the bus industry here?

I’m increasingly aware of lack of printed timetables. Everywhere. Getting hold of one feels like a prized possession these days. Last time I was in Stafford, I hopped on a D&G bus solely to acquire their timetable booklet (before retreating, prior to departure). Another friend tells me they sell on eBay.

What? People bidding on eBay for a current bus timetable, because they’re so hard to get hold of? Another industry pal confirms this hard to fathom phenomenon.

Arriva in Leicester recently announced it was stopping printing timetables, and dressed it all up as “saving the planet”. Pull the other one. I might have been born the day before yesterday, but I’m not falling for that.

Printed timetable for buses may be a relic for today’s tech-savvy finger-prodders, (and – hey! I’m one of them), but I seriously believe that the industry is making a big mistake going down this route.

People like to browse. Like the Argos catalogue. OK, they might want an electric toothbrush, and they’ll find it online. But what about browsing the rest of the tome? How often has something else caught your eye? Something you never knew you wanted until you saw it?

Same with bus timetables.

When I was but a lad, pre-internet days, I used to revel in acquiring a timetable book. I’d spend hours looking at what was possible. I still do. Whenever I’m in Derby, I buy the local authority booklet, with it’s excellent map. It opens up new possibilities for travel that I never consciously knew about.  In Germany, the local bus & rail timetable booklet seems to reside in virtually every household and restaurant/pub. Last time I was there, I offered to buy one and the gentleman in the station simply gave it to me.

You don’t have to be a transport geek to want this. Yes, online timetables are useful, but I find the vast majority of them clunky to say the least. Then there’s the issue of revising your plans on the move. Is there a signal? Has your battery run out? A handy booklet is simple, effective and always to hand.

It may well be cost-effective to stop printing bus timetables, but what about the wider picture? What lessons can the bus industry learn from the stampede to acquire the new Argos book, whenever it appears?

Blackpool Rocks!

It’s brash. Venue of many a stag and hen weekend. Kiss-me-quick hats, Big Dippers and 10p bingo. Blackpool is celebrated for its in-your-face, let-your-hair-down culture. It is famous too for its trams – the first in the country to have electric ones – and their bracing 11 and a bit mile slog up and down the coast to Fleetwood. Its buses, in my view, used to be fairly anonymous fodder. Something the locals use. But in recent times, Blackpool Transport has seen something of a renaissance in its operation.

So me and my bus-driving, blog-writing enthusiast friend Mark Fitchew rock up on a summer Monday morning to have a mooch around trams old and new – and the posh buses.

No Vacancies…

Mark is somewhat a Blackpool expert. His Facebook page often sees him posting pics of his latest visit, and he can tell you huge chunks of history about the system. And seconds after boarding our first vehicle – a rather splendid brand new Enviro 200 short single decker – he’s immediately pointing out where buses used to terminate in the 1970s. We’re on route 4 to Cleveleys – a fairly uninspiring dash around a Blackpool estate, dotted with guest houses and “no vacancies” in the front window – this seaside resort remains very popular, although we are in the height of the summer holidays.

The E200 is extremely impressive. The gorgeous leather seats fit nicely with the wood laminate-effect floor and tasteful yellow-based interior. There are next-stop screens and USB sockets and free Wi-Fi. The cove panels entice you with positive messages – no “check your bowel movements if you’re over 60” adverts on here.

Tickets Please…

A day ticket for buses and the modern tramway costs a decent £5.50. If you want to add unlimited rides on the heritage trams, an all-in-one ticket costs £11. We plump for the £5.50 as we’re only going to do a small bit of heritage in our limited time today. The friendly driver issues us our day ticket, but I’m slightly surprised that Blackpool Transport hasn’t got on board yet with contactless ticketing, given the amount of tourists that are here.

The trip to Cleveleys is uneventful. We hop off where it meets the tramway, and within 2 minutes, a tram to Fleetwood appears. Adorned across the front is the name “Alderman E.E. Wynne”. Edward Wynne was a former Blackpool Councillor, and it appears he was a rather controversial character, advocating complete closure of the system, when the future of the network was in doubt! Despite that, he was Chairman of Blackpool Transport for 6 of his 38 years on the Council.

Alderman Wynne would surely be pleased to day to see the effective modern tramway doing well. The purple and white beasts seem well-used, and within minutes, we’re at the northern terminus in Fleetwood.

Into Fleetwood and Across The Water…

The trams and buses stand next to each other, outside the imposing North Euston Hotel, built as a stopover for Victorians travelling from London to Scotland. The idea was that their rail journey would end here, and they’d catch a boat to Scotland because no rail link existed across the Lake District when it opened in 1841. Within a decade, the iron road to Scotland was complete, and the idea of Fleetwood being a major rail terminus had receded.  Fishing remained the big industry here, although this too began to decline in the 1960s. The last ferry to the Isle of Man departed in the 1961, the railway station closing down as part of the Beeching cuts in 1966.

One pleasing maritime-related service was running though. The Fleetwood to Knott End ferry has never been operational on the handful of visits I’ve made to Fleetwood in the past. Today, the “Wyre Rose” is going to whisk us across the water in a few minutes to Knott End for the princely sum of £2.

Time for Bitter…

Across the water, we find the Bourne Arms pub. A pint of bitter is consumed as Mark regales the history of local bus services to this unusual outpost, which actually feels more like somewhere in Devon in appearance than part of the gritty north!

The 2C bus service is Blackpool Transport’s northernmost service, east of the River Wyre. With a basic 30 minute frequency, we observe the departure of one service from the beer garden and then catch the next one, which is a rather elderly, but well turned-out Dennis Trident with East Lancs bodywork. The route is a splendid run through luscious countryside, through Preesall then Cold Row. At one point, we spot two “Black Country flags” fluttering from an upstairs window! We cross the River Wyre again, through pretty Poulton-le-Fylde, serving Victoria Hospital and skirting Stanley Park before arriving back in the town centre.

Our steed is carrying the older Blackpool Transport livery of black & yellow. Maybe it was once “trendy”, but I think it is looking increasingly dated these days. However, many of the newer examples in the fleet carry the altogether more agreeable “Palladium” branding and livery. It is classy, in an understated kind of way. When I first saw it a few years ago in a trade magazine, I wasn’t too bothered. But now I’ve seen it “in the flesh” a few times, it’s really beginning to grow on me. Coupled with the tram’s distinctive purple and white colours, Blackpool Transport for me is getting a real identity again.

We briefly sample the in-town “Customer Centre”, which has lots of visitors and is well-stocked with timetables, but alas no system map.

Heritage Bashing – and Ice Cream!

Now it’s time for some heritage bashing! We catch the 1930s double deck “Balloon” tram 717 down to the Pleasure Beach. “Mini” heritage tram tours cost £3.50 and are a lovely cost-effective way to sample some real transport nostalgia! Walter Luff, Manager of Blackpool’s Trams in the 1930s, commissioned these gorgeous machines, and their classy Art Deco-inspired swoops and lovingly-restored interiors are an absolute treat for any transport fan.

We retire for ice cream at this southern end of the heritage operation, as 717 whirrs away up the promenade – as it has done for the last 80-odd years. Nicely dodging a rainstorm (well, this IS the British seaside in the summertime, after all), we return to the Pleasure Beach terminus to admire the arrival of sister Balloon 715. Whilst the screams of terror emanate from the nearby Big Dipper, us transport nerds purr nicely as 715 glides away for a trip past the Tower and up to Cabin. This is where we hop off and observe a nifty little reverse procedure, as 715 trundles away back towards the heart of the action, and we similarly trundle our way to one of Mark’s favourite fish & chip establishments, where we eat in, chomping on our traditional seaside dinner, before making our way around the corner to catch a 3 service back to Blackpool North for our journey home.

Despite the excellence of another trip on a brand new Enviro 200 single decker, it was disappointing to find no timetable information on the stop (either vandalised or fell apart) and a car parked next to the bus stop.

The short windy trip back to the station reveals the work going on to extend the current modern day tram network up to Blackpool North station. The buses have some temporary stops around the area, and we take the “back way” up to Blackpool North, where the 1974-built station awaits us. It’s the only station I know where doors keep you on the concourse, locked away from platforms until the very last moment. A Twitter discussion, mischievously started by me, fails to establish the reason for this, and problems on the Northern rail network delay us by over 30 minutes, but we’re soon heading back towards Preston and onwards to the West Midlands.

The Verdict…

What to make of the Blackpool bus and tram network? It’s very much on the up. If you’d visited this seaside resort 20 years ago, you’d have seen the trams as an attraction, much the same as a donkey ride or stick of rock. Today, the modern rapid transit system not only serves a purpose, it looks good and sends a signal that not only is it “for locals”, it’s for everyone. For concessionary pass holders who don’t want to pay for the tram, the number 1 bus service mirrors the tram, all the way up to Fleetwood.

The buses themselves are becoming top notch. There has undoubtedly been – and continues to be – a transformation here. The “Palladium” brand – initially for high-quality vehicles – is rapidly becoming the norm here, and you can only applaud the decision to invest heavily in new kit. It’s a pity that the local yob fraternity decided to destroy the USB sockets on some upper deck tables, which warranted some unwanted publicity in recent times, but there’s no doubting the positive vibe going on with Blackpool’s buses.

The development of Blackpool’s much-loved heritage tram operation is a joy. Again, in years gone by, there appeared little identity in the tram operation. The balloons were front-line service providers, alongside rebuilt double deckers and some rather ugly-looking examples. Today, for my money, they have the balance just right. The modern fleet is distinctive and does its job well. The heritage service fits nicely in between, delighting tourists and holidaymakers. The day ticket is actually a “24 hour” ticket, which also fits well with holidaymakers.

Although I was only there for a few hours, I found a nice, well run, attractive operation, with high quality vehicles and friendly staff. Blackpool rocks!

 

Blackpool Rocks:

• High quality investment in new vehicles
• Excellent modern and historical tram services
• Well-priced day tickets

Blackpool Lacks:

• No contactless payment
• No system map available from the shop
• No bus information at Blackpool North station