Passenger Transport: October 15, 2021

YEARS 2011 | 2021

ISSUE 251 15 OCTOBER 2021

NEWS, VIEWS AND ANALYSIS FOR A SECTOR ON THE MOVE

Could driver shortage NI pushes with break viability of buses? ahead growth plans NEWS

National media coverage has focused on the impact that driver shortages are having on haulage, but some bus operators fear long term consequences

Bus operators are struggling to retain and recruit drivers

Bus operators around the country are feeling the impact of driver shortages, with one operator warning that a sustained shortfall could undermine the economic model for buses.

Stephensons of Essex owner Bill Hiron was one of a number of operators contacted by Passenger Transport. He fears that shortages are unlikely to ease in the short term and “a very seismic shift” in wages may be required.

He warned: “The challenge with that is, in the bus industry, if you put in that level of wage increase the whole economic model of bus operation just disappears.”

NEWS EXTRA: PAGES 4-5

We need HS2 and NPR in full - TfN Anything less is ‘shirking one of the biggest decisions for our country in a generation’ The North of England needs HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in full in order to truly ‘build back better’ and ‘level up’, Transport for the North warned this week.

Responding to reports that the Integrated Rail Plan will be “bad news” for the North of England, Cllr Louise Gittins, interim chair of the sub-national transport body, said: “These reports are disappointing. I hope that this is not the case, as the prime minister said only last week

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in Manchester that transport is “one of the supreme leveller-uppers” and he was very clear in saying he “will do Northern Powerhouse Rail”.

“But to truly deliver on these words it means: the full NPR network that properly connects

“These reports are disappointing” Louise Gittins, TfN

the North East to the North West; serious investment in a Northern Infrastructure Pipeline to upgrade local areas for the 21st century; and a genuine devolution offer as set out in our Northern Transport Charter with a devolved Northern Budget ... Anything less will not only be “bad news” for people living in the North, but it will be shirking one of the biggest decisions for our country in a generation.

HS2 DOUBTS: PAGE 7

08

BRT and rail expansion coming

ENVIRONMENT

UK transport NGOs to host COP26 event

14

Role of community action highlighted

INNOVATION & TECH

‘Let’s upend the status quo of transport’

16

Autonomous ‘pods’ system is launched

COMMENT

‘We’ve arrived at another crunch point’

18

Jonathan Bray sees big challenges

COMMENT

‘The final nail in the coffin?’

20

Alex Warner on rail franchising’s demise

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13/10/2021 18:04

CONTENTS

PASSENGER TRANSPORT PO Box 5496, Westbury BA13 9BX 020 3950 8000 editorial@passengertransport.co.uk

To become the future, we must survive the present Has public transport ever had a greater level of recognition from the public and their politicians?

Yes, it’s true that for many, public transport is something they used to do - before the pandemic came and they switched to home-working. But Robert Jack there is greater appreciation for the vital role that Managing Editor public transport plays in getting essential workers where they need to be. At the same time, more and more people appear to understand the link between public transport use and efforts to combat climate change - although many of us still regard behaviour change as something they’d like others to do!

However, despite this appreciation, has public transport ever faced a greater threat to its existence? A large minority of passengers have yet to return post-Covid, and we don’t know when or if they will. The government is understandably keen to stop handing out millions of pounds of emergency funding every week, but its withdrawal could lead to massive network cuts. Driver shortages have meanwhile added to the bus industry’s woes, with some fearing long term consequences.

Policy-makers seem to be united around a vision of us all making more journeys by public transport in the decade ahead as we seek to reduce carbon emissions. The question is how much public transport will be left if they fail to support it through the current crisis. The public transport sector is in a battle and it may not hold out for the zero carbon cavalry to arrive - it needs help now to survive.

HAVE YOUR SAY Contact us with your news, views and opinion at: editorial@passengertransport.co.uk PASSENGER TRANSPORT editorial@passengertransport.co.uk forename.surname@ passengertransport.co.uk Telephone: 020 3950 8000 Managing Editor & Publisher Robert Jack Deputy Editor Andrew Garnett Contributing Writer Rhodri Clark Directors Chris Cheek, Andrew Garnett, Robert Jack, George Muir, John Nelson OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS Passenger Transport Publishing Ltd PO Box 5496, Westbury BA13 9BX, UNITED KINGDOM Telephone (all enquiries):

020 3950 8000 EDITORIAL editorial@passengertransport.co.uk ADVERTISING ads@passengertransport.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS subs@passengertransport.co.uk ACCOUNTS accounts@passengertransport.co.uk Passenger Transport is only available by subscription. Subscription rates per year; UK £140 (despatch by Royal Mail post); Europe/Eire £220; Worldwide (airmail) £280 The editor welcomes written contributions and photographs, which should be sent to the above

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address. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written permission.

Printed by Cambrian Printers Ltd, The Pensord Group, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood, NP12 2YA © Passenger Transport Publishing Ltd 2021 ISSN 2046-3278 SUBSCRIPTIONS HOTLINE 020 3950 8000

IN THIS ISSUE 15

HARROGATE BUS FIRM BACKS CAR FREE DAY

22

BOB REID - THE RAILWAY’S BEST LEADER

24

HOW DO WE TACKLE THE SHORTAGE ISSUE?

26

PM HAILS ‘SUPREME LEVELLER-UPPERS’

The Harrogate Bus Company is backing a new zero carbon transport initiative with a two-for-one travel offer on Fridays. “It’s vital that as a community we do all we can to reduce carbon emissions,” said chief executive Alex Hornby.

ORGANISATION

PAGE

Arriva Southern Counties 11, 12 BCP Council 10 Brighton & Hove Council 10 Cornwall Council 10 Devon County Council 10 Diamond Bus 11 Essex County Council 10 First Bus 11 First West of England 4-5 FlixBus 13 Great British Railways 6 Kent County Council 12 Magtec 11 McGill’s 15 National Express Group 13 National Express West Midlands 12 Network Rail 6 Northern Rail 6 Oxford Bus Company 13 Plymouth City Council 10 ScotRail 7 Somerset Passenger Solutions 11 Stagecoach Group 13 Stagecoach Highlands 15 Stagecoach Oxfordshire 13 Stephensons of Essex 1, 4-5 Thames Travel 13 Torbay Council 10 Transdev Blazefield 4-5, 13, 15 Translink 8 TransPennine Express 6 Transport for Greater Manchester 6 Transport for the North 1, 6 Transport for the West Midlands 12 Transport Scotland 7 West Midlands CA 7 West Midlands Metro 7 Wiltshire Council 10

George Muir has spent the last six years writing a book about Bob Reid, British Rail’s chief executive from 1980 and chairman from 1983 to 1990.

“He had developed a clear idea of the change he wanted to make in the way the railway was managed,” he says.

Much has been made of the shortage of drivers, but the reality is it’s a much wider problem. Now it is one that has come to a head, writes Nick Richardson. “The UK system for providing bus services is financially unsustainable,” he warns.

Our Whitehall insider imagines what’s going on inside the minds of the mandarins at Great Minster House, home of the Department for Transport.

“The haulage industry has been warning ministers for many, many months, if not years”

REGULARS NEWS ENVIRONMENT INNOVATION & TECH COMMENT GRUMBLES CAREERS DIVERSIONS

03 14 16 18 26 27 28

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NEWS EXTRA ROUND-UP

Concerns mount over growing driver shortage The bus industry is short of 4,000 drivers and there are fears this could do untold damage to the future commercial viability of the sector There are deepening concerns in the bus industry Andrew Garnett about the Deputy Editor potentially catastrophic effect the growing shortage of bus drivers may have as competition for recruits heats up in the professional driver market.

The Confederation of Passenger Transport estimates there is a national shortage of 4,000 bus drivers, with analysis by Passenger Transport suggesting Scotland, the north east of England, Bristol and the south west were hardest hit this week.

First West of England revealed it was around 70 drivers short at its operations in Bristol and Bath. The situation there has been exacerbated by a number of existing drivers either self isolating or off sick after testing positive for Covid-19.

In a statement, Doug Claringbold, First West of England’s managing director, admitted his company was experiencing reliability issues and suspending some journeys as it grappled with the issue.

“We are working harder than ever to recruit and train new drivers, however in common with bus operators across the UK we are experiencing a severe shortage of staff,” he said.

“This situation is exacerbated by a number of other factors, including an increase in staff 04 | 15 October 2021 PT251p04-05 4

sickness, up three times normal levels in the West of England, an increase in drivers having to self-isolate due to family members contracting Covid-19 and staff holidays and accrued holidays resulting from long periods of furlough for some staff members.

“On top of this, due to Covid-19 restrictions placed on us earlier in the year, we have been prevented from close contact training with PCV learners, causing a backlog in training. Delays in getting licences back from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) due to industrial action has also had an impact, although we’re pleased to see that this situation is starting to improve considerably.”

Claringbold added the operator was addressing the issues by using agency drivers in order to try to minimise the network impact.

In the north of England, DVLA ISSUES ADD TO WOES The DVLA is understood to have a backlog of more than 56,000 applications for PCV and HGV licences, with 4,000 of them applications for new provisional licences. Delays have been exacerbated by Covid-19 and strike action at DVLA’s Swansea offices.

Transdev Blazefield revealed that potential bus driver trainees are currently waiting over three times longer than usual to get their licences and test dates confirmed by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA). This is leading to delays in recruits moving forward from the classroom to the road.

“Right now, we have 95 new colleagues at The Academy, our in-house driver training facility in Yorkshire and Lancashire,” said chief executive Alex Hornby.

“They just want to complete their training and be out on the road serving our customers - but instead, they’re waiting over three times longer than usual to get licences and test dates confirmed from the DVSA.” He added that his company was backing industry lobbying of the government to speed up the provisional licence applications and free up availability of theory and practical tests. “We are also keen to introduce our own delegated examiner to help process testing, but DVSA training needed to help us introduce these roles remains suspended,” Hornby added.

The problems are not limited to the larger group operators. Bill Hiron, an industry entrepreneur and owner of bus operator Stephensons of Essex, told Passenger Transport this week that his companies were finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain staff. He said the problem had started when DVSA

suspended driving tests during the Covid lockdowns. Hiron claims these suspensions meant he lost between 30 and 40 new recruits that he would have trained up during the periods when the DVSA suspended all vocational driver testing.

But there are other more fundamental problems too, particularly when it comes to the recruitment and retention of staff.

“There’s a whole combination of reasons [behind what’s happening],” Hiron said. “For the people that are leaving it’s partly reappraisal of lifestyle post-Covid - perhaps that’s the best way to describe it. We’ve had people retiring or going to part time jobs www.passengertransport.co.uk

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How do we tackle the shortage issue? Page 24 Is the sun setting on the ability to easily recruit staff?

“The worrying thing is that we’re not even getting applications from people who want to train as drivers” Bill Hiron that are less stressful or moving to a rural area where they can chill out a bit more. It’s partly people going to, not just HGV, but places like Amazon, DPD and white van man-type jobs too.”

Hiron added that one of his depots was very close to Stansted Airport and as the aviation sector rebounded following the easing of Covid restrictions, competition in the job market there was hotting up. Companies are wooing would be recruitments with golden www.passengertransport.co.uk

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handshakes and all manner of bonuses and perks.

That’s increasingly placing a big squeeze on the ability to recruit, he says. At Hiron’s coach operation in Suffolk, which relies solely on recruiting staff with PCV licences, the situation was even worse. “You can’t get licence holders for love nor money,” Hiron said.

But he also believes something fundamental has happened in the job market in recent months.

Hiron continued: “The big

groups have been putting forward there is a big pipeline of people wanting to become drivers, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily true in all cases. Certainly in some areas there are, but the worrying thing is that we’re not even getting applications from people who want to train as drivers.

“We’re getting some applications, but out of four interviews only one turns up and that’s despite us ringing them the day before to check they’re still going to come. Then the following day only one out of the four turns up. Why? I don’t know but there’s something very strange going on in the employment market, literally in the last six weeks.

There has been a very discernible shift away from people wanting to do the job.”

Of course these issues are not just restricted to the bus industry. The recruitment woes, particularly in the hospitality, social care and freight sectors are well known.

Many hauliers have offered staff inflation-busting, doubledigit pay rises in recent weeks in a bid to keep and recruit staff in order to tackle their own driver shortage issues. Logistics firm Gist, which delivers for Tesco, M&S, Aldi, Morrisons and Ocado, is now reportedly offering annual pay of up to £56,674. Meanwhile, supermarket chain Waitrose is offering annual pay of £53,780 and a £1,000 joining bonus for recruits with HGV licences at some locations.

Hiron increased wages for his drivers at the end of August by just under 6%. He says this stemmed the exodus of staff to some degree, but it had not made any difference to the number of people coming in.

“It worries me,” he said. “If it’s a short term problem there’s an end in sight, but I’m not sure it is. There are all sorts of sectors of the economy which are short of staff. In a sense you can argue that’s always solvable by wages, but I don’t know whether it is or it isn’t. But if it is it’s not solvable by two or three percent, or even, five, six or seven percent. Clearly it is going to take a very seismic shift in wages, whether that be 30%, 40%, 50%, 100%... I don’t know.

“The challenge with that is, in the bus industry, if you put in that level of wage increase the whole economic model of bus operation just disappears. Even with the most commercial and profitable city network, there’s not many services that will withstand that sort of wage increase.”

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NEWS ROUND-UP

Haines named as lead of GBR transition team More details about GBR emerge including HQ competition STRATEGY

The first steps towards the launch of Great British Railways (GBR) have taken place with the creation of a transition team under the leadership of Andrew Haines, who will also continue as chief executive of Network Rail.

The transition team will now be responsible for driving forward reforms and creating the railway’s new ‘guiding mind’.

They will initially focus on driving revenue recovery efforts post-pandemic, bringing a whole industry approach to tackling cost and promoting efficiency and establishing a strategic freight unit to boost the sector.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps has also set out the “core goals” that will define GBR. They are: Changing the culture of the

MANCHESTER RAIL TIMETABLE PLAN New train timetable aims to reduce bottlenecks INFRASTRUCTURE

A new “high performing” railway timetable for services around Manchester has been approved for December 2022. The Department for Transport says it will focus on improving the performance of rail services and provide more punctual, reliable journeys for passengers ahead of proposed infrastructure improvements that would unlock more capacity.

The timetable was jointly produced 06 | 15 October 2021 PT251p06-07 6

railways not simply creating a bigger version of Network Rail; Thinking like our customers, both passengers and freight, and putting them first; Growing the network and getting more people travelling; Making the railways easier to use; Simplifying the sector to do things quicker, driving down costs and being more accountable;

Having a can-do (not a can’t do) culture; Harnessing the best of the private sector; and Playing a critical role in the national shift to net zero.

Meanwhile, Shapps has also launched a competition to identify the location for the new headquarters of GBR. Expressions of interest will be sought with a commitment that

Concerns about Network Rail’s HQ in Milton Keynes have been raised

by the cross-industry Manchester Recovery Task Force, comprising the Department for Transport, Transport for the North, Transport for Greater Manchester, Network Rail and the train operators Northern and TransPennine Express.

It also follows an extensive public consultation that was launched in January 2021 and has the support of both government and Northern leaders. Once finalised, it aims to reduce delays for passengers by around 25%.

It will allow direct Manchester Airport connectivity from Liverpool, Chester and North Wales to be retained, an hourly service that

will run between Southport, Wigan and Manchester Oxford Road, and a second hourly service from Southport to Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge.

Changes to services will ensure that the wider Manchester area remains closely connected while bottlenecks become unclogged.

The new timetable will improve the service mix across a number of hotspots, including the congested Castlefield area of Manchester.

The DfT says the bottleneck there has constrained the flow of rail services for years and has generated millions of minutes of costly and damaging delays.

the national headquarters will be based outside of London.

“The competition will recognise towns and cities with a rich railway history that are strongly linked to the network ensuring the first headquarters will take pride of place at the heart of a new era for Britain’s railways,” added the Department for Transport.

Lobbying has already begun with Crewe, Derby, Doncaster, and York all expressing interest in bidding to host the new organisation.

Ros Jones, the directly elected mayor of Doncaster, said the town was best placed to bring rail back to the people it serves.

“With an extensive rail history of over 150 years of engineering excellence in the rail sector, Doncaster is a national hub for rail industry manufacturing and infrastructure,” she said.

However, politicians in Milton Keynes have raised concerns about the future of Network Rail’s headquarters there, which only opened a decade ago.

“We need urgent clarity that jobs based here in MK are safe,” said Peter Marland, leader of Milton Keynes Council.

Ambitious plans are now being developed to resolve those issues and early phase infrastructure is targeted to start in the middle of this decade.

“This part of the network is the buckle in the belt of the North’s rail network,” said Liam Robinson, chair of the Rail North Committee, representing northern leaders on the task force. “It has to be able to do its job. The interim service solution in this consultation is, inevitably a compromise, but it allows us the chance to run more reliable services until the task force can deliver on infrastructure solutions to enable the network to run as it needs to.” www.passengertransport.co.uk

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The final nail in the franchising coffin? Page 20 WEST MIDS BIDS FOR RAIL GROWTH Region makes pitch to expand Metro network FUNDING

The West Midlands Combined Authority is making a pitch for investment from the government’s City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) to fund rail services across the conurbation.

This includes £280m towards both improvements to the existing West Midlands Metro network and for the design and detailed planning work for the next series of extensions.

Among the extension proposals are Wednesbury to Walsall using a disused railway alignment; Wolverhampton city centre to New Cross Hospital; a further extension along Hagley Road in Birmingham and Sandwell; and Brierley Hill to Stourbridge.

Rail projects include the opening of a new railway station at Aldridge, detailed business cases for the Midlands Rail Hub project and the reopening of the Sutton Park line and developing plans for the expansion of Snow Hill and Moor Street Stations.

Also included in the bid is the innovative Very Light Rail scheme in Coventry city centre which is designed to offer the benefits of trams with lower development costs.

“We are already putting unprecedented investment in our transport network with projects such as the new Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro extension, the opening of five new railway stations and the roll out of West Midlands Cycle Hire,” said Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands. “This new funding will build on that by not only helping us get some projects, such as Aldridge Railway Station, over the finishing line, but set us well on the road to a real revolution in transport.”

The government is expected to make a decision on CRSTS funding allocations during the autumn. www.passengertransport.co.uk

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PM offers no firm commitment on HS2 Prime minister fails to address future of project’s eastern leg HS2

Prime minister Boris Johnson told the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week that cities in the Midlands and north of England would be “linked up” and the Northern Powerhouse Rail project was still on the cards, but he failed to resolve the future of the eastern leg of the HS2 high speed rail line.

Johnson’s comments follow those from transport secretary Grant Shapps that ministers could no longer “blindly follow” a blueprint for high speed rail that dated back to the last Labour government.

“Midlands Rail Hub and Northern Powerhouse Rail are

things, they’ve been invented, they hadn’t been when HS2 was first designed,” Shapps told The Financial Times. “Are we doing things in the best way and in the right order?”

His remarks suggest that ministers could be considering delaying or scrapping the eastern leg of the project entirely in favour of prioritising other rail schemes like Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Last year a report by the National Infrastructure Commission proposed delaying the eastern leg to Leeds in

“Are we doing things the best way and in the right order?”

favour of prioritising rail links between northern cities.

Despite the uncertainty, Johnson’s commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail was welcomed by Transport for the North.

“It was good to hear the prime minister say that the greatest challenge for the country was levelling up its economy and its society and that building Northern Powerhouse Rail was central to that,” said Tim Wood, TfN’s director of Northern Powerhouse Rail.

“We have worked collaboratively with the government over the past two years to come up with a blueprint for a new rail network that will free the North from the constraints of poor infrastructure that have held it back for far too long.”

SCOTS PROJECTS ARE CONFIRMED

Electrification progresses but double tracking axed PROJECTS

QUEEN STREET COMPLETED Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon visited Glasgow Queen Street last week to officially mark the completion of the £120m project to transform the station as part of the Scottish Government-funded Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme.

Sturgeon (right) is pictured with Maggie Hoey, ScotRail’s station manager.

The Scottish Government has confirmed plans to electrify the East Kilbride to Barrhead line but opted not to proceed with double tracking the East Kilbride and Busby line.

The East Kilbride corridor had recently been given approval for single track electrification infrastructure, and further development work is now required.

Transport Scotland says the decision has been made on cost grounds and will allow other decarbonisation projects, such as Borders electrification, to be progressed.

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NEWS ROUND-UP

NI pushes ahead with transport growth plans Glider and train service expansion are all on the cards NETWORKS

The slow recovery of public transport passenger numbers in Northern Ireland has not deterred leaders there from moving ahead with expansion plans, including doubling the length of the Class 4000 DMU fleet.

Translink, Northern Ireland’s bus and rail operator, told Passenger Transport last week that its services were carrying 60% to 65% of the passenger journeys in the same period of 2019. Great Britain’s rail recovery is in similar territory but its bus recovery is substantially further ahead.

Translink ordered 21 additional vehicles for Class 4000 units in 2018, when patronage was growing rapidly. The first of the coaches from Spanish rolling stock manufacturer CAF were

SCOTS DEMAND LAGS BEHIND GB Bus patronage at 65% of pre-Covid levels in Scotland PATRONAGE

Bus demand in Scotland as a percentage of pre-pandemic levels is substantially lower than the Great Britain average, it emerged last week.

Scottish Government minister Patrick Harvie told MSPs: “On average, current demand for bus services is only at 65% of preCovid levels across Scotland, and it will take some time to return to pre-Covid levels. Bus operators and local transport authorities will have to make decisions about where to 08 | 15 October 2021 PT251p08-09 8

delivered in March and on September 29 infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon launched the first six-car set in passenger service. The project to lengthen the seven trains cost £66m, including depot modification works.

A public consultation on Phase 2 of the Belfast Rapid Transit

Project closed last week. The ambition is to replicate the success of the mostly east-west Glider service on a north-south axis, as part of the Belfast City Region Deal.

Three northern route options are in the frame, along with a southern route from the city centre to Cairnshill Park & Ride

Translink chief executive Chris Conway (left) with infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon

deploy services to meet current, and hopefully growing, passenger demand, which might differ from pre-pandemic travel patterns.”

Department for Transport statistics for Great Britain as a whole show that bus passenger numbers outside London have been at 75% of pre-Covid levels or higher since midSeptember. On several weekdays, the figure was 80% or 81%, and on Sundays it reached 88% and 89%.

On London buses, the daily figure was between 70% and 82%.

Harvie’s message about ensuring bus services meet post-pandemic travel patterns follows proposals for train operator ScotRail to remove 300 services per day from its

timetables.

Analysis had shown that, even before the pandemic, ScotRail was providing “significantly more seats” on its trains than required.

Harvie said that since June 2020 the government had made up to £210m in emergency funding available to maintain bus services across Scotland.

Christine Grahame MSP said: “Despite the additional support from the Scottish Government for bus companies, Covid has had a substantial and continuing impact on services, with some being cut.

As we enter Covid recovery, will the Scottish Government’s funding be conditional on the return of direct

and an extension of the existing G2 Glider route (from the Titanic Quarter) to serve Great Victoria Street, Queen’s University and Belfast City Hospital.

Next month the Department for Infrastructure is due to receive a feasibility study into half-hourly trains between Belfast and Derry.

The study will also consider whether there is a case for three new stations, including one to serve City of Derry Airport.

The DfI and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council have commissioned a feasibility study into reinstating 10 miles of railway from Portadown to Armagh.

The DfI’s monitoring round in June identified a £24m deficit at Translink for which the DfI is seeking additional funding.

Susan Anderson, the DfI’s director of finance, told MLAs: “That Translink pressure is really the difference between the costs that Translink expects to incur this year versus the income that it expects to receive. It has not impacted on operational delivery, because Translink is continuing to deliver the service as planned.”

services such as those to the Borders General Hospital, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the Astley Ainslie Hospital, which serve my constituents both as patients as employees?”

Harvie responded: “It is a condition of our Covid funding that participating operators plan services and keep them under review in consultation with their transport authorities, having regard to the services that are required to minimise public transport connectivity disadvantages, including for island and rural communities. Similar requirements would continue under any recovery funding for bus operators.” www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Party conferences and a crunchpoint. Page 18

Burnham’s franchising aims for £1.55 flat fare The mayor of Greater Manchester aims to replicate London’s flat fare and capping systems but warns the planned Bee Network will come at a cost FRANCHISING

Transport for Greater Manchester looks set to kick off procurement for the first batch of bus franchising contracts this month as more details about the planned scheme were revealed in the region’s Bus Service Improvement Plan.

Despite a legal challenge from both Rotala and Stagecoach, the outcome of which is awaited, procurement of the first tranche of contracts, centred on the north east of the region, will commence within weeks. It follows the conclusion of a market engagement exercise that updated operators on the plans and invited feedback in order to “test specific commercial principles and contractual mechanisms”.

At a meeting of the combined authority’s housing, planning and environment overview and scrutiny committee last week, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Eamonn Boylan, the chief executive of both the combined authority and Transport for Greater Manchester, updated members on the plans, providing more details about the planned ‘Bee Network’.

They revealed that they plan to introduce around 750 fullyelectric vehicles in order to upgrade the bus fleet with an extra 270 electric buses to support the expansion and improvement of service provision. The entire Ring & Ride fleet would also be converted to electric and the ambition is to see the entire bus www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Burnham launched a ‘Destination: Bee Network’ campaign this week

fleet in Greater Manchester electrified by 2032.

But it is on ticketing where Burnham and Boylan go further.

They plan to introduce a London-style flat fare for single trips with a target price of £1.55.

That will be extended in validity to become a London-style multitrip ‘Hopper’ fare.

Alongside daily and weekly Travelcards, contactless payas-you-go ticketing with daily and weekly capping would be introduced. This would cap the fare to the highest individual fare of the journey.

The concessions policy would be expanded to offer a 25% discount for those aged between 18 and 21 and a 40% discount for larger groups.

However, they admit the Bee Network will come at a substantial cost. The BSIP plans sit alongside the region’s pitch for funding from the City Region

Sustainable Transport Settlement (PT250). It will require significant capital investment in the bus fleet and on going revenue support.

Burnham and Boylan also made a pitch for further powers to be devolved in order to help bring the Bee Network to life.

They continued: “With the role of an elected and accountable mayor of Greater Manchester now firmly in place and a decision taken to implement a franchised bus system (subject to the outcome of the judicial review), Greater Manchester Combined Authority is in a stronger position to make the case for further devolution of powers from central government to take greater control of the transport network.

“These include devolving powers for moving traffic offences, which cause congestion and delays to bus services within our towns and cities, to local authorities.”

BRABIN KEEN TO FRANCHISE WEST YORKSHIRE BUSES West Yorks mayor brands current system as ‘broken’ REGULATION

Tracy Brabin, the recently elected mayor of West Yorkshire, says she is keen to see the region’s bus network franchised, describing the current deregulated system as “broken”.

In an interview with The Yorkshire Post, Brabin said that while “a series of measures are being pursued to improve buses in the short term”, moving to public control may be part of the long-term solution.

Brabin said she envisaged a bus network for West Yorkshire that was a “fairer system” with capped daily fares. She continued: “It doesn’t work and I wish I controlled all the buses because everybody that knows I’m determined to make the bus system better is contacting me about their individual bus. I wish I was more in control to help them but we know it is broken.

“So many people are missing out because they can’t get home on time, they can’t pick up their kids on time, they can’t get to that interview or exam. We have to make sure we have that great system that London has because if it is good enough for London it is good enough for us.”

Brabin said part of the problem with the current deregulated regime was having multiple different operators with different fare structures.

“You might do half of your journey with one operator and half with another operator and potentially pay a different fare,” she said.

“That makes no sense. I was just at Leeds City College and they buy bus tickets for disadvantaged students.

They have to buy two sets because it is two different operators - that is just bonkers.”

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NEWS ROUND-UP

Devon plots ambitious path for bus growth ‘Devon Bus’ network to plug into wider south west plans BSIPS

Bus ticketing across a broad swathe of south west England looks set to be shaken up as part of the Bus Service Improvement Plan process.

Council members in Devon heard this week that authorities in Cornwall, Devon, Plymouth and Torbay are seeking to introduce a range of multi-operator tickets that would cover all bus companies across the south west.

This process would also see a range of zonal tickets introduced, taking into account journey to work areas including Exeter, north Devon, Plymouth and Torbay.

“Working with Cornwall Council, Plymouth City Council and Torbay Council we have already highlighted improvements to cross border connections and possible collaborations for

fare initiatives,” explained Dave Black, Devon’s head of planning, transportation and environment.

“We are also holding similar discussions with Dorset Council and Somerset County Council for the eastern side of Devon.”

Black added that the councils are also exploring how ticketing for young people might be improved. Meanwhile, options to expand the ticket schemes to include local rail services are being examined in the hope of creating a fully integrated network.

In Devon itself, Black says the council is aiming to roll out its existing ‘Devon Bus’ brand across the local network as part of an Enhanced Partnership with operators.

On key interurban corridors, such as Bideford to Exeter and Barnstaple to Tiverton and Exeter, a new ‘Devon Lynx’ brand would be introduced. These services would also be integrated to give better links with onward rail and

Brighton & Hove plans for bus growth But city warns there are post-Covid obstacles to navigate Brighton & Hove Council has revealed ambitious plans for bus passenger growth as part of its Bus Service Improvement Plan.

However, the council warns that by late September, bus patronage in the south coast city had only returned to 50-60% of the patronage levels seen before the pandemic.

Brighton & Hove Council

10 | 15 October 2021 PT251p10-11 10

said its plans for buses envisage patronage to have returned to at least pre-Covid levels by 2023-24.

“Because of expected reduced demand as a result of permanent changes to travel habits, such as people working from home more often, this is likely to require other journeys to be transferred on to bus,” the council adds.

By 2024-2025, the target is for

coach services.

Bus services to railway stations across the county would also be improved. Black notes that the opening of the new station at Marsh Barton and the reopening of Okehampton station give opportunities for seamless integrated journeys to be introduced, including new bus links to several other stations in the county.

On bus priority and infrastructure, £7.5m has been allocated for bus priority measures and improvements to bus stops.

On the former, this aims to build on the Exeter Transport Strategy which set out a long-term vision for priority corridors for bus services into the city. Devon’s BSIP will propose expanding this concept to other urban areas of the county. Points where delays occur have been identified and will focus on the most affected bus routes serving Exeter, Exmouth, Newton Abbot and Barnstaple.

patronage to increase by 5% on the 2018-19 baseline; by 2030, the target is for bus passengers to have increased 15% on the 2018-20 baseline.

“The targets set for passenger numbers exceed the level of growth achieved between 201112 and 2018-19 (circa 10%),” the city’s BSIP document notes.

“This indicates this level of increase is achievable, subject to the extent of measures which can be delivered through this BSIP and future demand following the pandemic.”

IN BRIEF BCP OPTS FOR PARTNERSHIP Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council has opted to seek an Enhanced Partnership with local bus operators as part of its Bus Service Improvement Plan submission. Members were also informed that while passenger numbers have increased in recent months, they remain at between a half and two-thirds of pre-pandemic levels.

WILTSHIRE RESTORES BUSES Wiltshire Council plans to spend £671,000 from the Subsidised Bus Service Fund to restore and introduce new subsidised bus links across the county.

The council also plans to form an Enhanced Partnership with local operators as part of its Bus Service Improvement Plan and is examining options for a ‘Superbus’ network based on the county’s interurban bus network.

ESSEX WARNS ON PATRONAGE Essex County Council warns in its Bus Service Improvement Plan that there is a long way to go before bus patronage is restored following a steep decline as a result of Covid. The document reveals that bus passenger numbers in the county in 2020-21 peaked at 31% of pre-pandemic levels. On some individual services, particularly rural services, patronage is down 80% of pre-Covid levels.

The council is planning to bid for funding for five major bus projects to reverse this and decades of structural decline. The projects aim to transform the bus networks in Basildon, Clacton and Harlow.

Another project would expand DRT in rural areas while the ‘Thrive’ project aims to support market town bus services.

www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/10/2021 17:24

Arriva prepares to withdraw from Surrey Closure follows spiralling losses at south east business NETWORKS

Arriva’s woes at its bus operations in the south east of England have continued with the news that the group plans to close its depot at Guildford. If the plans proceed it will see the group finally withdraw from bus operation in Surrey.

In a statement the group said it was working with trade union groups and staff to explore the options available for the 100 staff affected by the move.

It continued: “Decisions like this are extremely difficult and are not taken lightly, however Arriva Guildford has unfortunately experienced ongoing decline in passenger numbers over

recent years, even prior to Covid-19, and despite every effort to achieve efficiencies, our Guildford operation is no longer sustainable.”

The financial position of the group’s operations in the county and neighbouring Kent have been precarious for some time.

Accounts filed in July reveal that in the year ending December 31, 2019, Arriva Kent & Surrey lost a substantial £8.25m (2018: £2.80m) on revenues of £42.34m (2018: £42.35m).

Attempts have been made in recent years to shore up the Guildford operation. In 2018 the

“Decisions like this are extremely difficult”

operator announced it would re-employ staff on new lower salary contracts following contract losses and intense competition with local independent Safeguard and Stagecoach.

The closure of the depot would also spell the end for the former Guildford and West Surrey operations of the post-NBC London & Country business.

Two decades ago the business had depots in Cranleigh, Guildford, Horsham and Woking but all, with the exception of Guildford had closed by 2009 when the Horsham operations were passed on to Go-Aheadowned Metrobus.

Arriva has been streamlining its operations elsewhere in the south east in recent months with the Sheerness depot on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent closing in July.

DIAMOND GOES ELECTRIC Rotala subsidiary Diamond Bus has introduced the first of five electric vehicles on its bus network in the Black Country. Rather than purchasing new vehicles, the operator is working with electric drive specialist Magtec to repower existing diesel vehicles. “By reusing and refurbishing existing vehicles, it has allowed us to invest in zero-emission technology, without the need to dispose of existing service-ready vehicles,” says the operator. www.passengertransport.co.uk

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SPS operates 150 vehicles

FIRST BUS GAINS CONTROL OF SPS Specialist transport firm now wholly owned ACQUISITIONS

FirstGroup has announced it has taken full control of Somerset Passenger Solutions (SPS), which operates the contract to provide transport for workers employed at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station near Bridgwater in Somerset.

Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

SPS was formed in 2016 as a joint venture between First South West and JJP Holdings, owned by Jonathan Jones-Pratt. He had won an initial contract at the site almost 10 years ago with his company Crosville Motor Services. Since then SPS has grown and now employs around 450 people with a fleet of 156 largely unbranded vehicles.

“To see what’s been achieved at Hinkley Point C is remarkable and I am immensely proud that the business I started has been taken to new levels thanks to the joint venture with First Bus,” said Jones-Pratt.

“I feel that this is the right time to conclude a sale and step back from the SPS business in order to hand the reins to First Bus.” Joe Thompson, First Bus’s portfolio managing director, described SPS as a “first-class operation”. He continued: “The purchase of the remaining 50% of SPS shares forms part of our wider strategy to develop and grow our offering in business-tobusiness services.”

15 October 2021 | 11

13/10/2021 17:24

NEWS ROUND-UP

Bidding hots up for Fastrack BRT contract Kent plans to let new eight-year contract for Thameside network BUS RAPID TRANSIT

Bidding for a new contract to operate Kent’s Fastrack Bus Rapid Transit network in the north of the county looks set to be hotly contested, Passenger Transport understands.

Several bidders, some of them without an existing bus presence in the county, are currently actively pursuing the contract for the network, which is currently largely operated by Arriva.

Kent County Council revealed more details about the contract earlier this year in a Prior Information Notice. The council says it wishes to keep up the momentum for wider public transport use in the area with a

BSIP PATRONAGE CONCERNS But TfWM still planning radical changes for buses PARTNERSHIP

Transport for the West Midlands has warned that if bus patronage does not return to pre-Covid levels soon the region will require significant financial support to maintain the status quo bus network.

Pete Bond, TfWM’s director of integrated transport services, warned members at a board meeting of the West Midlands Combined Authority last month that if guarantees of further financial support were not forthcoming, viability of the commercial bus network could be called into question. “Increasing pressure will be placed on the 12 | 15 October 2021 PT251p12-13 12

goal of 25% modal share between public and private transport by 2025/26. It is currently at 22%.

“In 2022, the network reaches a critical point where the planned opening of the Fastrack tunnel between Bluewater and Whitecliffe (Eastern Quarry) prompts the opportunity for Fastrack to expand to serve the new sites effectively,” said the council’s PIN. It added it therefore planned to launch a competitive tendering process during 2021 for a new contract incorporating an extended Route A (which currently links Dartford with Northfleet) and the current route B (between Dartford and Gravesend).

“There are also plans for further expansions to these services during the life of the contract as

the development sites proceed,” added the council. “A new Route C is also in development.”

The council expects to award a gross cost contract with Kent taking the revenue risk but bidders are expected to ensure that revenue growth is maximised with patronage growth a key performance metric.

The PIN declares the contract is expected to commence from April 1, 2022, and it is anticipated it will run for eight years, subject to periodic KPIs being met.

Future phases of the network will have the provision to be awarded without retendering, subject to meeting performance criteria.

Kent also anticipates the network will be operated with opportunity-charged electric vehicles. The council undertook a trial of such a vehicle,

manufactured by Volvo, in 2018.

Its performance obviously impressed as Kent says it will seek only to operate an electric single deck vehicle powered primarily with opportunity roadside charging with charging points located at Gravesend, Dartford and the operating depot. The council will install the on-street chargers, but will ask the winner to procure a fleet of around 27 buses to an agreed specification.

Tenders will be evaluated on “performance confidence” but price will play an element in the final decision.

The council continued: “A strong focus on providing a very high-quality service is expected.

Our key ambitions are to be Europe’s best Bus Rapid Transit network and to empower our passengers to have greater influence over their service.

“This will mean regular customer contact and localised decision making, all whilst delivering KCC with value for money.”

authority to subsidise further routes as a result,” Bond warned.

His comments were made when Bond informed members about the region’s planned Bus Service Improvement Partnership, he said the West Midlands bus network has an “indisputable, but often undervalued” role in the region with trips by bus accounting for 80% of all public transport journeys.

TfWM is basing its BSIP assumptions on patronage recovering to 80% of pre-Covid in the first year with 90% in year two and full recovering in the third year. To maintain the status quo on service provision it has allocated £84m between April 2022 and March 2023.

Bond said the BSIP aimed to set out the region’s ambitions to

improve customer experience and address barriers to bus travel.

Bus priority is seen as a key element of average vehicle speeds and the current network of bus lanes, which is 53km-long would be more than doubled to 110km.

But it is in the ticketing arena where there would be radical changes. TfWM proposes to reduce the price of the nBus multi-operator ticket to the same price of the equivalent product offered by dominant local operator National Express West Midlands, thereby reducing the price premium.

It will then remove all other ticket types from sale so that nBus is the only product range available.

“This would reduce the ticketing range from thousands to tens making it much easier for the customer to understand which ticket is best for

them,” Bond noted. “It is also proposed that the price of single and return tickets are aligned across operators so that they too are simple and easy for customers to understand.”

TfWM also wants to take over the provision of ticketing retail and all engagement activities with government. It is also proposed that circa 0.5% of all future nBus revenue is ring-fenced for marketing investment managed by TfWM. All buses and associated infrastructure would be branded as part of the West Midlands Transport network.

Multi-operator contactless capping would also be introduced with TfWM acting as the broker. It is currently bidding for £20m from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) to progress with this proposal. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/10/2021 17:26

Stagecoach patronage passes 70% mark Group sees strong return to bus following end of the summer RECOVERY

Stagecoach has announced that patronage across its UK bus network had reached in excess of 70% of the equivalent 2019 level by the end of September.

The Perth-based group, which is currently discussing a potential merger with National Express Group, said in a trading statement that passenger demand at its regional bus operations had experienced strong recovery in recent weeks following the return of school and universities across the country to face-to-face learning.

With the 70% patronage mark now crossed, the group said it was operating mileage at around 94%

OXFORDSHIRE OFFER WORKS

Bus patronage boost as operators work together RECOVERY

A campaign that aimed to tempt local residents in Oxfordshire to get back on the bus appears to have played a part in boosting bus use by around 20% in the last month.

Go-Ahead subsidiaries Oxford Bus Company and Thames Travel joined forces with Stagecoach’s operation in the county to help residents return to using buses in September. It saw hundreds of people take advantage of an offer of 30% off the cost of 12 trip tickets purchased through the websites or apps of the three operators.

The campaign, backed by Oxford www.passengertransport.co.uk

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of 2019 levels.

For the week ending October 2, 2021, journey numbers were 70.1% of the figure for the equivalent period in 2019. Fare paying journey numbers were 74.4% and concessionary journey numbers were 60.2%.

Meanwhile, so-called ‘commercial sales’ are higher than fare-paying journey numbers as a percentage of the 2019 levels.

The group says this is partly attributable to travel patterns during the Covid recovery period, whereby single tickets represent a higher proportion of sales than in 2019. Period products like weekly and monthly tickets represent a lower proportion. Stagecoach adds it continues to progress a number of ticketing initiatives to reflect changing travel patterns.

“The momentum in passenger

journeys and sales reflects a pick up in activity and travel across the UK, and growing confidence to return to public transport,” said chief executive Martin Griffiths.

“While there remains some uncertainty around how the recovery continues, our outlook for the year ending April 30, 2022, is unchanged from when we announced our full year results.”

The group said its London bus operati0n continues to demonstrate strong operational and financial performance and it has expanded its commercial operations in recent months.

The group also said it had retained the contract to manage rail replacements for train operator LNER. Stagecoach added that it continues to review opportunities to expand elsewhere in this arena.

City Council and Oxfordshire County Council, was designed to coincide with the latest phase of recovery from the pandemic.

With university students returning to physical lectures, pupils back to school, workers returning from furlough and many employers taking the next steps in relaxing their “work from home” guidance bus operators experienced a positive increase in patronage.

Oxford Bus Company and Thames Travel reported a 20% increase in overall passengers in September, following the month-long campaign. It means every three in four passengers have now returned to using buses compared to before the pandemic.

“It is great to see more people coming back to bus in recent weeks,”

said Phil Southall, managing director of the two Go-Ahead operations.

“The campaign was a success and we hope to continue to welcome more people back to bus. Bus travel is vital for our economy and remains one of the most sustainable modes of transport and is key to improving congestion and air quality in our communities.”

Southall: ‘Great to see more people coming back to bus’

IN BRIEF FLIXBUS EXPANSION FlixBus is continuing its expansion in the UK with the reintroduction of international journeys to France, Belgium and The Netherlands and new domestic services to and from London Heathrow Airport. Since re-launching in the UK in April 2021, FlixBus has tripled its local network to 60 direct routes between almost 30 UK cities.

Andreas Schorling, managing director of FlixBus UK, said: “We are covering numerous destinations in England, Wales and Scotland.”

FARE OFFER EXTENDED Transdev Blazefield is extending its £1 after 7pm fare deal across its operations until the end of December 2021. The fare offer was first launched by the bus firm across its networks in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester in June, as part of a package of measures designed to encourage more people to get out and about across the North. Since then, Transdev has seen positive results with 85% of customer numbers returning to its buses in September 2021, compared with the same month in 2019.

CHARITY’S COVID SUPPORT The National Express Foundation is inviting bids from community groups for a share of a new pot of funding which is being made available to help young people in the West Midlands ‘make up’ for time lost during the pandemic.

Covid-19 had a significant impact on the delivery of community services which support young people. The Foundation is hoping to support initiatives which play a vital role in helping young people to succeed in life.

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13/10/2021 17:26

ENVIRONMENT

UK transport NGOs to host event at COP26 Sustainable Transport Alliance will highlight community action EVENTS

The UK’s leading sustainable transport NGOs will champion the importance of communities in creating a greener transport future at COP26 next month, as attention increasingly turns to transport as the biggest source of greenhouse emissions in the UK and the fastest rising globally.

The Sustainable Transport Alliance will showcase examples of how local initiatives can engage and empower people to achieve climate-safe, healthy and inclusive transport systems and behaviours.

Their interactive session, People make transport: communities enabling greener travel, takes place on November 10 in the Green Zone at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

The event will focus on the challenges and benefits of reducing car use and shifting as many journeys as possible onto public and community transport, walking, cycling and shared mobility. A prestigious list of

‘PUT CARBON LABELLING ON TICKETS’

Public transport should promote green credentials COMMUNICATION

Better communication around the environmental benefits of public transport compared to cars could be a way of encouraging people back to the network as our collective 14 | 15 October 2021 PT251p14-15 14

government, academic, industry and community experts will share their expertise.

Local examples from locations across the UK will be shared: from an employment mobility pilot in South Wales Valleys; to travel confidence with young people in Lancashire; to people-centred street design in East London; to place-making and active travel development in the host city of Glasgow.

A special publication from Passenger Transport, Destination Net Zero: Decarbonising Transport,

will be distributed at the event, which is supported by Transport Scotland and Go-Ahead Group.

“Our organisations work with communities across the UK to help them access, benefit from and spearhead greener, more inclusive transport,” said Jools Townsend, chair of the Sustainable Transport Alliance, and chief executive of Community Rail Network. “There is so much inspiring work going on across our networks, forging climate-safe forms of mobility, while bringing people together and empowering communities -

“Transport is often neglected in people’s thinking about the climate, but it is coming to the fore at COP26” Jools Townsend, Sustainable Transport Alliance

EVENT SPEAKERS Trudy Harrison MP, parliamentary under secretary of state, DfT (invited); Jillian Anable, professor of transport and energy, University of Leeds Institute of Transport Studies (invited); Cllr Anna Richardson, city convenor for sustainability and carbon reduction, Glasgow City Council; Xavier Brice, chief executive, Sustrans; Richard Dilks, chief executive, CoMoUK; Jools Townsend, chief executive, Community Rail Network; David Statham, strategy director, Go-Ahead Group.

awareness of the climate crisis continues to grow, according to transport expert Jonathan Edwards.

In response to the recent release of the government’s National Travel Survey, Edwards, who is transportation market leader - EMEA, at GHD, the professional services company, offered some tips on how ticketing can get public transport back on track. And this included better information about the green credentials of public transport

versus the private car.

Edwards wrote: “The public transport sector should be looking to make information like this more accessible and consumer-friendly, and, to achieve this, we recommend adding carbon labelling to all public transport ticketing immediately.”

A GHD survey last year found that 81% of UK consumers support the concept to ‘carbon label’ consumer services, particularly travel tickets, energy bills and water bills, and

and we are excited about sharing that on the global stage.

“Transport is often neglected in people’s thinking about the climate, but it is coming to the fore at COP26, as it must, with global transport emissions rising faster than any other sector.

“We’re showing that public and community transport, combined with walking, cycling and shared mobility, is fundamental, to enable a shift away from car-dependency.

We know through our work that this can unlock all sorts of benefits for people’s health, wellbeing, and access to opportunity.

“We are hoping to get decisionmakers from across the globe thinking about how an engaging and empowering approach can work in their localities.”

The Sustainable Transport Alliance includes Bus Users, Campaign for Better Transport, Community Rail Network, Community Transport Association, Collaborative Mobility UK (CoMoUK), Living Streets, London Cycling Campaign, Sustrans.

The event is taking place in Tower Base South, Glasgow Science Centre, at 5-6pm on November 10, and will be part of the UK government’s Green Zone event programme. Further details at sustainabletransportalliance.org

that 59% would choose lower carbon options if better informed about their overall consumption.

60% of respondents even said they would be willing to pay more for environmentally friendly services.

Meanwhile, another GHD survey from earlier this year also showed that, post-pandemic, green issues will be the highest priority for 14% of people when choosing which goods and services to buy - and GHD expects this figure to climb sharply. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/10/2021 17:27

“It’s vital that as a community we do all we can to reduce carbon emissions”Alex Hornby

Harrogate bus firm backs Car Free Fridays Bus company offers two-for-one travel to tempt motorists

Alex Hornby (centre) at the launch of Car Free Fridays

CAMPAIGNS

The Harrogate Bus Company is backing a new zero carbon transport initative with a two-forone travel offer on Fridays.

The Transdev-owned operator, which runs the town’s Harrogate Electrics buses, is supporting Zero Carbon Harrogate’s ‘Car Free Fridays’ campaign, which began on October 8 with an invitation to sign up online to a pledge to leave the car at home at least one day per week. To encourage motorists to switch, two people can travel together using one Harrogate day ticket on Car Free Fridays.

Zero Carbon Harrogate brings together a group of residents across the Harrogate District to support a low-carbon sustainable economy, with the

aim of making the area a net zero carbon community by 2030. The campaigners say cars and the congestion they cause are one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, making up 49% of total emissions in Harrogate District - a figure which places Harrogate 28% above the national average.

With world leaders due to

meet in Glasgow at the end of this month for COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, local campaigners hope increased focus on the impact of carbon emissions will persuade more people in Harrogate to leave their cars behind on Fridays.

The Harrogate Bus Company

MCGILL’S URGES RENFREWSHIRE TO ‘SWITCH’ Electric buses enter service ahead of COP26 ELECTRIC BUSES

HYDROGEN HITS THE HIGHLANDS Inverness will soon become the next city to trial a hydrogen bus on routes across the city and as far north as Dingwall, Alness and Muir of Ord. As a combined initiative between HITRANS, Protium Energy Limited and Opportunity Cromarty Firth, the Caetano hydrogen fuel cell bus (pictured) is expected to operate from mid-October through to November 2021 on routes operated by Stagecoach Highlands. The trial will conclude after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Bus company McGill’s urged residents to become “zero heroes” as it launched its first fully electric bus route in Paisley, with a further two routes following this month. The company’s £32.5m investment in 68 zero emission buses, supported by the Scottish Government’s Scottish Ultra Low Emissions Bus Scheme, will see it become the largest operator of electric buses in Scotland.

The McGill’s 26, 23 and 38 electric

CEO Alex Hornby said: “It’s vital that as a community we do all we can to reduce carbon emissions. I’m proud to be part of the district’s Climate Change Coalition Board, as we work together to find sustainable answers to the growing issue of air pollution where we live.

“Our proposals to fully convert our bus fleet to zero-emission electric power in the coming years will make a significant contribution, but right now we can all do our bit to drive down carbon emissions simply by signing up to the campaign pledge to leave the car at home for just one day a week.

“As well as the benefit to our local environment, choosing the bus makes sense in lots more ways - it’s a lot less stressful than driving, and with a full day’s travel anywhere for two people travelling together within Harrogate, Knaresborough, Wetherby and as far as Harewood and Ripley on the 36 at only £4.70 on Car Free Fridays, it’s a lot cheaper than driving into town and paying for parking.”

routes, all branded Switch, will be live by the end of October just as Glasgow prepares to host the COP26 climate summit. The company has launched a major marketing campaign to encourage more residents to make the switch from their cars, including video content starring local people and McGill’s very own animated “zero heroes.”

McGill’s Group CEO Ralph Roberts commented: “The scale of our investment truly demonstrates our commitment to the green agenda, and cements us as leaders in clean, zero emission journeys. This is just the beginning as we look to provide more and more game-changing technology to improve air quality in our towns and cities.”

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13/10/2021 17:27

INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

New autonomous mass transit system launches World’s first operational system will open in 2025 at the National Railway Museum in Shildon, but UK-based firm plans global transport revolution MASS TRANSIT

A driverless, zero-emission mass transit technology - comprising autonomous electric “pods” capable of traveling on both road and rail - launched this week by UK-start up Urban.MASS “will revolutionise urban mobility and connectivity in cities worldwide, cutting congestion, air pollution, costs and carbon emissions”.

Urban.MASS’ floc® technology promises to combine door-todoor, on-demand ride hailing transport with high frequency, accessible and sustainable mass transit to provide seamless, zero-emission passenger and cargo journeys across cities.

The world’s first fully operational site is planned to open in 2025 at the National Railway Museum, Locomotion, in Shildon, North East England - exactly 200 years after the same site hosted the world’s first passenger steam engine, Stephenson’s Locomotion.

A “rapid global rollout” will follow, seeing at least 10 cities adopt the technology by 2030, beginning with Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and cities across the UK. Explaining the concept, Urban.MASS points out that 68% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, putting massive strain on roads and existing public transport networks. In the UK alone, road congestion cost the economy almost £7bn in 2019, with 65% of its workforce currently commuting by car.

The concept is billed as 16 | 15 October 2021 PT251p16-17 16

a cheaper alternative to conventional mass transit infrastructure projects - such as London’s £19bn Crossrail project - which are “disruptive, time consuming and costly, with European rail projects going over budget by 34% on average”.

Urban.MASS says that these costs can be prohibitive for smaller cities, developers, and businesses, such as airports and out-of-town business parks, which compounds the reliance on road transport.

“Cities are changing like never before - populations are exploding but the way we move people around hasn’t changed in over a century,” said Urban.MASS CEO Kevin O’Grady. “Victorian-era rail and road technologies weren’t designed for the demands of

modern life and yet worldwide we continue to rely on the same basic, expensive, and carbon intensive system. We should be using solutions of the 21st century, to serve the new breed of cities we see today - cities that are built for people, not polluting vehicles”.

“It’s almost 200 years since the United Kingdom invented passenger rail - it’s time to once again set a new global precedent and upend the status quo of transport. With massive demand from cities right across the world, it’s clear that people everywhere recognise the need for a new technology to dramatically change our transport systems for the next 200 years. Our affordable and accessible system delivers twice the track for half the cost, with an

“It’s time to once again set a new global precedent and upend the status quo of transport” Kevin O’Grady, Urban.MASS

A visualisation of ‘floc®’ technology

unrivalled customer experience.”

The Urban.MASS floc® technology deploys hundreds of lightweight, driverless, zero emission electric pods to collect passengers from anywhere in a city using ground-level tracks or existing road networks. To traverse the most congested areas of urban centres at high speeds, the pods elevate to an aboveground Duo Rail™ track via Urban.MASS stations, all without passengers having to leave the pod. The pods can “flock” together into connected trains or run individually depending on demand. This means floc® can deliver high frequency peak capacity on dense routes and also provide economically viable services on less dense routes or during off-peak times.

The elevated Duo Rail™ track, powered by overhead solar canopies, can run above existing roads and infrastructure, giving a physical footprint 70% smaller than a typical urban light rail system. This allows infrastructure to ‘tiptoe’ through dense urban areas, minimising the need to demolish buildings or dig expensive tunnel networks, while allowing space for roads, green corridors, cycle paths or pedestrian zones below.

Using ‘pop up’ construction, each prefabricated section of Duo Rail™ track can be installed in a matter of days. The result is a system costing “50% less than traditional light rail”.

In the UK, Urban.MASS has identified a number of cities suitable for deployment, including, Bristol, Liverpool, Cambridge, Oxford, and Cardiff.

Urban.MASS has meanwhile signed partnership agreements with architectural design company Grimshaw and WSP, one of the world’s largest engineering professional services www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/10/2021 17:28

Ticketer and Padam to develop DRT solutions Partners pledge to offer smooth modal integration DRT

A new partnership widening the opportunities for further DRT integration for operators and local authorities has been formed by Ticketer, the innovative transit and data intelligence partner, and Padam Mobility, provider of software for smart and flexible mobility solutions.

The planned Padam Mobility and Ticketer integration will see further enablement of DRT and fixed-route bus intermodality, along with a new level of flexibility for operators in the way they deploy their services. Three key components “will provide the impetus to change the DRT landscape for the better”.

The first is the ticketing integration between Ticketer and Padam’s mobile app for

OPTIBUS PARTNERS WITH GREENROAD Safety data can be fed into transport planning SAFETY

Optibus, the software platform for public transportation planning, scheduling, and rostering, is partnering with GreenRoad Technologies, the safety telematics leader, to increase passenger safety and comfort by bringing historical road safety data into the earliest phases of transportation planning.

The lack of safety data at the earliest stages of transport planning www.passengertransport.co.uk

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booking and following DRT trips. The second is DRT driver features that will be available on the existing Ticketer Electronic Ticket Machines (ETMs). The third element is Connection Protection, which will provide assurance that there will be a connecting service available.

The Padam Mobility and Ticketer collaboration will enable a smooth modal integration through the existing Ticketer ETMs with one single driver interface, reducing operator costs as well as providing simplicity and flexibility for drivers. For passengers, the travel experience is greatly improved by removing any payment friction, and

connection protection will ensure a reliable, connected and integrated multimodal service.

Antonio Carmona, general manager UK and international at Ticketer Group, commented: “This is another step on our path to opening up our Ticketer platform to new partners.

We are excited to work with Padam Mobility to bring DRT and conventional public transport networks closer together. A convenient, reliable and equitable alternative to car travel is the first step in addressing the mobility and sustainability challenges that we have as a society, and this partnership is an important step in that direction.”

“We are excited to work with Padam Mobility to bring DRT and conventional public transport closer together” Antonio Carmona, Ticketer Group means many road and driving hazards are detected only after services roll-out, at the driverlevel. This exposes passengers to low-quality, risky services that compromise their safety and comfort and increase the rate of injuries or incidents per million miles. Some operators and agencies increase running times to mitigate accidents, thinking slower is safer, but longer travel times only decrease passenger satisfaction, increase expenses, and harm operational efficiency.

“Although public transit is one of the safest ways to travel, thousands of passengers, as well as drivers, pedestrians, and occupants of other vehicles, are still injured or killed

each year in bus-related crashes.

Many of these incidents could be prevented if safety data was used to plan networks that are safer,” said Optibus CEO and co-founder Amos Haggiag. “Partnering with GreenRoad allows us to do just that, by creating the first-ever integrated planning and safety system for public transport providers.”

To reduce risks, Optibus and GreenRoad are empowering operators and agencies to account for safety factors, such as road and ride quality, collisions, injuries, and driver behavior including speeding, sudden acceleration and braking, and sharp turns, at the network planning stage.

MYTRIP MILESTONES

Platform is designed to help smaller operators APPS

Bournemouth-based public transport app and website provider, Passenger has revealed its myTrip app and website platform has exceeded 50,000 users and onboarded 50 operators since launching one year ago.

The myTrip app, officially launched on October 1, 2020, allows passengers to purchase tickets for bus routes across the region using cashless options, as well as view realtime information on bus locations.

The app can also share real-time occupancy levels submitted by bus passengers. Earlier this year, Passenger enhanced its myTrip offering by launching websites for operators - allowing bus users to access web-to-mobile ticketing and live journey planning through an additional digital platform.

Tom Quay, CEO at Passenger, said: “As myTrip celebrates its one-year anniversary this month, it’s inspiring to see how much of a positive difference the platform has made to operators. We designed the platform with smaller operators’ needs as our priority, helping them modernise their services to appeal to today’s travellers and their shifting needs.”

Roger Birch, general manager from Whippet said: “We’re delighted to have welcomed more travellers on board thanks to our new digital capabilities. myTrip has helped us connect to more of our community, and it’s important we continue raising awareness of the positive impacts of taking the bus ... We’ve improved the range of tickets available through the app, including our new 5 day tickets for £25 package which can be used across our network over 90 days - ideal when you’re not needing to go to the office every day.”

15 October 2021 | 17

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COMMENT

JONATHAN BRAY

Party conferences and a crunch-point

The big issues were debated at this year’s lively party conferences, but there are huge questions to be answered on transport policy

It felt like the fallow Covid period has reinvigorated party conferences as institutions that previously felt like they were in a slow decline. As the equivalent of Glastonbury for the party faithful, this year they were far busier and buzzier than I was expecting.

The Conservative party conference was a sign of how far the government has moved into local transport’s territory with ‘levelling up’ the buzz phrase that nobody could resist saying as many times as possible at as many fringe meetings as possible. Levelling up is still a very baggy concept onto which all sorts of asks, ideas and wishes can be projected.

However, we are told that more definition will come when the spending review is published.

In the meantime levelling up minister, Neil O’Brien defined it on Twitter (and on the fringes) as: empowering local leaders and communities; growing the private sector and boosting living standards, particularly where they’re lower; spreading opportunity and improving public services, particularly where they’re lacking; and restoring local pride.

All of which is a good fit with the need to invest in and support public transport and active travel - and devolve more decisions over its future. With climate being the other big theme of the Conservative party conference there is a big opportunity to ensure central government funding decisions reflect these priorities. There is now a whiff of the 1970s Heath era for economic policy 18 | 15 October 2021 PT251p18-19 18

- with regional development and industrial policies to the fore. Privatisation and deregulation is no longer an aim in itself (as we have recently seen on rail and bus policy). Again this is a helpful context for the goal of putting public transport networks back together as well as the ideal of a longer term approach to local transport funding.

If you look at the big radical changes (that were unforced by events) on local transport in recent times, none of them originated from the Department for Transport and all of them came from a big hitter in another more influential part of government. So, the last big round of devolution and effective bus franchising powers came from George Osborne when he was at The Treasury and the radical recent bus and active travel strategies came from Number 10. Michael Gove’s new brief (which covers local government, levelling up and inter-departmental working is therefore very interesting), means if he wanted to he could do something similarly significant.

But we will have to wait and see, as Gove kept his powder dry at the party conference.

Another notable feature of this year’s

“Levelling up is still a very baggy concept onto which all sorts of asks, ideas and wishes can be projected”

conferences was the influence exerted over them by mayors. Different mayors have defined themselves in different high profile and characteristic ways as they have taken on the mantle (those that don’t tend not to last). They do this in different ways, Ben Houchen in Tees Valley focussed on delivering some big regionally significant projects (like the transformation of the former Redcar steelworks site and the turnaround of the local airport) while Andy Burnham set out a timetable for when a fully integrated local public transport can be delivered.

But overall there’s a sense now that the mayoralties have found their feet, and as they roamed around the party conferences they also exerted a magnetic pull on the headlines and discourse that took place there.

The next big events for public transport are the spending review and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The spending review will be a big test of whether there is going to be a significant recalibration of what the DfT does to align itself with the pressing need for both rapid decarbonisation and in realising the ambitious goals of the bus strategy. Or whether inter-city will continue to triumph over intra-city, with a significant share of capital funding still hoovered up by the monstrosity which is the £27bn national roads programme.

The other big question is to what extent the spending review will enable existing public transport networks to be maintained (through continuing to fill the funding gap left by depleted patronage due to Covid) as a base on which to build the aspirations of the bus strategy. It certainly feels very tight at the moment, particularly for those with responsibilities for light rail systems where HMT are saying there is no possibility of more money post-April.

Meanwhile our world is also being rocked by two additional phenomena. Firstly, cracks are showing in the just-in-time global supply chain and the shaky illusion that we could always get what we needed at declining cost whenever we wanted. Stranded containers, empty shelves and soaring energy prices are prime indicators of this. Secondly, ageing workforces, and workforces who can get jobs they either prefer or can get more money doing (or both), are leading to higher wages and driver shortages. All exacerbated by the persistent inability of DVSA to get its act www.passengertransport.co.uk

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A vision of Greater Manchester’s fully integrated network, championed by mayor Andy Burnham

together. These two trends could both increase the cost of standing still in terms of levels of public transport provision - and further eat into available funding for improvements.

Everything is also made more complex by the fact that we don’t yet know what the new baseline is for public transport demand and whether the trends we are now seeing are transient or permanent. The danger for us all in this situation is that we are locked into a debate about whether we want more or less than we had before in terms of public transport provision, rather than taking a fresh look at just what kind of public transport system we need post-Covid, but in a decarbonising world.

And what are the main objectives for that public transport system? For example, should we shift from an office rush hour driven network to networks that provide a more consistent service across more hours, given that leisure appears to be where new markets are to be had? Should urban public transport be seen as a universal low fare utility to provide www.passengertransport.co.uk

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“Should urban public transport be seen as a universal low fare utility?” access for all to support levelling up goals?

Or should it focus on providing a premium product to attract cash rich, time poor motorists with an alternative they are prepared to use?

In the mix too now is the pressing need for the organisations that provide public transport should better reflect the diversity of the areas they serve both in the decisions they take and the people they employ. The easy bit is keeping up with the cycle of awareness days on Twitter with suitable corporate tweets and vinylingup buses and trains. It is more challenging to take a long hard look at the data we collect, the way we consult, the planning tools we use to determine the service we provide and thus who it serves and who it doesn’t. Something that has been sharply exposed by two recent

events that we have got behind: the Gender on the Agenda events that Landor are running and that we are sponsoring, and the last Urban Transport Next event that we ran on childfriendly decision-making on transport.

Fairness, climate and responding to post-Covid changes in where people want to be when, are the three factors that should be shaping some new thinking about what urban public transport is for, if we don’t get hemmed in by dealing with one short term funding challenge after another. And with local government now in the budget setting process for 22/23 - we have already arrived at another crunch point.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonathan Bray is the director of the Urban Transport Group. Throughout his career in policy and lobbying roles he has been at the frontline in bringing about more effective, sustainable and equitable transport policies.

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13/10/2021 17:38

COMMENT

ALEX WARNER

The final nail in the franchising coffin?

Govia being stripped of Southeastern should bring the curtain down on franchising and hasten the introduction of concessions Shall we just knock it on the head now?

I mean, franchising. With the demise of Southeastern, it’s tempting just to expedite the move towards National Rail Concessions as soon as possible. Let’s get on with it, we know the end game and actually it looks pretty straightforward, and dare I say it, a ‘common sense’ way to run the railway. Everyone wants out currently - the longstanding owning groups look bored of the status quo, some are trying to make a buck anyway they can (rail replacement contracts), whilst most of their managers are demoralised.

The Department for Transport’s Pete Wilkinson miraculously kept trains running in record time when Covid reared its ugly head in March 2020, maybe he can rip up all the recently renegotiated contracts and put everyone out of their misery so we can crack on with the new concessions ASAP? The news a fortnight ago about Govia being stripped of the Southeastern franchise they’ve held since April 1, 2006 due to alleged fraud, was a great surprise to those of us who have been impressed with the way they’ve run the network and the culture of the owning group.

Industry colleagues, however, seem pretty silent about it. I was at a meeting with several MDs, DfT and Network Rail the following day and there was no tittle tattling or very little ‘did you see what happened to Southeastern?’ chuntering. Personally, I think even those working in the sector have been sapped of their enthusiasm right now. The life is being drained 20 | 15 October 2021 PT251p20-21 20

out of those in the TOCs, every week that passes, I see the pace get slower - if it goes any slower, managers will be walking backwards.

The Southeastern saga was a big news day for me. As regular readers of this column will know, I have an obsession with Southeastern. Four decades living in Orpington, my childhood spent spotting trains on the network, then the dream job as retail director when the public sector took over from Connex, before Govia assumed control a couple of years later.

Words cannot explain the depth of emotion and affection I have for Southeastern - I think about it every single day of my life and always will do. I know it’s unhealthy and I cannot quite explain the whirlwind of emotions that I conjure up when I do so, but it’s just the way it is. For this reason, I find it poignant seeing this wonderful railway going through such a difficult time, another period of transition, of uncertainty at which frontline employees, particularly those from the days of Connex, will be holding their owning group in contempt, even if it is deserved or not.

During the dark days of strikes on Southern and a botched timetable on GTR, several managers within Southeastern berated their association with Govia because they felt that

“Hardly any franchise has been without scandal or ignominy”

the bad publicity elsewhere undermined their own reputation. In the aftermath of the DfT’s decision last week, one person messaged me and explained how upset managers at Southeastern will be that Govia will be moving on. Personally, I don’t think they will care less those working on the network have an affinity with their railway, rather than with the owning groups - it’s the same across the industry and anyone ‘at the centre’ in group roles who think differently is, quite frankly, deluded.

I’m not putting the boot in when they are currently at a low ebb, but the reality, though, is that a rather enjoyable period is likely to follow for those at Southeastern in the next year or two, if the experience at Northern or LNER is anything to go by, and from my own memories when I was retail director at South Eastern Trains, under government ownership.

Investment will be unlocked, there may be a looser rein from above in terms of scrutiny, I suspect and there won’t be distractions around other aspects that come with being part of an owning group, such as obsessing about franchise extensions, re-bidding or the wider portfolio or share price.

These musings are not meant to be disingenuous to Govia. Firstly, I place on record, as I always have done, that its stewardship of Southeastern from an operational and customer service perspective has been very good indeed. It has quietly gone about its business, without melodrama and engaged effectively with customers and the local community. This is a complex and hugely challenging railway that they have near enough mastered slickly, effectively and sans fuss.

Culturally, the organisation is absolutely light years away from that which I came across when Southeastern was transitioning over to Govia’s ownership back in 2006, when there was an unpleasant arrogance about the place as the new owners swaggered into our Friar’s Bridge Court HQ. Go Ahead’s David Brown - CEO since 2011 - is a fine man, so too his counterpart at Keolis UK, Alastair Gordon. You will be hard pushed to find two individuals at the helm who are more customer focused and driven to do the right thing for public transport.

As Southeastern MD between 2015 and July 2021, David Statham has been one of the most respected within his peer group and developed a reputation, more so than any, for pursuing social causes, particularly diversity and www.passengertransport.co.uk

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“It’s had its day and a slow death is the last thing anyone needs” inclusion, and he has been popular and visible across the communities he serves.

Whilst frontline employees and many managers won’t shed a tear for the departure of Govia, they have engaged extremely well with their people, better than most, if not all, owning groups. They have always tried to ensure that franchise employees derive benefit from their stewardship at ‘the centre’ and have acted with high levels of self-awareness, empathy and respect towards the railway culture and ‘family’. Even during the prolonged strikes on Southern, they never lost sight of this and some might argue, Govia were carrying the can for the industry as a whole in trying to tackle ‘the role of the guard’ where efforts elsewhere had ultimately failed.

Although I don’t know the ‘ins and outs’ of what has happened at Southeastern, I do work on gut instinct and I just don’t believe deliberate fraud occurred. When this is suggested, folk conjure up a picture of senior managers in a smoke-filled room together, conspiring to cook the books. Whatever the circumstances, it isn’t a good look for the privatised railway and this is why I’m a real advocate of the new concession model. It’s far more straightforward, allows owning groups to concentrate on nothing else, not tripping themselves up, but just delivering a service for customers. Progression towards this state should be accelerated. Nothing is to be gained by large swathes of the sector being under the stewardship of the Operator of Last Resort and others taking orders from their owning group and their funder, the DfT. There’s already a growing antipathy among the ‘have nots’ working for privatised owning groups - they think that LNER and Northern get anything they want and with far less scrutiny and performance management. Whether that is jealously or not, I don’t know, but I hear the murmours and whispers.

The ultimate demise of Southeastern is surely the final denouement or nail in the coffin for the current structure. Unpredictable though it was, insofar that Govia have traditionally, in their management of Southeastern, been viewed almost as the ‘goody two shoes’ in the sector - and not unreasonably so - it cannot have been healthy, the continuous extension of their franchise.

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A Southeastern 465 Unit at Gravesend

perspective and a nearly constant negotiation of tenancy that must have been a distraction.

Southeastern’s fate and its timing as we approach the end of privatisation as we know it, made me reflect that hardly any franchise has been without scandal or ignominy. That Southeastern has suffered it twice now is bad enough, but, of course, East Coast has had five owners (including two stints under public sector control). Northern has perennially been in trouble, even as far back as Northern Spirit at the beginning of the century and TransPennine’s financial woes and poor performance that hit the headlines prepandemic were not dissimilar to those faced

by First North Western around the same time that Northern Spirit was hitting the buffers.

ScotRail is off quite soon, the great 15-year vision for Wales that Keolis won in 2018 lasted only a couple of years. The relatively recent history of SWR, GTR and Southern has been a tale of industrial relations and performance woes - so too West Midlands Trains and its predecessor London Midland. Meanwhile, out east, c2c and Greater Anglia have continuously seemed on the brink of implosion due to their over-reliance on London’s success.

So, the structure is broken and who is, of course, to say that it will be any different under GBR, even if the set-up intuitively feels more logical. Industry professionals are, in my view, inherently good - indeed, in many cases, excellent rounded leaders with a breadth of skills and experiences - but they deserve the right structure to be able to perform

effectively and flourish. Whilst there is loyalty to their owning group or Network Rail employer, even at CEO level, I believe that, in almost all cases, they act with a duty to public transport and a motivation to do the very best for the sector.

The industry is full of fine people and the situation with Southeastern should bring down the curtain on a structure that has brought some successes, but ultimately pretty damaging headlines and an environment that hasn’t done justice to the talents of railway managers, right up to the very top.

In the case of David Brown, he should be allowed to retire from full executive life with his dignity intact and a reflection of the overall contribution he has made throughout his lengthy career to the transport sector, untainted by last month’s news. So too, the senior teams at Go-Ahead and Keolis. History will show that they, more than most owning groups, did the right thing for the good of the industry and the finale for Southeastern was a blip (admittedly a not insignificant one) on their tenure of the franchise. But, it’s now time to get on and properly knock this current industry set-up on the head. It’s had its day and a slow death is the last thing anyone needs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex Warner has over 28 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector

15 October 2021 | 21

13/10/2021 17:28

COMMENT

GEORGE MUIR

Bob Reid - the railway’s best leader I have spent the past six years writing the life story of Bob Reid, a reformer who left us with a growing, successful railway

I can tell you this, if you are going to write a book, write fiction. Then, if your hero is called Patterson, with two ‘T’s, then that is his name.

But if you write about Bob Reid, as I have done, there is a mountain of facts to check and you better put one ‘T’ in Frank Paterson’s name, or you will face wrathful emails.

But why Bob Reid? I have asked people who is the best manager whom they have ever worked for. Some mention Chris Green, but for most people long in the railway, it is Bob Reid. That is, Bob Reid One, British Rail’s chief executive from 1980 and chairman from 1983 to 1990. It is his life story that I have written and combined with a history of the railway since 1948.

It is a super story; I hope people buy the book. It helps one understand more fully the industry we work in.

Frank Paterson joined the railway in 1946, a year before Bob Reid, both at stations up on the Deeside line, from Braemar to Aberdeen.

It was long, long ago, a different world. Half the freight in the country was carried by rail.

There were small stations dotted everywhere.

Tiny Banchory, where Bob Reid was first posted, had a signal box and a small siding for freight. Frank tells good stories of these times.

A different world it was. It all had to change.

Almost every piece of rolling stock and equipment was old and battered by war. The processes were ancient and labour-intensive.

All had to be made new and more efficient.

But all around was social change and technical 22 | 15 October 2021 PT251p22-23 22

change in other industries. Motor cars and roads were soon to be improved and the great motorways built. The task, therefore, facing the railway chairmen of renewing the railway in a way that would respond to the changing world was immensely difficult.

Three attempts followed, all led by talented people: the Modernisation Plan of the 1950s led by General Brian Robertson, the station closures of the 1960s led by Doctor Beeching

It has been an absolute delight to write this book

and the “modern management” of the 1970s led by Henry Johnson and David Bowick.

But despite some successes - the InterCity network, the HST diesel train and modern signalling - the railway in 1980 was at a low ebb.

It was at that moment, after 30 years in the railway, that Bob Reid, almost an outsider in the railway community, was appointed chief executive. When he left, 10 years later, it was a growing, successful railway.

Tracing that story is the book I have written.

I have been working on it for six years and it has been an absolute delight, straying from the task so often, wandering down enchanting side paths leading to stories I could not resist. One was prompted by General Brian Robertson’s granddaughter. I did not know her from Eve, but she plumped herself down beside me in a restaurant high in the Italian Alps when we were both skiing. She told me about her grandfather, the railway chairman, and about his father, Wully Robertson, born in 1860, who is the only person ever to have held every rank in the British Army, from the very bottom to the very top.

How could that be? That path was such fun to explore; I have squeezed it into the book.

Bob Reid’s father’s time as Governor of Assam is fascinating. The Battle of Kohima, the tennis court battle in the high mountains of Assam; that too is in the book. Bob Reid’s captivity in the defence of Tobruk is in the book, his time as a prisoner of war which formed his strong personality. They are all in the book.

Now, back to the main road.

By the time Bob Reid became chief executive he had developed a clear idea of the change he wanted to make in the way the railway was managed. He felt it was dominated by the “producers”, the engineers and operators, who decided, often working in silos, what they thought the right thing was to do. Bob wanted to break the hold of the “producers”. He wanted what he called a business-led railway, one dominated by consideration of the markets the railway served, the passenger and freight customer, and what they would pay for.

“British Rail”, he said, “used to be not so much a management but a vast administrative machine. Profit was not a dirty word, it was a word that didn’t exist.”

The change he made was called sectorisation, named for the five market www.passengertransport.co.uk

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sectors the railway served, three passenger (InterCity, South-East and Provincial) plus freight and parcels.

He proceeded cautiously, for there was much opposition. In 1982 directors were put in charge of the planning and budgeting for each sector, with the running of the railway remaining unchanged, under the control of the regional general managers, who were however required to comply with the plans and budgets of the sector directors. Then, in phase 2, in 1996, the authority of the sector directors was greatly strengthened, and sub-sectors took shape. Finally, in phase 3, sectorisation was completed, under OfQ (the Organising for Quality initiative), with the regions disbanded and all railway activity placed under the sub- sectors.

These changes were immensely significant.

Luck came my way again when I bumped into, by telephone, the American Lou Thompson. He was railway adviser to the World Bank and wrote this for me: “Sir Bob was, I believe, a seminal figure in breaking the shell around the traditional monolith that operated a railway. He understood that the railway was there to serve markets. It was an unsettling concept that is still working its way through many EU railways.”

Three things strike me about the story.

First, throughout this period chairmen, including the great analyst Dr Beeching, were blind to changes on the roads. In Dr Beeching’s reports, one of which proposed a great new freight network, the word motorway is not mentioned nor that the permitted load of a freight carrying lorry was being greatly increased.

Secondly, the changes made by Bob Reid were introduced gradually. He allowed them to evolve within the railway. And he was clear, at each stage, what the problem was he was trying to solve. It sounds obvious, but I question whether the Williams-Shapps

“Sir Bob was, I believe, a seminal figure in breaking the shell around the traditional monolith that operated a railway” Lou Thompson

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Plan for Rail is sufficiently clear about the problem it is trying to solve.

Thirdly, it is extremely difficult to reconcile the control of engineering and the vast projects integral to the railway with control of the day-to-day business of running trains.

Nonetheless, a focus on markets must be maintained.

I make no suggestion that Bob Reid’s form of market focus through sectorisation, should be introduced again, but some way must be found to make consideration of the market dominant in the planning of Network Rail and the train operators.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR George Muir was director general of the Association of Train Operating Companies from 1999 to 2008.

Bob, happy and smiling, looking down from the footplate of the steam train The Great Marquess

EVOLUTION OF THE RAILWAY ORGANISATION 1. Under the Big Four Departmental under a general manager. Four departments (passenger, freight, civil engineering and mechanical & electrical), each operating independently and reporting to the general manager.

Limited co-ordination at intermediate levels.

2. Under Hurcomb and the Railway Executive Highly functional/silo: the regional department heads reported up to the functional heads in the executive with little authority lying with the regional general managers, who hated the arrangement.

3. Under Robertson and the Commission, after absorbing the Executive Re-established the authority of the regional general managers but with departmental heads jointreporting up to the Commission. No single person at the Commission controlling/directing the whole.

4. Under Beeching, under the British Railways board As above, plus financial analysis and work study, etc. Still no single person in overall control.

5. Under Johnson/Bowick For the first time, a chief executive and management board. Below the Board, three levels: Region, Division, Area (newly created to absorb the ancient districts). Much greater coordination and focus.

6. Under Reid/Parker Phase 1 (1982): Sectors - Control passed to sector directors heading the five market sectors (three Passenger, one Freight, one Parcels). Delivery remaining with the general managers and the Regions. The middle layer - the Division - soon removed.

Phase 2 (1986): Sub-sectors - Substantial control passed to the sub-sectors of each sector.

Delivery remaining with the general managers and below them, the Areas.

Phase 3 (1992): OfQ (Organising for Quality) - Both control and delivery passed to the sub-sectors, renamed profit centres.

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COMMENT DRIVER SHORTAGES

NICK RICHARDSON

How do we tackle the shortage issue?

Much has been made of the shortage of drivers, but the reality is it’s a much wider problem. Now it is one that has come to a head The recent shortages of fuel and other essential supplies have become conspicuous headline news. The driver shortage has resulted from a combination of factors, but the trend has been downward for many years.

Although mainly focusing on the lack of heavy commercial vehicle licence holders, there has been some media coverage of the bus and coach sector. Here too these essential workers are declining in number.

To understand what to do about it requires an understanding of the causes. Supermarket and fuel shortages have become widespread, all ignited by government advice not to panic.

Nothing creates a panic more than someone in authority saying that there isn’t a problem.

The pandemic certainly hasn’t helped, while Brexit removed our European friends who filled driving vacancies. The suggestion that temporary visas should be made available looks like a u-turn which is unlikely to cover up the underlying xenophobia of Brexit. Meanwhile, allowing UK drivers longer working hours is hardly a long term solution.

working conditions, antisocial hours and limited rewards. We have experienced this for years but bus and coach operators have been busy trying to contain costs either to survive or to generate some sort of return for shareholders. This is where the divergence between rhetoric and reality lands: if bus and coach drivers are key workers, then there should be sufficient incentives for people to commit to a career where they are truly valued.

For bus and coach, driver shortages mean that some journeys are lost which will cloud the users’ impressions. If services are unreliable, they will find other ways of getting around.

Some of the pain can be self-inflicted, a good example being with the then South West Trains franchise within which Stagecoach offered a good redundancy package to its train drivers only to find that it was left with too few

people to drive the trains.

We know that the number of people attracted to bus and coach driving is diminishing, even without all the recent problems. Official statistics (Table DVSA0601) show that in 2007/08 there were 10,331 PCV tests conducted with 5,203 passes; by 2019/20, this had dropped to 7,345 tests with 4,404 passes and inevitably last year was much lower. Curiously, the figures for the total number of PCV drivers seem to be unavailable but it is likely that the number of new drivers is not catching up with the number reaching retirement age. The aspiration for 4,000 new buses included in England’s national bus strategy implies that at 10,000 additional drivers at least will be needed although how this can be achieved is rather murky. This is what happens when attention is focused on shiny new things rather than the people who operate them.

Driving is not an attractive proposition for many people and we need to identify why that is and do something about it.

Recruitment should concentrate on finding the right candidates who are customerfocused rather than being grateful that anyone is interested. The first big problem is that working hours and conditions are simply not appropriate for many would-be drivers.

Women drivers are hugely outnumbered by men because doing the job while caring for families is not compatible. Perhaps this can change as a result of the pandemic with peak periods being more subdued than they were before. Many depots have relied on part-time drivers who are now in short supply because acquiring and retaining a PCV licence is onerous for anyone who is part-time.

The number of people attracted to bus and coach driving is diminishing

Demographics However, the biggest cause of driver shortage is a demographic one - many are of an age approaching retirement and this bulge in the age profile will leave a big gap which will get worse before it gets better. It seems that 20% are in the 60 to 64 age group according to BBC figures from 2015. It all points to a lack of appeal for the job with some unattractive 24 | 15 October 2021 PT251p24-25 24

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH: www.ciltuk.org.uk Tel: 01536 740100 @ciltuk

Working conditions The second problem is that working conditions fall short of expectations. The actual process of driving is often tiring and although the quality of bus cabs as a working environment has improved substantially, some remain deficient and uncomfortable. Other aspects can be pretty tedious such as driving in heavy traffic in all weathers or in the dark. With working hours as they are, drivers can take people to work in the morning and take them home in the evening with not much respite between. Working at weekends may not suit people’s lifestyles either.

Instances of assault of various kinds affect bus drivers who are usually on their own in dealing with incidents. They are, in effect, doing two jobs as driver and conductor (or should we say customer assistant). Unless the reality of bus and coach work changes, the lack of appeal will stay with us.

Bus and coach driving pay has stayed in the doldrums

Rewards Thirdly, we have the big problem of pay. In parallel industries such as train drivers, pay has risen to acceptable levels but bus and coach wages have stayed in the doldrums. For all the respect gained during the pandemic and the continuing efforts of staff to provide a good journey experience, the job does not pay well. However, the current staff rely on there being insufficient drivers so that they can through overtime to make up their wages to a reasonable level. When all the vacancies are filled, this equilibrium becomes destabilised because staff are no longer able to work more than should normally be expected.

Relatively low pay undermines loyalty, destabilises the customer relationship and means that some would-be staff don’t think about the offer for long. Pay rates may not even be advertised and instead we are told they are ‘competitive’ - competitive with what?

Looking at some examples illustrates the problem. One job agency (www.reed.co.uk) features PCV drivers in London paid in the range £20,963 to £35,100. At the lower end of the scale for new entrants, it hardly provides for a lavish lifestyle and in many cases covers little more than the rising costs of housing and subsistence. Sampling other adverts indicates a rate of £8.93 per hour in Mansfield to ‘over £25,000 after 9 months’ in Gillmoss. Some bonuses on starting are on offer, for example First drivers in Portsmouth have a £2,000 www.passengertransport.co.uk

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“The UK system for providing bus services is financially unsustainable” incentive, subject to certain conditions, with a salary of £11 per hour equivalent of ‘up to’ £27,456 annually. The average seems to be £10.20 per hour, £23,000 annually i.e. 22% lower than the UK’s national average salary (uk.jobted.com).

Breaking the cycle An economist will advise that in times where the demand for drivers exceeds the supply, then wages should rise. This illustrates the bus and coach conundrum - if wage rates are raised, then the job will be more attractive and staff will stay longer, but it is unaffordable because the revenue which pays the staff is not sufficient to justify an increase. Outside the UK, transport systems are typically funded and managed by governments because the benefits to society outweigh the subsidies required. In other words, the UK system for providing bus

services is financially unsustainable. If better wages and conditions do become available, we could expect that unless more revenue is generated then operators will never be able to break out of the wages/cost cycle. Only then can services be improved to meet expectations.

It comes down to value for money with ‘investment’ in new vehicles apparently being more important than securing a full and reliable workforce. Perhaps all the funding mooted could be better spent on the staff that provide the service and not just the equipment needed. This would be an interesting experiment: apply the same amount of funding to infrastructure or vehicles and compare it with investment in people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nick Richardson is Technical Principal at transport consultancy Mott MacDonald, a Director of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK) and Chair of PTRC Education and Research Services Ltd. In addition, he has held a PCV licence for over 30 years.

15 October 2021 | 25

13/10/2021 17:29

“The haulage industry has been warning ministers for many, many months, if not years”

COMMENT

GREAT MINSTER GRUMBLES

PM hails ‘supreme leveller-uppers’

Our Whitehall insider imagines what’s going on inside the minds of the mandarins at Great Minster House, home of the DfT

Transport, our prime minister tells us, is one of the “supreme leveller-uppers”, or at least that’s what he told the Conservative Party conference in his speech on October 6. If that’s the case then we can presumably expect to see this department being one of the winners from the Comprehensive Spending Review. We will doubtless see much made of a capital investment programme for roads and rail but, call me cynical, I wonder how much will actually be brand new or simply a re-announcement of pre-existing projects.

With growing speculation that the easterly leg of HS2 Phase 2b to Leeds is indeed to get the chop following our secretary of state’s recent interview with the Financial Times, I am sure we will see the government make a great deal of fuss about upgrading existing rail routes in the Midlands and the North with improved eastwest links, and the prime minister assured us in his conference speech that the government will “do” Northern Powerhouse Rail. I’ve expressed serious reservations about the merits of HS2 in the past, and it looks like some degree of common sense is emerging in terms of prioritising the upgrade of existing routes.

The prime minister also reminded us of the government’s investment in 4,000 new zero emission buses. I’ve lost count of the number of times this particular news items has been repeated by ministers. What this neatly disguises, of course, is that there are still some 40,00 diesel buses operating on our roads, so this commitment to invest in 4,000 new ones 26 | 15 October 2021 PT251p26 26

is merely a tip of the iceberg, and I haven’t yet seen anybody explain how the other 36,000 new zero emission buses will be funded given that local transport authorities don’t have the resources and the operators are going to be reluctant to invest when patronage remains depressed. Nor have we yet announced the date by which we want all these diesel buses off our roads anyway! Of course, it won’t be long before the local transport authorities submit the first Bus Service Improvement Plans. It will become very apparent very quickly, I suspect, that these plans will require considerably more funding than is currently available.

But until the outcome of the spending review is announced on October 27, life is going to be a touch uncertain. How the chancellor is going to square the circle of meeting all the spending commitments implied by the levelling up agenda while also trying to avoid further tax increases is a little beyond me. But I am sure there are going to be spending cuts too, although I suspect these will be hidden in the detail while ministers spin like mad to show off all their investment plans. I have a strong suspicion that there will be much smoke and many mirrors in evidence on October 27 and in the days that follow as ministers desperately seek to demonstrate the government’s commitment both to investment and returning at some point to a low - or lower - tax economy.

Meanwhile, ministers are grappling with the fuel crisis, although to be fair this was in large part a problem created by panic buying rather than an inherent shortage of fuel. But the moment somebody told the press that some petrol stations were running short, panic buying was inevitable. And it must be said that the haulage industry has been warning ministers for many, many months, if not years, that the country was facing a serious shortage of HGV drivers, so it’s a touch surprising that we haven’t had some kind of plan in place to address the problem well before now. And with the DVLA said to be sitting on some 54,000 vocational licence applications - and that’s over half of the total shortage of drivers - I really am at a loss to understand why something hasn’t been done before now. Ministers point to the fact that many other countries also have a driver shortage, to be fair, but this feels to me to be a problem that could have been addressed, at least in part, some time ago.

It’s arguable, of course, that this isn’t a government issue but a reflection of haulage businesses failing to provide decent pay and working conditions for drivers, and I have some sympathy with that point of view. I for one would not fancy living life on the road in the way these drivers have to. Anyway, the prospect of fuel shortages, as well as empty supermarket shelves in the run up to Christmas, is enough to put the fear of God into any government and so action has finally been taken on a number of fronts to address the problem. Too little too late? Or a measured response to a worldwide problem? I’ll leave you to be the judge. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/10/2021 17:29

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Fernandes appointed chair of Women in Rail CAF employee to head networking and support group NETWORKS

Christine Fernandes, business development lead at rolling stock manufacturer CAF, has been appointed the new chair of Women in Rail.

Fernandes took over the role on October 1 from Women in Rail founder Adeline Ginn MBE, who has held the position since establishing the charity nine years ago.

Fernandes has been involved with Women in Rail since 2018 as a member of the WR London committee and, also, as a member of the WR Wales group before taking on the role of chair for Wales in February this year.

“Adeline has left a great

GTR SEARCHES FOR APPRENTICES Train operator’s 2022 apprenticeships rise by 25% TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT

The number of apprenticeships on offer across rail firms Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express will increase by a quarter in 2022, with 250 places available across departments, including engineering, customer services, train driving and administration.

“As passenger numbers increase and the country gets back on track, we’re delighted to be able to offer even more fantastic opportunities to work in the innovative rail industry,” said David Jackson, GTR’s apprenticeship specialist. www.passengertransport.co.uk

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legacy for me to build on,” said Fernandes. “The responsibility to guide and lead Women in Rail into the next chapter of its development is a great privilege.

“I look forward to the challenge and opportunity to shape and influence the future, even more so in these times of change within the industry and world postCovid.”

Christine Fernandes

Fernandes has 30 years’ diverse experience of the UK rail industry, encompassing manufacturing, leasing, operations, track and consulting. She achieved chartered engineer status some 20 years ago and added to her list of credentials in 2003 with a Masters of Business Administration.

Fernandes started her career in 1990 with the British Railways Board as a sponsored undergraduate engineering management trainee.

She joined CAF in 2017 as part of the business development team. There she has played a key role in securing several highprofile projects including the £700m CAF Wales and Borders new trains order.

“CAF is, and continues to be, a great support through my journey with WR,” Fernandes added.

Cole is Omnibus Society president Blackpool Transport boss to guide society in 2022 APPOINTMENTS

Jane Cole, managing director of council-owned operator Blackpool Transport, has accepted the role of president of the Omnibus Society for 2022. She will succeed Go North East managing director Martijn Gilbert, who, as a result of the pandemic, has held the post for the last two years.

Cole has led Blackpool Transport since 2014 after a career in the rail industry. She is

Jane Cole

also the current president of the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

She will give her inaugural address to the society at a special event that will be held in central London on January 25, 2022.

SCHEDULER OF THE YEAR POSTPONED Ceremony will take place in early 2022. Enter now!

AWARDS

This year’s Joe Wood Scheduler of the Year Award has been postponed until early 2022. Details will be announced in due course.

This year’s awards ceremony was due to take place in November in Galway, Ireland. However, the UK bus industry is currently facing an unprecedented combination of pressures, with Covid recovery, driver shortages and, in England, Bus Service Improvement Plans.

Therefore, the organisers and sponsors of the award, Passenger Transport and CitySwift, the specialist data engine that uses AI to improve bus network reliability and efficiency, have decided to postpone.

The Joe Wood Scheduler of the Year Award was launched in 2019 to boost recognition of schedulers, and the winner of the inaugural prize, Trentbarton’s Richard Sherratt, was announced last year. The award is a tribute to Joe Wood, a widely respected young bus manager who died in 2019. Joe had worked in scheduling roles at Go-Ahead, Stagecoach and Reading Buses before joining CitySwift’s fastexpanding team.

The delay means that the deadline for nominations for this year’s prize has been extended until November 26. It’s quick and easy to enter simply visit bit.ly/3ma9skB and follow the instructions. Finalists will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Galway, Ireland, for the award ceremony in early 2022.

The judges are Blackpool Transport managing director Jane Cole (who is also president of the Confederation of Passenger Transport), Go North East managing director Martijn Gilbert, Trentbarton’s Richard Sherratt and Andrew Garnett, deputy editor of Passenger Transport.

15 October 2021 | 26

13/10/2021 17:30

DIVERSIONS

School trip bus really knows how to party

shortage meant the vehicle he had hired for the trip was suddenly and inexplicably cancelled at very short notice.

“And when you promise kids a fun day with their advisories, you make it

happen,” he tweeted.

Determined to stay true to his word, but with no other options, Jim managed to hire a pimped-out party bus the day before the trip, fully equipped with a dancing pole, show lights, a bar, and a top-of-theline sound system.

“The entire day was in fact a phenomenal experience for all the kids,” he reported. “They didn’t really care about the bus, and a lot of great planning by a lot of great people made for a fantastic day.”

Deluxe Limousine, the company that operated the party bus, said it was the first time it has been contracted to operate a trip for an educational establishment.

recently in a bid to restore his confidence about using the bus.

After a trip on the Cityzap express service between York and Leeds, Seeger was invited by the operator for a backstage tour of the operator’s head office in Yorkshire where the red carpet was well and truly rolled out.

And watch out Ray Stenning; while there the pint-sized bus nut even made a pitch for a new bus brand and livery called Zipline.

“He’s even come up with his own colourful design to back up his suggestion - Seeger’s a real

bus super-fan,” said operations director Vitto Pizzuti. “It’s great to see Seeger go from being a non-user of buses to such a proud supporter, and hopefully that’ll stay with him as he grows up too.”

During his tour of Transdev HQ, Seeger even got the chance to sit behind the wheel of a bus.

“There’s not been one day since his visit that Seeger hasn’t mentioned this excitedly, or his new best friend Vitto,” said dad Jason.“I honestly can’t remember anything having such a huge effect on him...”

Bus driver shortage also biting in the United States It seems that Britain is not the only country struggling with a shortage of bus drivers - things are also looking tough in the United States too.

And that recently led to a group of teenagers riding a party bus, complete with a stripper pole and neon lights, for their school trip.

Teacher Jim Mayers, a language and composition teacher at the Brooke Charter School in Boston, recently revealed the bus driver

Pint-sized bus fan

WATCH OUT RAY STENNING!

Eight-year old Seeger Crowley may just be Yorkshire’s biggest bus fan but after some negative experiences elsewhere, Transdev Blazefield came to the rescue

Regular school bus interior...

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Beyond cool

TRAINSPOTTING IS A TIKTOK HIT Social media site TikTok has created an online home for people to share their niche hobbies, and one student’s childhood passion for trains has now officially made trainspotting cool.

Francis Bourgeois resumed his childhood spotting hobby during lockdown and shared his outings with followers. He’s become a hit, not only for capturing passing trains, but also for the subtle humour of his videos.

He’s also become something of a heart throb with some fans comparing his looks to that of “a young David Bowie.”

“I would die for this man,” noted one fan gravely.

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13/10/2021 17:31