Passenger Transport: July 15, 2022

FO EV RT ER NI Y GH T

ISSUE 269 15 JULY 2022

NEWS, VIEWS AND ANALYSIS FOR A SECTOR ON THE MOVE NEWS

What did Boris do for public transport?

04

We reflect on PM’s time in office

NEWS

Bus users would pay no more than £2 for single fares

Boris bows out - but £2 bus fare promo floated

It has been reported that Boris Johnson’s team have spent months working on a plan to subsidise fares on local bus services in England for six months Behind-the-scenes talks are reported to have taken place between the government and the bus industry over a scheme to cap bus fares in England at £2 for six months from October.

Boris Johnson announced on Thursday, July 7, that he would be step down as prime minister but remain in place during the contest to succeed him. Just two days later The Sunday Times reported that Downing Street had been working on a scheme to subsidise single bus journeys since April.

Covid lockdowns and the strong “avoid public transport” message decimated bus use and passenger numbers remain significantly short of pre-Covid levels. Although emergency funding support

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continues to be provided, there has so far been no government-assisted bus marketing initiative to reverse the damage done during Covid. In contrast, the government lured rail users back with the ‘Great British Rail Sale’ earlier this year.

It is understood that the impetus behind the £2 bus fare cap is to offset the cost-of-living crisis, with energy bills set to soar in October.

Other countries have already cut public transport fares to help with rising living costs, with Germany

£2bn

Pre-Covid annual fare paying receipts of bus companies outside of London

offering monthly travel on local public transport for just nine euros in June, July and August. However, none of those aiming to succeed Johnson have taken up the plan, with at least two proposing to instead slash fuel duty by a further 10p - at a cost of £10bn a year.

It’s difficult to assess what the cost of the six-month £2 bus fare cap would be. However, before Covid, annual fare paying receipts of bus companies outside of London was £2bn (London fares would not be subsidised because a single fare is £1.65). Post-Covid, and over a six-month period, this figure is around £925m, of which only a portion would need to be reimbursed by government.

AFTER BORIS: PAGES 04-05

Vere reveals strained TfL relationship

06

Minister says capital is ‘dragging feet’

ENVIRONMENT

‘Small changes can make a big difference’

14

CPT reports shows route to net zero

COMMENT

The case for transport authorities

22

Jonathan Bray sees a strengthened case

COMMENT

Reforming rail ticketing

26

Nick Richardson looks at the options

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13/07/2022 17:16

CONTENTS

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

The herd left Boris - will it leave public transport?

“When the herd moves, it moves,” Boris Johnson observed in his resignation speech, referring to how quickly his colleagues abandoned him last week. We will discover which direction the herd are moving over the summer. Will it be onto Robert Jack pastures where public transport can thrive?

Managing Editor For all of his flaws, Boris Johnson appeared to have a strongly-held and sincere belief in public transport and active travel, and their ability to help communities prosper. His eight years as mayor of London appear to have influenced his thinking, and perhaps the creation of metro mayors will provide future prime ministers who understand transport. However, it seems unlikely that Johnson’s successor will share his passion for public transport. The risk is that he or she will slash fuel duty, make draconian cuts to rail spending and let the National Bus Strategy for England fade into memory.

Johnson’s pledge to revolutionise transport remains unfulfilled.

A seismic change was never going to be achieved over three years, especially amid the Covid crisis. It’s depressing - and pointless - to ponder how this money might have otherwise been invested in developing public transport had the pandemic not occurred.

Whatever happens next, public transport will likely continue to enjoy a more prominent position than it did previously. Just look at Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and countries all around the world. That herd is also moving and its direction of travel is clear.

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 OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS Passenger Transport Publishing Ltd PO Box 5496, Westbury BA13 9BX, UNITED KINGDOM Telephone (all enquiries): 020 3950 8000

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part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written permission.

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IN THIS ISSUE 16

A FAILED EXPERIMENT IS NOT A FAILURE

15

‘CITIES NEED HELP WITH ZERO EMISSION VEHICLES’

24

MY HALF-TERM REPORT FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT

29

THE HERD MOVED, BUT WHERE IS IT GOING?

Transport for London innovation director Thomas Ableman says a willingness to try and fail is the secret to success when it comes to innovation. “Success in innovation is actually really simple,” he says.

“It’s simply being willing to try things.”

ORGANISATION

PAGE

Adventure Travel Agility Trains Arriva Rail London ASLEF Avanti West Coast CAF Chiltern Railways Eurostar First Bus Go-Ahead Group Go North West Greater Anglia GWR Hitachi HS2 Kent County Council LGA LNER London Tramlink Lothian Buses Merseyrail Morebus MTR Network Rail Northern Trains Nu-Venture Reading Buses RMT ScotRail Southeastern Stagecoach Group Transdev Blazefield TransPennine Express Transport for London Transport for Wales TSSA West Midlands Trains Yellow Buses

11 9 8 8 8 9 8 8 10, 12 10 10 8 8, 9 9 4 11 11 8 8 12 8 11 8 8 8 11 7 8 8 8 4, 12 11 8 6 9 8 8 11

A new report says a more cohesive approach to accelerating the uptake of zero emission vehicles from buses and cars to bikes and scooters - across the UK’s city regions is vital if ambitious decarbonisation targets are to be achieved.

“We’re just over halfway through this fun-packed year and I’m due my customary half-term report,” writes Alex Warner. Recruitment woes, collaboration in the rail sector, reorganisations within bus groups.

These are some of 2022’s big issues.

Our Whitehall insider imagines what’s going on inside the minds of the mandarins at Great Minster House, home of the DfT. “We now have to prepare for a new secretary of state for transport,” they say. “It’s hard to imagine that Shapps will remain.”

REGULARS NEWS ENVIRONMENT BRTUK COMMENT GRUMBLES CAREERS DIVERSIONS

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NEWS BORIS JOHNSON

A pro-public transport PM - but did he deliver?

Boris Johnson has been a consistent cheerleader for public transport but he leaves office without having delivered his promised revolution. What now?

Three years ago, shortly after becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson set out Robert Jack his domestic Managing Editor priorities in a speech at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum. Public transport, and particularly buses, were centre stage. He wanted to improve transport services within cities - not just between cities - so that “people don’t have to drive”.

“I know a lot about buses, believe me,” he said. “I love buses ... I will begin as a matter of urgency the transformation of local bus services.”

Secretaries of state for transport have come and gone without ever mentioning buses, and here was a prime minister declaring his love for them. The Brexit frontman is regarded by many to be a populist politician, but he didn’t indulge in “war on the motorist” rhetoric. His eight years as mayor of London appeared to have given him a genuine appreciation of the positive impact that public transport can have on communities.

Commenting in the wake of Johnson’s resignation, former transport minister Norman Baker told Passenger Transport: “Boris Johnson, guided by [his transport advisor] Andrew Gilligan, was well disposed towards public transport, probably a legacy of his time as London mayor. In my view, he was the worst prime minister ever - except when it 04 | 15 July 2022 PT269p04-05 4

came to public transport.”

After securing a landslide victory in the December 2019 general election, Johnson began to make pro-public transport spending announcements. In February 2020, he gave the green light to HS2, after consideration of the Oakervee Review. He also launched a £5bn revolution in local transport, focussed on buses and cycling. This funding was to deliver at least 4,000 “British built” new zero emission buses.

Just one month later, however, the Covid pandemic swept into the UK and the government was forced to make a series of unprecedented decisions.

Lockdown restrictions and a strong “avoid public transport” message saw bus and rail use

plummet and billions ploughed into emergency funding.

Johnson pressed on with his plans to transform public transport. In March 2021 he launched the first ever National Bus Strategy for England, penning the foreword himself. Two months later the Williams-Shapps review was published, promising an end to a quarter-century of fragmentation on the railways as they come under a single, accountable national leadership.

Towards the end of last year it was becoming clear that the money available for bus and rail failed to match the scale of the ambition set by Johnson.

The £96bn Integrated Rail Plan for the Midlands and the North was dismissed as “woefully

“In my view, he was the worst prime minister ever - except when it came to public transport” Norman Baker Johnson pledged to transform bus services

inadequate”. It omitted a high speed link between Manchester and Leeds and saw the eastern leg of HS2 trimmed so that it terminates in the East Midlands.

Capturing the mood, Huw Merriman, chair of the Transport Select Committee, observed that the prime minister had been “selling perpetual sunlight and then leaving it to others to explain the arrival of moonlight”.

More moonlight appeared when funding for Bus Service Improvement Plans was found to be £5bn short of what English local authorities had requested in order to meet the aspirations of Johnson’s national bus strategy.

Robert Montgomery of busreinvented.com, who previously headed Stagecoach’s UK bus business, believes that the strategy has not been backed up by resources. Addressing a BRTuk Lunchtime Masterclass as Johnson was delivering his resignation speech, he said: “On the plus side it’s fair to say that we have a national bus strategy ...

We have a document, but I don’t think we have gone much further than the document. Because the original bus strategy was to be supported by £5bn of government money, which then magically dwindled to about £1.4bn.

“I think we’ve got a bus strategy in terms of the thought is there, and the idea is there, but whether we have funded it sufficiently and we’ve committed strongly enough to it is a different question.”

Montgomery fears that the next prime minister may not even notice that buses exist. This view is echoed by Norman Baker, who said: “I fear we will soon feel some chill winds blowing over the sector, particularly if Rishi Sunak takes the top spot. More generally, I cannot see any of the likely contenders being as positive about public transport as Johnson.” www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:13

BORIS JOHNSON AS PM: A PUBLIC TRANSPORT TIMELINE JULY 2019 BORIS: “I LOVE BUSES”

FEBRUARY 2020 THE MONEY STARTS TO FLOW

MARCH 2021 BUS STRATEGY LAUNCHED

MAY 2021 PLEA FOR SUPPORT

Soon after becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson declared that local bus services would be among his government’s domestic priorities.

“I love buses,” he said in Manchester.

“I will begin as a matter of urgency the transformation of local bus services.”

One month before we were plunged into the Coronavirus crisis, Boris Johnson gave the green light to HS2, after consideration of the Oakervee Review, and announced £5bn for a ‘local transport revolution’ over the duration of the parliament.

Boris Johnson launched the first ever National Bus Strategy for England in March 2021. In the foreword to the strategy, he wrote: “I love buses, and I have never quite understood why so few governments before mine have felt the same way.”

Covid lockdowns and the strong “avoid public transport” warning decimated patronage. As restrictions eased a broad coalition urged Boris Johnson to send a “loud and clear” message of support for public transport. They are still waiting.

MAY 2021 ‘PLAN FOR RAIL’

NOVEMBER 2021 £96BN ‘OWN GOAL’

DECEMBER 2021 BUS STRATEGY CONCERNS

FEBRUARY 2022 FUNDING CLIFF-EDGE

After a wait of two and a half years the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail was published in May 2021, promising an end to a quartercentury of fragmentation on the railways as they come under a single, accountable national leadership.

Boris Johnson’s £96bn Integrated Rail Plan for the North and the Midlands was almost universally slated last autumn. A new high speed line between Leeds and Manchester was chopped, along with HS2’s eastern leg to Leeds.

As we approached the end of 2021, it became clear that the funds made available by the government to transform bus services fell drastically short of the ambitions displayed by local authorities in response to the National Bus Strategy for England.

As Boris Johnson marked the launch of his levelling-up white paper with a visit to Blackpool Transport, there were warnings about the consequences for buses if the Bus Covid Grant ended on April 5. It was later extended until October.

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NEWS ROUND-UP

Vere lifts lid on strained relationship with TfL Baroness Vere has shared her exasperation at London mayor Sadiq Khan and Transport for London, accusing the capital of ‘dragging feet’ over cuts LONDON

Transport minister Baroness Vere gave a robust assessment of her relationship with Transport for London and City Hall during an appearance before MPs on the Transport Select Committee at the end of June.

In response to a question about future funding arrangements for the capital’s transport system from Ruth Cadbury, the Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, Vere expressed exasperation about TfL’s relationship with the Department for Transport.

“I spend more time than I had ever wished for thinking and talking about TfL, understanding their finances and understanding I am going to be frank now - quite how fortunate London has been during this pandemic and quite how many billions of pounds have been given to London for quite reasonable asks which have not been fulfilled,” said the minister.

“I ask people in London who sit there and demand billions and billions of pounds more to look at what they are asking for, versus what the rest of the country is getting. I am sorry, but at the moment it is all London, London, London. We have heard it before.

It is outrageous.

“I know what you are going to say because I have heard all the arguments. You are going to say that it is the only place with positive GVA, la, la, la. I get all that. That is why we are funding London to the tune of £5bn already.”

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Vere: ‘We have to reach an agreement’

Committee chair Huw Merriman asked Vere to explain what reasonable asks had not been met. In response Vere claimed TfL had been twice asked to come up with proposals for reforming its pension scheme.

“Dragging feet,” she added.

“The report on pensions was ready on March 31. There were 17 recommendations in that, or some huge number. It was agreed that a way forward, an implementation plan, was to be provided to the Department, along with a clear indication of what the next steps would be.

Nothing arrived. Savings.

Nothing arrived.”

Vere said it was important to recognise that London post-

“At the moment it is all London, London, London ...

It is outrageous” Baroness Vere

pandemic will be different from the capital city that existed before the onset of the pandemic.

She continued: “It is really important that we recognise that.

I completely accept that. What we cannot have is a situation where we have some people standing there going, ‘Just give us some more money. We don’t have to do anything in return. Just give us some more money’.”

Cadbury countered that this was not true. It led to a terse response from Vere: “Then, when we say, ‘Oh look, there are certain things that you might want to do,’ - trust me I know so much about TfL’s finances and about where savings could be made - whenever we suggest that it is ‘the evil Tories making me do stuff’. It is insane.

We have to reach an agreement.”

Cadbury said London was the only capital city in the world that didn’t receive any revenue funding from the government.

Vere countered that TfL received “massive amounts of capital support”. It led Cadbury

to urge a meeting between ministers, London mayor Sadiq Khan and TfL. “This is my favourite thing about London,” Vere responded.

“Whenever there is nothing to say, someone says, ‘Have a meeting’...

‘Minister, minister, have another taskforce.’ What is there to say?

This is my point.”

It led Cadbury to ask Vere why her relationship with London was so different to other relationships with local authorities and bus operators in England.

“It is a really important point,” said Vere. “I have a really good relationship with Andy Burnham, with Steve Rotheram and with Tracy Brabin.

We do not agree on everything of course, we don’t - but, do you know what, we can have good conversations and we can talk openly and it will not then end up in the media the next day.”

She claimed the situation with Sadiq Khan was “the destruction and the chipping away of trust over a very long period of time”.

She added a draft letter about a recent funding extension, that Vere claimed contained “marketsensitive information,” had been leaked to the media. “How can we have a relationship where we are trying to agree on a simple extension?” she added. “It was a simple draft extension letter and it got blown up.”

Vere added she had spoken to Seb Dance, Khan’s deputy mayor for transport, and had sought to reset the relationship before the letter had been leaked. She said she had got on well with his predecessor Heidi Alexander, but the leak had soured relations.

“I just thought, ‘Okay, I gave you a last chance’,” Vere added.

As Passenger Transport closed for press, TfL announced its current funding deal had been extended from July 14 to July 28. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:14

“It is a very important funding stream, but it supports fuel usage”

Minister confirms plans to reform BSOG Vere says existing funding mechanism is ‘a bit of a dinosaur’ FUNDING

Buses minister Baroness Vere has confirmed the UK Government intends to press ahead with reforming the Bus Service Operators Grant in England, branding the current arrangements as “a bit of a dinosaur”.

Vere told MPs on the Transport Select Committee that the grant supported bus services to the tune of around £200m and provided £42m to local authorities to support services, but in a world of climate targets it was no longer an appropriate tool.

“It is a very important funding stream, but it supports fuel usage, which clearly is not what we want to see,” she added. “We have started having conversations, and

indeed have had them for some time, and thinking about how it would be reformed, to move it away from straight fuel usage.

“You can expect to see a consultation later this year.”

Vere said that plans for reforming BSOG were in the early stages and that a number of options were being considered.

Changes had already been made which had led to a £0.22 per kilometre uplift for services operated with zero-emission buses.

Vere continued: “We felt that was one of the things that we could do right now. Clearly, the entire framework needs to be looked at. There are lots of different ways. We have not made ministerial decisions about it.

“There is still a lot of work to be done in terms of options, but we welcome as much input as possible from stakeholders as to how they think it should work.”

Call for evidence over council bus operations Move follows new Scottish powers for municipals MUNICIPALS

Transport minister Baroness Vere told MPs on the Transport Select Committee that the government is to consult on plans to allow the creation of new municipal bus operations.

Scotland last month introduced new powers that permit local authorities to establish new municipal bus operations (see page 12).

In response to a question

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from Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter, about the success of Reading’s council-owned bus firm, Vere said she respected Reading Buses, but “we must also remember that there have been many municipal bus companies that have failed in the past”.

She continued: “We do not necessarily laud them as much as the ones that are successful. It is about balance.”

Vere confirmed England’s

Robert Largan, the Conservative MP for High Peak, pressed Vere on a timeline for when changes could be made but Vere refused to be drawn, noting that it would be very much guided by the volume of consultation responses. She did suggest she was keen to see more radical reform to the grant rather than mere tweaks to its existing terms.

“I understand the complexity and why you need to be careful

Vere said BSOG reform would see it move away from straight fuel usage

National Bus Strategy committed the government to probing the opportunities for new municipals and confirmed there would be a call for evidence later this year.

“I would appreciate people responding,” she said. “Let’s have a look at it. Should they be able to set one up from scratch?

Sometimes local authorities set up things from scratch and they go horribly wrong and are very costly. That is what I want to prevent happening.

“Certainly, if there is a good rationale, we should hear the evidence and see what we do next.”

in the consultation,” said Largan in response. “The converse argument would be that we need to be much more urgent in moving away from fossil fuelbased subsidy. If we are to hit the legally binding targets we have, don’t we have to do this much more quickly?”

Vere said this was why the government had made the zeroemission BSOG uplift as it was “something we could do fairly quickly”.

She continued: “One of the biggest challenges for zeroemission buses is total cost of ownership and establishing when that is going to reach pari passu with Euro 6 diesel. Obviously, a BSOG will be an element in that.

“The industry will be making very long-term investment decisions on the back of what BSOG goes on to look like. While I accept that if I could wave a magic wand and get the perfect solution today I would, we cannot do that. I think we are moving at an acceptable pace given that we were able to do the BSOG uplift for zero emission buses.”

‘WE WON’T SAY NO TO FRANCHISING’ Non-mayoral franchising bid would not be rejected REGULATION

Despite not having automatic bus franchising powers, transport minister Baroness Vere told MPs on the Transport Select Committee that she would not reject a franchising plan from a non-mayoral local transport authority (LTA, but “what we do not want is for everybody to jump on franchising and start what is... quite a lengthy process”.

But Vere added that for many LTAs, an enhanced partnership was still “quicker, cheaper and has very similar outcomes to franchising”.

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NEWS ROUND-UP

More disruption as drivers vote to strike ASLEF members at eight train operating companies have voted for strike action which increases the likelihood of further industrial unrest INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

Industrial unrest on Britain’s railways looks set to continue after ASLEF members at eight train operating companies voted for strike action. It clears the way for the first nationwide strike by train drivers in a generation.

The union said members had voted “overwhelmingly” to strike as they had not received a pay rise since 2019.

“With inflation running at north of 10% that means those drivers have had a real terms pay cut over the last three years,” said Mick Whelan, ASLEF general secretary.

“We want an increase in line with the cost of living - we want to be able to buy, in 2022, what we could buy in 2021.

Drivers at Arriva Rail London, Chiltern, Great Western Railway, LNER, Northern Trains, Southeastern, Transpennine

Express and West Midlands Trains all voted to strike.

Turnout ranged from 83.5% at West Midlands Trains to 92.5% at Arriva Rail London, operator of the London Overground network.

ASLEF members have already staged action at Greater Anglia and London Tramlink. A strike planned for late June at open access operator Hull Trains was called off as a result of continued negotiations.

Further ballots of ASLEF members close on July 27 at Avanti West Coast; CrossCountry; and

“They seem to have no interest in finding a resolution”

Mick Whelan, ASLEF

ScotRail settles ASLEF pay dispute 5% increase shows the scale of pay offers needed ASLEF members at ScotRail have voted to accept the improved offer from ScotRail which included a 5% increase in basic pay as well as an excess revenue share premium and additional improvements to other terms and conditions.

It perhaps demonstrates the scale of pay increases that can

08 | 15 July 2022 PT269p08-09 8

be expected to resolve on-going pay disputes across the wider transport industry.

Staff at London Tramlink are currently staging strike action after dismissing a pay offer of just 3%, which ASLEF organisers branded “a huge real terms pay cut”.

Meanwhile, as Passenger Transport closed for press, the

Direct Rail Services. However, the union says it has successfully concluded pay deals this year with DB Cargo, Eurostar, Freightliner Heavy Haul, Freightliner Intermodal, GB Railfreight, Merseyrail, MTR Elizabeth line, ScotRail, and Pre Metro Operations. Multi-year deals are already in place with other companies, the union adds.

Meanwhile, members of the TSSA union at Network Rail and Southeastern have also voted for action. At the infrastructure controller more than 6,000 rail workers in a wide range of operational roles - including engineering, maintenance, supervisory, support, and control roles have voted in favour of both strike action and action short of strike.

Managerial staff in the top bands of the company also voted

RMT was considering an offer it had received from Network Rail. The union said the offer “amounts to a real terms pay cut over the next two years and will involve cutting a third of all frontline maintenance roles and 50% of all scheduled maintenance work”.

Meanwhile, the RMT has resolved its long-running dispute over the use of guards on Merseyrail’s new train fleet. It will see guards move to the new role of train manager.

in favour of both strike action and action short of strike. However, the strike action vote missed out on the required legal threshold by less than 2%, so while managers in bands 1-4 can take action short of strike, they cannot take strike action from this result.

At Southeastern hundreds of members voted for strike action and action short of a strike.

TSSA members who are staff in station grades and revenue protection teams at Avanti West Coast have already voted for strikes. Members at c2c, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, LNER and Northern Trains have also voted for action.

The results from ballots of members at GWR, Greater Anglia, TransPennine Express and West Midlands Trains are awaited.

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said the results of the union’s latest ballots would “greatly increase the prospect of major disruption”. “Frankly, when the fat cat team at Network Rail and their puppet masters at the Department for Transport lose the support of their management grade staff they must know that the game is up,” he added.

However, Whelan said it was not too late for the companies or the government - to resolve the situation.

“We’re happy to talk to anyone to do a deal and make sure Britain’s railways aren’t disrupted,” he said. “The government is restricting what the operators can offer, but then refusing to get involved in negotiation. They seem to have no interest in finding a resolution.”

The Rail Delivery Group said it wanted to see “rail unions engage with train operators over the reforms needed to secure a bright long-term future for the industry”.

“We urge the ASLEF leadership to continue talks,” it added. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:15

GWR WORKS ON PRESENTATION

A Class 197 on a crew training run at Blaenau Ffestiniog

Train operator and Hitachi aim to solve issues ROLLING STOCK

TfW unveils wider role for new CAF train fleet Class 197s will cover for the introduction of new trains on the Core Valley Lines and the delayed Class 230 units for the Wrexham-Bidston line ROLLING STOCK

Transport for Wales has revealed that it intends to use its new CAF-built DMUs across a wider area than originally planned.

The Class 197 multiple units were ordered in 2018. Crew training has been under way in North Wales since last year. The units are due to enter passenger service this summer but this has now been deferred to the autumn.

The units, from CAF’s Newport factory, will enable reductions in journey times. They feature leather seats and have wider doors than the Class 175 and Class 158 units they will replace.

At a press preview of the new trains in Chester on July 1, TfW listed the routes which Class 197s will operate, including several where other train classes were previously lined up. The services from Cardiff to Ebbw Vale, Cheltenham and Maesteg will eventually be operated by Class 231 units from Stadler, similar www.passengertransport.co.uk

PT269p08-09 9

to units used by Greater Anglia.

For an interim period, Class 197s rather than Class 231s will replace the current Class 170 Turbostars.

This will enable the 231s to operate Core Valley Lines services until the two new fleets of trains for the CVL are ready for service.

The Wrexham-Bidston line will also be operated by Class 197s.

TfW had previously expected its five Class 230 units from Vivarail to operate this line for the foreseeable future, but the units have been beset by technical problems. Further modifications are now required, and TfW envisages deploying both classes of train on the line at the same time if Network Rail and the Office or Rail and Road approve the delayed plan for two trains per hour in each direction.

All three Pembrokeshire railways will also be operated by Class 197s, which TfW aims to use for most of its long-distance services. It has also acquired

loco-hauled Mark 4 coaches for some workings from Cardiff to Holyhead and Manchester. Some of the 77 Class 197 units will be fitted with ERTMS equipment for operation on the Cambrian lines, west of Shrewsbury.

Alexia Course, TfW’s director of transport operations, said the Class 197s would enable TfW to run more services and carry more customers in comfort. “The construction of our new trains has been four years in the making, and customers and colleagues are incredibly excited to welcome passengers onto them from later this year,” she said.

Deputy climate change minister Lee Waters said: “These new vehicles represent a real transformational improvement on the trains that they will be replacing, providing comfortable and frequent services, encouraging people to leave their cars behind and move onto a more sustainable form of transport.”

GWR and Hitachi are working together to find ways of improving presentation of the operator’s large fleet of Class 800 trains.

Work which is already underway includes repainting.

The trains began to operate GWR services from Paddington to Bristol and South Wales in October 2017.

They are owned by Agility Trains and were built by Hitachi, which has an ongoing contract to maintain the trains.

In recent months, horizontal staining has been noticeable along the bodysides of many of the vehicles, with vertical stains underneath some windows. Last week the paintwork on one Class 800 carriage was observed to have peeled away in strips. The glass near the edges of Class 800 windows can appear opaque to passengers looking out.

The standard of presentation contrasts with the appearance of other fleets, including those operated by GWR. Operators have been paying close attention to their cleaning regimes since the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A spokesman for GWR and Hitachi told Passenger Transport: “Hitachi and GWR are responsible for cleaning of Class 800s intercity fleets and we are working together to identify opportunities to improve train presentation. This work stream is underway and includes both repainting and maintenance of exteriors, and the replacement of carpets on Class 800s.”

He declined to say why the relatively new trains were suffering from poor external presentation, but highlighted the trains’ internal cleanliness. “The interior of the trains continues to benefit from a wider, enhanced cleaning regime put into place in March 2020.”

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NEWS ROUND-UP

Back to the future with First Bus restructure Group’s 10 UK bus businesses will be consolidated into six OPERATIONS

First Bus has internally proposed a major restructuring of its management that will see the current 10 operating companies reduced to just six.

The proposals would see operations in the South West merged with those in Dorset, Hampshire and Berkshire. First West of England would merge with First Cymru while also gaining the Worcester operations of First Midlands. The Essex and Eastern Counties businesses will be reunited once again as part of an expanded East of England operation.

Elsewhere the rump of the once much larger First Manchester business, now confined to a single depot in Oldham, would be moved into the existing Midlands & South Yorkshire

GO NORTH WEST PATRONAGE GAIN Firm reveals passengers have returned to the bus RECOVERY

Go North West says it is now operating nine out of every 10 buses that ran prior to the pandemic, and over the last few months it has seen a surge in patronage “with passenger levels per bus now equalling 2019 figures”.

The Manchester-based firm is the first Go-Ahead subsidiary to hit the landmark stage of recovery. Across the group’s 11 regional bus companies, patronage 10 | 15 July 2022 PT269p10-11 10

operation. First York would lose its autonomy and merge with West Yorkshire to create a North & West Yorkshire business.

No changes are planned in Scotland where the Aberdeen, Glasgow and Scotland East operations were merged some time ago.

First Bus managing director Janette Bell announced the plans in a letter to senior managers on June 30. She said: “Consolidating 10 senior leadership teams of various sizes and reshaping into six more balanced local business units

we will also be able to strengthen our leadership capability and create local businesses that have the right level of resources to be sustainable.”

Bell added that the process was not designed to cut costs nor reduce the headcount, but was about “creating six new businesses that are ready to lead us into the future, with confidence and clear expectations”.

She continued: “To set each of the local business units up for success, they will also have a standardised leadership team

The planned changes

varies between 80% and 100%.

Nationwide, patronage figures are around 85% of pre-pandemic levels.

“The combination of a young population, a thriving local economy and a lively nightlife scene have all contributed to this recovery in customer levels,” said Go North West managing director Nigel Featham.

“We are now looking to the future with plans to add additional resource to our network.”

He added Go North West was grateful to the government funding which has been essential in enabling the firm to keep a comprehensive service running throughout the pandemic.

structure, to improve decision making and provide clarity on roles and responsibilities.”

However, First Bus’s proposals are raising concern amongst industry observers. Some say the new structure could spread management teams too thinly.

Meanwhile, the merged Cymru and West of England business unit would also have to grapple with the rapidly diverging bus policies of England and Wales, with the latter now moving towards implementing bus franchising under the aegis of Transport for Wales.

One critic of the proposals is former Brighton & Hove managing director Roger French.

Writing on his Bus and Train User blog this week, French said: “First’s proposed reorganisation has all the hallmarks of recreating the disastrous period for the group in the 1990s when management became ever more remote from operations on the ground due to completely unworkable mergers of the company’s operating areas along with centralised edicts and overbearing control.

“And here we go again.”

Bouncing back: Go North West

www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Councils report steep rise in tender prices High inflation and driver shortages are driving cost increases TENDERS

Local authorities are finding that prices of new tenders for bus contracts are 30% to 40% higher than the previous contracts, following months of high inflation, driver shortages and wage increases.

The situation is laid bare in a letter from the Welsh Local Government Association to the Welsh Government, which also explains that some contracts are being retendered because they have been handed back prematurely.

First minister Mark Drakeford referred to the letter in the Senedd. “The new tenders are coming in anywhere between 30%

KENT AXES 39 BUS ROUTES Council cuts rural services in bid to save £2.2m BUS CUTS

Kent County Council (KCC) has confirmed it plans to axe 39 supported bus services at the end of October in a move that will save £2.2m. All of the routes mainly serve rural areas in the county and the decision comes despite the council securing £35.1m for its successful Bus Service Improvement Plan.

David Brazier, the council’s cabinet member for highways and transport, said KCC must “produce a balanced budget and prioritise the services that we are obliged by law to provide”.

The decision to axe the subsidised www.passengertransport.co.uk

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“New tenders are coming in anywhere between 30% to 40% higher”

further discussions with them as to what, if anything, the Welsh Government is able to do to assist,” said Drakeford.

Bev Fowles, of the Coach and Bus Association Cymru, told Passenger Transport that many contracts were indexed to increase in line with inflation each August, but there had been major cost increases since last August.

Some authorities had agreed to increase payments during interim months. Neath Port Talbot, for example, was providing a monthly uplift based on a measure of fuel price increases.

Other authorities had declined to increase payments before the next annual review. Fowles said that so far in 2022, operators had made losses running into tens of thousands of pounds on schools contracts in Swansea alone.

services follows a public consultation exercise that drew over 2,500 responses. The outcome from that has led the council to pull back from scrapping the Kent Karrier ‘dial-a-ride’ services.

“It is clear from the consultation that in proposing to withdraw 48 supported bus services, including the Kent Karriers, that the impact on the most vulnerable users is significant and, in some areas, there would be no provision of any form of public transport,” Phil Lightowler, KCC’s interim director of highways and transportation, told members.

“It is proposed that the eight Kent Karrier services will be retained. They will continue to provide a bookable bus service for those most in need.”

He added that the service would be removed from the supported

bus budget and sit as a defined line within the public transport budget.

They will be funded, in future years, from a number of external sources including Bus Service Ooperators Grant surplus, government funding, the Local Transport Fund, and increased passenger revenue.

Norman Kemp, who owns Aylesford-based independent bus operator Nu Venture, said many of the routes being axed were “life lines” for rural communities in the county. He also expressed fears for the future of the remainder of the county’s subsidised bus network.

“If people don’t use them in sufficient numbers to pay the driver and fuel costs, Kent can’t keep on paying for them,” he said. “They need to find a long-term way to maintain sustainability.”

to 40% higher than the tenders that they are replacing,” he said.

Some councils had relatively new contracts and some were relying on contracts that had been struck a long time ago. Some contracts had annual renewable mechanisms but others did not.

“What the WLGA proposes is that they should collect further and more detailed information about the impact that school transport services are having to absorb from the rising cost of petrol and other transport measures, and then we will have

IN BRIEF ADVENTURE TRAVEL GAINS ComfortDelGro subsidiary Adventure Travel has announced it will take on two Vale of Glamorgan bus routes from Easyway of Pencoed following the independent company’s closure at the end of July. The company has said it has secured agreement with the Vale of Glamorgan Council to fund the continued operation of Routes 88 and B3 from the start of September.

YELLOWS RESTRUCTURE Bournemouth-based independent Yellow Buses has announced it will restructure two routes serving the Royal Bournemouth Hospital as a result of Go-Ahead-owned Morebus extending its M1 service there.

Yellow Buses said the expansion had resulted in “intensifying competition between us at a time when the government is rolling out the National Bus Strategy which is designed to, amongst other things, reduce competition between operators”. Yellow Buses added: “Morebus are a large PLC, we are not, so we don’t have the financial strength to compete with them in these challenging times.”

COASTLINER EXPANSION Transdev Blazefield has announced the launch of a new express service between York and Whitby via Scarborough. The Coastliner Express X43 will offer a single return trip six days a week and run throughout the summer holidays. Connections will be offered at York with the regular Coastliner 843 route from Leeds and Tadcaster. There will also be a single return working on the X43’s days of operation between Whitby and Scarborough which create new opportunities for days out.

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NEWS ROUND-UP

Lothian Buses is the only council-owned bus operation of any scale in Scotland

Scottish councils can create new municipals

Scottish transport minister Jenny Gilruth says she wants local authorities to use new powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act to run local bus services REFORM

Scottish transport minister Jenny Gilruth has said that she wants local authorities to use new powers, introduced last month, to operate bus services.

The UK Government’s Transport Act 1985 prohibited councils from establishing bus companies. Existing municipallyowned companies were allowed to continue but most have ceased to exist. Lothian Buses is one of the exceptions, and is the UK’s largest municipal bus company.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 includes a provision for any local transport authority to operate services using vehicles that require a PSV operator’s licence.

The authority must be satisfied that providing such a service “will contribute to the implementation of their relevant general policies”.

There was a long delay to 12 | 15 July 2022 PT269p12-13 12

implementing this part of the legislation, which the Scottish Government attributed to staff being temporarily redeployed to deal with matters relating to the Covid-19 pandemic. The powers came into force on June 24.

Labour MSP Neil Bibby asked Gilruth whether she actually wanted councils to use the powers and whether she agreed that “the bus market is broken beyond repair and that councils must take back control of bus services?”

She replied: “Yes, I want local councils to run their own services.

Why else would I stand here talking about the powers in an

“I want local councils to run their own services” Jenny Gilruth

Act that gives local authorities the power to do so?”

Some MSPs expressed concern over service cancellations and reductions. Green MSP Gillian Mackay said: “There has been a raft of service cuts across central Scotland, with driver shortages and efficiency cuts being blamed. When we should be increasing service provision, services are being cut.

“Stagecoach reported a profit of more than £32m for the first half of the most recent financial year, yet the X28 service, which serves Cumbernauld in my region, is up for cancellation. Does the minister agree that more needs to be done to hold the private sector to account, and that more support for publicly-owned bus services could ensure that the transport needs of our communities are truly supported?”

Gilruth said the government had recently announced additional funding, a reference to the £25m for the Network Support Grant Plus (NSGP) until October. “That supports the sector with its continuing recovery from the pandemic and allows operators to respond to changed travel patterns that are arising from people working from home,” she said.

“However, I am clear that subsidy from government to private operators is not sustainable, and nor is it desirable in terms of the longer-term ambitions. Ms Mackay made an important point in relation to the profit margins of some operators. The point is particularly pertinent because bus travel is one of the most affordable forms of public transport.”

She said she expected operators benefiting from NSGP funding “not to reduce services but instead to look after the communities that they serve”.

Conservative MSP Graham Simpson said: “There are too many bus deserts in this country, so the new powers are an opportunity to do things better.”

He asked Gilruth to convene a summit of councils and operators to consider the way forward.

She responded: “I am ahead of him. I have already convened working groups with operators on the back of a call that I had with First Bus and Lothian Buses last week.

“There are a number of challenges in that space at the moment. The first is in relation to service provision and long-term funding, and the second is driver shortages. That is a real challenge, so I want to work with operators to see what more the government can do to support them, although we recognise the split in relation to devolved and reserved competences.” www.passengertransport.co.uk

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ENVIRONMENT

‘Small changes can make a big difference’ Shifting journeys from car to bus and coach just once a month could save millions of tons of C02e emissions, and unlock billion of pounds of savings MODAL SHIFT

Switching car journeys to bus and coach is essential to achieving the country’s net zero emissions goal, according to a new report released this week from the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

The UK’s net zero commitments require a decarbonisation of the transport sector, the highest emitting sector and the only one whose emissions have increased since 1990. This requires ambitious action to tackle car greenhouse gas emissions, which account for the majority of surface transport emissions.

The Decarbonisation Dividend report, created alongside WPI Economics, found that if every person in Great Britain switched just over one car trip to bus or coach per month each year (13 per year) by 2030 it would create

a cumulative reduction of two million tons of C02e. What’s more, a shift of just over two trips per month (26 per year) journeys by 2050 would result in a cumulative reduction of 19.5 million tons of C02e.

The findings of the report also identified health and societal benefits that could be reaped in years to come due to this shift.

Such benefits include cumulative reductions in congestion valued at £29.4bn and cumulative health benefits worth £14.9bn - enough to build 33 new NHS hospitals.

Commenting on the report at

“Half of Brits want to have a more balanced mix between using their car and taking the bus or a coach” Graham Vidler, CPT

‘Lack of tech hinders clean coaches’ Zero Emission Coach Taskforce reports findings A taskforce dedicated to ensuring the coach sector’s transition to zero emission alternatives is both workable and realistic has provided insight into the challenges currently facing the sector on their road to destination zero.

The Zero Emission Coach Taskforce (ZECT) has outlined, in a new report, the challenges

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its launch, Graham Vidler, CPT chief executive said: “Without shifting demand from cars to buses and coaches, the UK will fall short of its net zero ambitions.

“The report shows that small changes in the way we travel can create a big difference. To unlock these benefits, each of us needs to switch just one journey per month from car to bus by the end of this decade, two journeys per month by 2050. That’s it.

“The encouraging findings from the report and our consumer research demonstrate that the shift from cars to buses and

facing the coach sector that must be overcome if they are to achieve the government’s ambition of net zero by 2040.

The ZECT, established by the Confederation of Passenger Transport in December 2021, brings together key stakeholders including coach operators, manufacturers, finance and infrastructure specialists as well as

observers from DfT, Welsh and Scottish governments.

Members were tasked with identifying the challenges facing the coach sector, supported with industry evidence.

The report identified the current lack of certainty over zero emission technology as the most significant barrier facing the industry will future coaches be powered by electric, hydrogen or a combination of both? This lack of direction has resulted in hesitancy and presented multiple additional challenges.

coaches is necessary, desirable and, most importantly, possible.”

Additional consumer-focused research conducted by CPT unearthed Brits’ attitudes toward bus and coach travel. The nationally representative research of 2,000 UK adults was conducted

by OnePoll in June and July.

It emerged that inconvenient routes, infrequent services, slow journey times and unreliability were key factors behind buses not being a viable option for travel.

Whilst a third of Brits (33%) do not know how much a single fare is in their local area.

However, over half of Brits (54%) admitted they’d be more likely to use the bus in their local area if the services were better.

In an increasingly greenconscious age, almost half of car-driving Brits (46%) have considered taking the bus more compared to this time last year, with half of those (49%) doing so to be greener.

Vidler continued: “Our findings show that around half of Brits want to have a more balanced mix between using their car and taking the bus or a coach. With many parts of the country set to invest in speeding up journey times there’s a great opportunity for people to start shifting some of their journeys.”

Helena Bennett, head of climate policy at Green Alliance, added: “Buses and coaches are both critical forms of transport for millions of people across the country, so it’s encouraging to see their many benefits laid out so clearly in this report. Transport remains a thorn in the side of the decarbonisation agenda, and while technological advancements will accelerate a large proportion of the transition to net zero, we also need to think carefully about encouraging alternative, low carbon modes of transport.” www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 17:40

‘Cities need help with zero emission vehicles’ Urban Transport Group and Connected Places Catapult report ZERO EMISSION VEHICLES

A more cohesive approach to accelerating the uptake of zero emission vehicles - from buses and cars to bikes and scooters - across the UK’s city regions is vital if ambitious city-wide and national decarbonisation targets are to be achieved, a new report urges.

The report commissioned by the Urban Transport Group and Connected Places Catapult, and prepared by Arup, suggests a fragmented approach to decarbonising urban vehicle fleets puts those targets at risk.

Transport is the single biggest contributor (by sector) to UK greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 27% of emissions, with 91% of this from road transport. Decarbonising

transport will therefore be vital if the UK’s national target of net zero emissions by 2050 is to be met, as well as city regions’ own net zero ambitions, of which target dates range from 2030 to 2048.

The report sets out the challenges city regions face in decarbonising urban vehicles, which includes private vehicles as well as public sector fleets, and also the opportunities to overcome barriers and make real progress.

The challenges, examined across six themes, range from staffing capacity at local authorities, a lack of cohesive national policy

“We need more resource locally given the scale of the task” Laura Shoaf, UTG

and the absence of strategic and coordinated funding, whilst opportunities are presented in further devolution of powers to city regions, innovation and infrastructure design.

The report also sets out a roadmap detailing how the journey to net zero by 2050 is achieved through each of the six themes.

It concludes: “The government has made decarbonising vehicle fleets a policy priority and made significant funding available for this task. However, the report finds that there is a need for greater cohesion of national policy with less fragmentation between both the approach taken to different transport modes (cars, buses, taxis, new mobility and so on) as well as with the provision of supporting green energy infrastructure. If all urban vehicles are to be decarbonised as rapidly and efficiently as possible then

there is also a need for government to involve the city regions more closely in the formulation and implementation of policy.”

Laura Shoaf, chair of the Urban Transport Group, and chief executive at West Midlands Combined Authority, said: “Alongside promoting modal shift we are investing heavily in supporting the decarbonisation of the vehicles on our streets but we know we will need go faster and further if we are to meet our ambitious net zero targets.

“This report sets out in detail how best this can be achieved.

But in essence, we need more resource locally given the scale of the task, we need to look at all vehicle types and the supporting energy infrastructure together and the city regions need a seat at the top table when the key decisions are being made.”

The findings of the report drew on interviews with officers from Urban Transport Group’s member transport authorities, workshops conducted by Connected Places Catapult and an online survey with key external stakeholders.

FIRST LOOK AT HYDROGEN BUSES Designed especially for Liverpool City Region ZERO EMISSION VEHICLES

The first images of the interior of the new, zero-emission hydrogen bus fleet coming to the Liverpool City Region have been released. The CGI visuals give a sneak peek at the hi-spec interiors and features which passengers will be able to experience when the vehicles, supplied by Alexander Dennis, enter service.

Designed especially for the city region, the buses will feature larger seats with unique pattern designs, just as on the new trains for the Merseyrail network. www.passengertransport.co.uk

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BRTuk LUNCHTIME MASTERCLASSES

A failed experiment is not a failure - Ableman Transport for London innovation director Thomas Ableman says a willingness to try and fail is the secret to success when it comes to innovation Thomas Ableman has devoted his career to innovation Robert Jack within the Managing Editor realm of public transport, with National Express, Chiltern Railways, his own start-up and now Transport for London. And last month he gave a presentation on the subject as part of the the latest series of BRTuk Lunchtime Masterclasses.

Ableman, who joined TfL as director of innovation last year, offered insights on how an innovative culture can be fostered in large and small organisations.

Policy-led innovation One of the things that Ableman loves about his new role is that TfL “is absolutely clear what it is trying to achieve”.

“It has really clear policy goals,” he said. “These are set down in [the mayor’s transport strategy], which I wholeheartedly recommend.

I think it’s absolutely fantastic.

[It is] the bible within TfL.” Those goals include 80% of trips within London being made by public transport or active travel by 2041, zero deaths on the road and improvements in London’s air quality. Ableman argued that TfL has a “huge” track record of innovation in its pursuit of those policy goals, citing as examples the congestion charge, ultra low emission zone, contactless payment and “wildy controversial” but successful schemes like 16 | 15 July 2022 PT269p16-17 16

Walthamstow’s mini-Holland.

Campaigners protested against the latter by walking down the street carrying a coffin, forecasting the death of the area as a result of streets being reduced to buses and active travel only.

“It has not died. It is in fact thriving,” said Ableman, who lives in the area. “The fact that you can only get down the road by bus or bike has made it a more attractive place for local businesses.”

Customer-led innovation Throughout his career, Ableman has been more familiar with customer-led innovation. He spent seven years as commercial director at train operator Chiltern Railways, which he hails as “an outstanding example of customer-led innovation”.

“I have got into a few online debates with people about the extent to which the industry was customer-focused,” he admits.

“I think there’s a real challenge remaining customer-focused in large parts of public transport, but at Chiltern Railways I think we really did manage it.”

Commenting on the reasons for this, he said: “We had a long term franchise. We were there for 20 years. We knew therefore that if we invested we would be able to reap the rewards of those investments in the future. We had competition and therefore we were able to try and win customers. And I think a huge amount of leadership from Adrian [Shooter].”

Chiltern’s track record includes being the first franchised train operator to introduce Wi-Fi on trains and the first to introduce barcode tickets. These are now both widespread throughout the industry and widely-used.

“Both of those things, barcode ticketing and Wi-Fi on trains, were introduced not because we wanted to introduce something new, they were introduced because those were the things we felt would add value to our customers,” said Ableman. “Barcode ticketing has been absolutely transformational in the ability of customers to access the railway quickly, easily and efficiently.”

Ableman reported that his own

“Success in innovation is actually really simple. It’s simply being willing to try things.”

Thomas Ableman

mother, who is now 73, used to get stressed at the thought of using her phone to buy a ticket. Now she is stressed at the thought of being unable to use it to purchase one!

“There can sometimes be an assumption that certain things won’t be welcomed by certain user groups and of course that’s right,” he said, “but people do adapt and change if something is genuinely designed to be user-friendly.”

While Ableman talks up Chiltern’s customer-focussed credentials, he acknowledges that there are always lessons to be learnt. For example, the contruction of a new station building at Bicester Village made him realise “how institutionalised I had become as a public transport person”.

He spent a lot of time working on it with architects and was proud of the result, but then he was even more impressed with what Bicester Village Outlet had done with their section of the station, which was outside of the railway boundary. “It looks like the inside of a five-star hotel and it really made me realise just how different the station could be from our normal expectation of a station,” said Ableman. “It’s a fantastic quality waiting environment. We didn’t build that - not because we didn’t test the idea but because it simply didn’t occur to us.”

He also points out that this lavish station environment was much cheaper for Bicester Village Outlet to deliver because it wasn’t part of the railway: “It is so much more expensive for us to do less.”

Be willing to fail Amazon is the most famous company in the world for innovation. It began life as a tiny start-up but today it’s worth more than $1tn. Its most famous innovations are familiar to all.

Amazon Prime, the Kindle, www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:45

SUPPORTED BY: www.atkinsglobal.com @atkinsglobal

Amazon Studios and Amazon Web Services.

“What’s the secret sauce?” asked Ableman. “How did Amazon manage to achieve this extraordinary track record of success and innovation which no other company has? There’s a very simple answer to that ... Amazon has had an unprecedented track record of failure and it’s their willingness to accept a failure which is why they have been able to achieve so many successes.”

These failures included Amazon Auctions, intended as a rival to eBay, Amazon Wallet, a shopping and fashion retail brand, a search engine, a travel portal, a restaurant review service, video games and a health brand. But Amazon’s biggest failure is arguably the Fire Phone. “[They] channelled billions of capital investment into that and it was a complete flop.”

Ableman continued: “Success in innovation is actually really simple. It’s simply being willing to try things even if you don’t know if they’re going to work, because an awful lot of individuals and organisations don’t want to try something unless they know it is going to work.”

Chiltern, he argued, was an example of a public transport operator that was willing to try things that didn’t work.

For example, it experimented with contactless payments and Bluetooth ticketing but it couldn’t make them work commercially.

Test your assumptions He recommended a book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries, as an informative guide for anyone with an interest in innovation or change. It describes a way of thinking around innovation, and the key point is that anything www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Innovating at TfL

Snap start-up’s assumptions were tested

Bicester Village Outlet’s railway station waiting area

“[Amazon’s] willingness to accept a failure is why they have been able to achieve so many successes” that’s new and uncertain lacks one thing above all - knowledge.

It explains the need to break down the assumptions on which the idea is based upon.

Ableman founded his own start-up, Snap, in 2016 and led it until it ceased in the second lockdown of October 2020.

Described as “Uber for coaches”, Snap connected small, typicallyindependent coach operators with consumers who wanted to make journeys - and the concept was based on a range of assumptions.

Snap assumed that people would be willing to buy tickets on

their mobile phone. It assumed that people would be willing to pick up a journey at an unmarked place. It assumed that they would be willing to travel on vehicles that we’re not branded with the name of the retailer that they had booked with. And it assumed that they would be willing to have a flexible timetable and they would accept a degree of uncertainty.

Once these assumptions have been identified, Ableman said it was quick and easy to test them.

Snap ran a series of small-scale experiments in Exeter in 2016 to test its assumptions.

Ableman argued that innovation “doesn’t need to be just big blockbuster innovation”, but it can be difficult to achieve in large organisations.

“I think across-the-board public sector can sometimes find big innovation easier than small innovation but those small incremental changes are also incredibly important,” he said. “Big projects get big sponsorship and they get big drive in organisations. Small projects can be easier to deliver in small organisations.”

The larger the organisation the greater the lines of communication, and this can slow down decision-making.

But Ableman argues that it’s important to build a culture of experimentation within large organisations like TfL. “You’ve got to be willing to accept that some of them won’t work,” he said. “A failed experiment is the gaining of knowledge, it is not a failure at all.”

At the same time he believes that larger organisations like TfL should engage with start-ups who may be able to come up with solutions to its problems. To achieve this, TfL has established a ‘freight lab’ and a ‘road lab’ to bring small-scale innovators into TfL and pair them up with problems. They can then develop solutions within the context of being a small organisation.

Ableman is also working on an innovation and collaboration framework to address one of the challenges around innovation in the public sector environment.

“Public sector procurement rules exist for a very good reason,” he commented, “But they are also highly restrictive. They are designed to achieve various outcomes, including fairness.

They weren’t designed for innovation.”

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BRTuk LUNCHTIME MASTERCLASSES

He added that Fastrack was very important at a strategic level and also locally and at a county level. “It’s a key part of our growth without gridlock transport plan,” Gillen said. “It’s also a key part of the implementation framework for Ebbsfleet Garden City.”

The latter has stiff targets for public transport, aiming for it to have a 40% modal share.

“With Ebbsfleet being such a huge development area, it’s vital to have Fastrack as part of that,” Gillen said, adding that there were restrictions on the number of car parking spaces at the development as a planning condition.

Fastrack has helped unlock new housing developments in Kent Thameside

Benefits of BRT

Fastrack in maturity plays to its strengths

Kent’s Fastrack bus-based rapid transit network is 15-years old, but its promoters are looking to the future with a switch to zero-emission Kent’s Fastrack bus rapid transit scheme has been a poster Andrew Garnett child for what Deputy Editor the bus can achieve over the last two decades.

With dedicated high-quality infrastructure backed by some serious bus priority interventions, Fastrack plays a crucial role in not only bringing the emerging Kent Thameside area together but also facilitating economic growth while also providing convenient links around Dartford, Bluewater, Ebbsfleet and Gravesend.

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enshrined in the recent bus policy announcements made by the UK Government and the devolved administrations, so it was perhaps timely for BRTuk to review the system’s progress as part of its latest series of Lunchtime Masterclasses.

Strategic importance Daniel Gillen, principal Fastrack development planner gave a brief overview of Fastrack’s progress since the network launched in March 2006.

The first route incongruously numbered Route B, had 5km of on-street bus lanes, segregated busways and dedicated off-road busways with priority at signalled

junctions. Linking Dartford and Gravesend, it was managed

by Kent County Council and followed a successful funding bid from the European Community Infrastructure Fund.

Route A - again linking Dartford with Gravesend but via an extensive employment and housing development area known as The Bridge, was managed by developer ProLogis until April 2022. This was part of a 17-year contract as part of the Section 106 commitments that allowed the development next to the Dartford Crossing to proceed. “It’s an unusual deal,” said Gillen. “I’d be interested to see if any developer does something like that again.”

Gillen said Kent had chosen bus-based rapid transit as research had continually shown there were between 18% and 23% of car users who could be encouraged to switch from car to bus if buses were a quicker and more reliable option.

“That’s a key focus in Kent,” he said. “We want to keep on doing more and more priority measures to really protect journey times and reliability.” He added there was also a link between the Fastrack infrastructure spend and the wider benefits for the local economy.

“BRT is not just for one particular socio-economic group either,” said Gillen. “BRT very much transcends all groups. If it’s fast enough and connects people to where they want to go, people will use it.”

He added there was evidence of people who were extremely wealthy using Fastrack as a reliable means of accessing high-speed rail services into London from Ebbsfleet International station.

“It’s very much a bridging mode,” Gillen added. “It appeals to a far wider market than a regular bus.”

Gillen described the infrastructure at the heart of www.passengertransport.co.uk

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Fastrack as a real mixture of standard bus lanes and traffic light priority, but there are also sections of segregated busway too, primarily around The Bridge development, that offer what Gillen termed a strategic advantage for the bus.

This includes a Fastrackonly bridge over the M25 that allows buses to avoid the regular congestion in the area created by problems on the Dartford Crossing. “That bridge is hugely important,” he added. “It avoids having to negotiate what is an incredibly congested junction and when the Dartford Crossing goes down it’s a huge asset for us.”

However, Gillen admitted there were issues in enforcement. While physical barriers restricted cars and other vehicles from some elements of the segregated infrastructure, it was down to the police to enforce the remainder. Changes to the 2004 Traffic Management Act should solve some of this sometimes sporadic enforcement.

Patronage building back Covid-19 has of course had an impact on many bus networks and many are reporting patronage that is around 80% of what it was before the pandemic hit. Fastrack is bucking that trend though with patronage now in excess of what it was at the start of 2020.

“In March of this year we were at 109% of what was the 2019 monthly mean patronage,” revealed Gillen. “This is hugely encouraging. There’s a been a shift in terms of how people travel, with more leisure travel and people only travelling a couple of days each week when they would previously travel each day, but we have seen a recovery.”

He admitted there was a major reason behind this success and it was the recent opening of a large Amazon distribution hub that Fastrack serves with dedicated www.passengertransport.co.uk

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buses. Amazon also pays for it employees to travel for free on Fastrack.

He continued: “But that’s not the be-all and end-all; when you look at the data for Fastrack A and B from March, so the month before the A diverted to serve Amazon, and also take out all the Amazon data, we are almost 100% of where we were pre-Covid.

When you add in the Amazon demand we’ve exceeded it.”

Shane Hymers, Fastrack’s development manager, added there was evidence that growth was also being achieved as a result of home working with some residents giving up their second car as Fastrack was so convenient for them. “That’s where a lot of our new numbers have come from,” he said. “The journey patterns are very different from what they were in 2019.”

Hymers added that bus patronage elsewhere in North Kent was at around 80% to 85% of what it was. “That’s still pretty good when compared to other parts of the county,” he said. “I think this is a really good demonstration of why BRT works and why journey times are so important too.”

Fastrack: next generation The next phase of this truly

ambitious BRT network will see zero-emission vehicles introduced and a new long-term contract with an operator partner.

This aims to build on the 2018 trial of an opportunity-charged electric Volvo bus which had built an appetite to move towards zeroemission operation.

“Unlike most zero-emission operations in the UK, we’re going down that opportunity charge model,” he added. “Having done extensive modelling work, that really suits the operating characteristics of the route in terms of route and the intensity of the operation.”

Gillen admitted there was a cost implication from choosing opportunity charging when compared to the more conventional pure battery-electric operation but that has been solved thanks to the award of ZEBRA funding from the UK Government. The new zeroemission fleet is expected to start entering service in 2023/2024.

“We’re currently looking at what vehicles we go forward with and the charging infrastructure,” he said.

Meanwhile, the network will also expand. Following the transfer of the Route A infrastructure from ProLogis

earlier this year, a dedicated Fastrack tunnel will open in late 2023/early 2024 connecting Bluewater with Ebbsfleet International and this, plus other new pieces of dedicated infrastructure. will unlock further housing developments. Elsewhere in Kent work has commenced on a new Fastrack network centred on Dover with an initial corridor linking housing developments with Dover Priory Station.

Moving to maturity With growth now ahead of early 2020, Fastrack is looking to move to a London-style operating model with regulated headways over a conventional timetabled service. That will be supported by the new operating model. At present Arriva pays a fee for each journey to use Fastrack infrastructure. Kent County Council now plans to replace that model with a gross contract model that will see it taking the revenue risk. That could see Fastrack going cashless to speed buses up further.

“I am completely obsessed with journey times and dwell times,” added Hymers. “The quicker you make journeys is what’s going to influence more people on buses.”

An opportunity-charged zero-emission Volvo bus was trialled on the Fastrack network in 2018

15 July 2022 | 19

13/07/2022 17:38

BRTuk LUNCHTIME MASTERCLASSES

Greater Manchester plans to introduce bus franchising

Can buses change and remain commercial?

Robert Montgomery says bus franchising is expensive and Enhanced Partnerships are ‘shotgun marriages’. Instead he proposes a third way Published in March 2021, the National Bus Strategy for England Robert Jack effectively Managing Editor heralded the end of the “swashbuckling days of the the deregulated 1980s”.

Bus operators must now design networks via binding Enhanced Partnership agreements or follow instructions under bus franchising arrangements. But is there a ‘third way’ for buses?

Robert Montgomery, who served as managing director of Stagecoach’s UK Bus business between 2013 and 2017, believes there is. Delivering the last of the latest series of BRTuk Lunchtime Masterclasses, he explained why the current approach to buses is flawed and why franchising will not succeed.

Montgomery, who now heads his own consultancy, busreinvented.com, maintains that the real problem is traffic 20 | 15 July 2022 PT269p20-21 20

not buses. When he was born in Glasgow in 1952 the main modes of transport in that city and others were buses, trolleybuses and trams. Rising prosperity saw car ownership soar while public transport declined, and cities became “congested, polluted and overrun by cars”.

Meanwhile, reducing urban traffic levels is an important part of the response to the existential threat posed by climate change.

“The next biggest social problem is dealing with traffic,” said Montgomery,. “We can’t continue to live with high levels of traffic, that are ruining the planet, killing people and damaging health. The promised land is cities where traffic isn’t a problem.”

But how do we get to that promised land?

Franchising is flawed “Right now the fashion is to assume it will be the public sector [that leads the way],” said Montgomery. “It’s quite fashionable now to refer to London-style franchising. All of the metro mayors use that phrase constantly, even the secretary of state uses that phrase.”

He said the assumption was that franchising would deliver better, cheaper and more frequent bus services, but he warned that this would come at a considerable cost.

London, for example, required about £700m a year to support its franchising system before Covid.

“There’s no magic money tree involved in this,” he warned.

“Franchising is about spending significant sums of public money to improve bus services, reduce

“The real damage to the commercial bus model is the daily failure of highway authorities to manage urban roads”

fares, increase frequencies - but in a way that is not financially sustainable.”

He recalled that plans by Nexus to introduce a Quality Contracts bus franchising system in Tyne & Wear initially suggested that the authority would be able to do more with less. However, Nexus later revealed that its own assessment identified a 33% chance that the scheme would end in financial failure.

Meanwhile, the consultation on the franchising proposal in Greater Manchester was based on “business as usual”, but it will still cost £134m. Phase 2 will include lower fares and increased services, but these enhancements have not been financially assessed.

He contrasted this with the West Midlands, where mayor Andy Street and bus operator National Express West Midlands are working together in partnership to deliver lower fares and increased services.

“Franchising like London is the autocratic option,” he argued.

“It’s the autocratic way of getting to the promised land. It’s a command and control approach.”

Montgomery also argued that London-style franchising would hinder innovation. “It’s not easy to make changes in a contracted environment and there’s not really much incentive for anyone to innovate,” he explained.

And he said that Transport for London’s post-Covid experience should serve as a warning to those who plan to become dependent on increased public expenditure.

“I find it ironic that the secretary of state [for transport], who is reducing support to London for the bus network, is simultaneously encouraging Manchester to franchise, to move into the same world,” he said.

Despite the widespread use of franchising in cities around the www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:52

world, Montgomery believes that London-style franchising is a model “whose time has gone”.

“It’s environmentally credible,” he claimed. “You can use that process to deal with the environmental issues, but it’s not financially sustainable, particularly in the current public sector debt environment. So going down a route where we take the urban bus operations in the UK into being dependent on public money is a road to nowhere.”

The commercial model Some have suggested that Britain’s commercial model for operating buses is broken, but Montgomery disagrees.

“My conclusion is that it’s not broken,” he said. “It’s a bit battered and bruised, partly by Covid, partly by Brexit, but actually those are simply two bumps in the road. The real damage to the commercial bus model is the daily failure of highway authorities to manage urban roads and seriously address declining air quality and increasing congestion.

He continued: “If our traffic authorities decided to manage the roads to a proper capacity, restrained traffic to ensure that whatever traffic was there could flow freely, then that alone would create a benevolent bus operating environment and would trigger significant transformation and modal shift - and breathe life into the commercial bus model.

“What’s holding buses back in our cities is not the operators, it’s not Covid, it’s not Brexit, it’s the failure to manage the roads.”

Enhanced Partnerships are the mechanism within which all commercial bus operations in England must now reside, but Montgomery is not impressed.

“I don’t see them as proper advanced partnerships,” he explained. “They are more like shotgun marriages. They are not a route to the promised land because they don’t actually address traffic congestion ... They simply focus on Bus Service Improvement Plans, as if buses were actually the problem.

“It’s not the bus services that are the problem. It’s the traffic on the streets that buses have to contend with that prevents buses performing the way they should.

And therefore the National Bus Strategy is too focused on buses and not sufficiently focused on mobility.”

A third way?

Montgomery acknowledges the need for change: “Buses have always sat in this world well they are a business but they are also a very political animal and an important part of the community.

I don’t think you can run buses in a major city without hand-inglove co-operation between the politicians and the operator. We see that work in various places and that’s the only way forward. I’m not in any way advocating that we

‘DYNAMIC URBAN MOBILITY PARTNERSHIPS’ Based on a shared vision and clear, agreed objectives Independently chaired by a reputable local figure Focused on both environmental and financial sustainability Driven by car restraint and modal shift Delivered by public support and private investment Delivering returns to community and the investors Fostering innovation and challenge Delivering a comprehensive, co-operative, co-ordinated mobility package for consumers

www.passengertransport.co.uk

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“I think there’s a better way of getting to the promised land”

Robert Montgomery keep things the way they are or the way they’ve been. I’m simply advocating a different way of looking at the change.

So what does that different or third way, look like? Montgomery believes its possible to work closely with politicians but without losing commercial focus and expertise, and he’s not the first to suggest such an idea.

For example, back in 2015 bus and coach commentator Roger French proposed “a middle way for Greater Manchester” (PT101) - a new public/private company.

Montgomery’s proposal is not dissimilar. He is calling for the creation of “dynamic urban mobility partnerships” for cities to bring together all of the public and private sector stakeholders in urban mobility. He describes this as “the democratic option”, where progress is made by “compromise, discussion and debate”.

These partnerships would have very clear objectives and would work together through an independently chaired partnership board, supported by a range of working parties. Car restraint and modal shift would be at the heart

of their agenda.

Funded by public and private investment, they would function “in a way that fosters ongoing innovation, not something that is ossified into a set of contracts that never change”. Bus operators would contribute via a 1-2% levy on their gross revenues, sacrificing short term margin in return for long term market growth. That money would then be invested by the partnership in improving the mobility options in the city.

“It’s not unreasonable to invest 2% of revenue if it’s invested wisely in terms of bus priority and other measures,” he said. “That leads to modal shift, that leads to market growth, that leads to more profit ... It makes commercial sense for operators to do it but they have to have the trust to process their money through the partnership.”

Other sources of revenue would include a slice of urban parking charges, a workplace parking levy and congestion charging, alongide funding from the combined authority and central government.

In conclusion, he said: “I think there’s a better way of getting to the promised land - a more comprehensive way, a more democratic way and a more radical way, that’s much more likely to succeed and be financially and environmentally sustainable then going down the route of 1990s London-style franchising.”

ABOUT BRTuk BRTuk has members from across the industry, including operators, promoters, manufacturers and consultants. It serves as an information hub and engages with all levels of government.

Visit: www.brtuk.com

15 July 2022 | 21

13/07/2022 16:52

COMMENT

JONATHAN BRAY

Making the case for transport authorities Transitioning to a fully empowered transport authority can be difficult, but the case for transitioning is stronger than ever before “Underneath all the commercial activities of the board, underneath all its engineering and operations, there is the revelation and realisation of something which is in the nature of a work of art ... it is in fact, a conception of a metropolis as a centre of life, of civilisation, more intense, more eager, more vitalising than has ever so far been obtained.”

Frank Pick, the first chief executive of London Transport (December 1935).

At a recent UITP meeting of mostly European transport authorities it was revealing how much in common many of those attending had. We were in the 80% club (patronage plateauing somewhere in the 80% range of pre-Covid). Our national politicians simultaneously (for climate and cost of living reasons) want better public transport, but (for Covid deficit reasons) also want to reduce financial support. In addition, national governments are increasingly dropping fares cuts initiatives from the sky without having thought through the rationale or how they will be funded. All of which means that budget crunches are coming for many transport authorities with little sense as yet of how they are going to be resolved. The wide-ranging consistency in these immediate challenges was the background for the launch of a new Urban Transport Group/UITP report that makes the case for empowered transport authorities for metropolitan areas as the best vehicle for tackling challenges like these.

A big part of the case for metro area 22 | 15 July 2022 PT269p22-23 22

transport authorities is that they map on to real travel, cultural and economic geographies, at a scale whereby they can develop capacity, expertise, reputation and corporate memory.

This allows them to deal with the bad times (like Covid or fiscal squeezes) as well as be ready to move quickly to capitalise in the good times (for example, when there is the political will for traffic restraint or public transport expansion). More widely they are also best placed to make the inevitable trade offs that will need to be made (given finite resources) on service provision and investment without bias to one mode or another or one sub-area or another.

Critically too, although they need to be fiscally responsible, they also have a public interest remit. It’s not just about the bottom line - it’s also about making the places they serve more prosperous, fairer and greener.

All of this also gives them a spur to innovate, which they are too rarely given credit for (in the UK, for example, it’s transport authorities who were ahead of the private sector on everything, from low floor buses, to Oyster and zero emission buses).

The job that transport authorities have had has never been easy but the report argues

“Budget crunches are coming for many transport authorities”

that it has now become more complex and difficult than ever. Not so long ago a bus was a bus, a tram was a tram and a bicycle was a bicycle. Now there is both blurring of the edges between the modes (from tram-trains to e-bikes) as well as a growing range of new formats for mobility (such as e-scooters) and new business models for their provision (such as Bolt). At the same time, in fits and starts, vehicles are becoming more connected and autonomous as well as greener and cleaner.

And that’s just one dimension to the growing complexity. More widely we live in an urbanising world, putting incredible pressures on those cities which are growing fast in terms of resources, energy, housing and transport.

We also live in a warming world where we need to both deal with the consequences and slow down that warming. All of which means that the professional sectors dealing with energy, transport and the built environment can’t continue to inhabit separate silos. For example, you can’t have electric buses without green energy infrastructure and you can’t fully decarbonise transport without decarbonising transport’s built estate.

So what are some of the key contemporary challenges that both existing and potential transport authorities are facing in the second decade of the 21st century and how are they doing it? Here’s four: Let’s start with where we came in - funding.

Transport authorities can find ways of blending different and new funding sources because they can earn the trust needed to do so through scale, capacity, capability, and track record. There’s a very wide range of mechanisms for doing this which transport authorities round the world are already using.

Land value capture and property development is big in South East Asia whilst in the US local taxes on everything from fuel to mansions are widely deployed. There are big tech solutions like road pricing in Gothenburg (used to fund a new cross-city rail link) to more prosaic parking charges in Sydney. Given the squeeze on national budgets from Covid, metro areas are going to need to raise more themselves - and empowered transport authorities are a good vehicle for ensuring the proceeds are wisely spent.

On climate there are difficult choices to be made around how to balance spend on reducing carbon emissions with improving climate www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:25

“At their best the sum of a transport authority is far more than the parts”

The Montreal Metro reflects and enhances the identity of the place it serves

resilience. At the UITP meeting where the report was launched there was a presentation from Paris on the vast programme of works being carried out to protect public transport from the increasing risks of a major flood, which could take out much of the Metro for an extended period. Transport authorities are in a good place to make the difficult decisions about how much to spend on expanding the network compared with protecting what’s already there from climate risks.

On fairness and social justice, because of their wider public interest remit, there is an expectation that transport authorities should be pioneering ways of ensuring that both their own organisations and the decisions they make reflect the full diversity of the areas they serve.

New York’s MTA is one example of a transport authority doing this in practice through its concerted efforts to ensure more of the contracts it lets go to women and minoritiesowned businesses (the most successful programme of its kind in the US).

On new technologies, mobility and business models the job of transport authorities is to balance consumer benefits with protecting the wider public interest. The classic example of this is where new entrants www.passengertransport.co.uk

PT269p22-23 23

flood the market with a new mobility format (such as dockless e-scooter or bike rental offers), which some travellers respond to positively but which can cause wider safety and urban realm issues in relation to use and parking (for example, for disabled people).

Singapore is a good example of how a transport authority can take a sophisticated and agile approach. The Singapore Land Transport Authority’s approach to new forms of mobility and business models is to ‘turn disruptions into opportunities’ by creating a regulatory framework which is flexible and facilitative to allow businesses to thrive. But the LTA is also not afraid to act decisively where necessary, including on requiring data and on clamping down on excesses in the dockless bikes market when operators wouldn’t do it themselves.

At their best the sum of a transport authority is far more than the parts. Reflecting the quote from Frank Pick at the start of this article, they can reflect and enhance the identity of the places they serve through being the respected custodians of their design traditions (from the Montreal Metro to London’s red double decker buses) and by maintaining a strong and consistent corporate identity.

They can also support public art and cultural

events and provide wider civic and commercial leadership in the investment, procurement and organisation decisions they take. In short, they can add to the allure of the places they serve for visitors, investors and residents.

Transitioning to a fully empowered transport authority can be difficult where one doesn’t currently exist - as inevitably it will take on powers currently held elsewhere. Without strong political backing a stepping stone approach may be needed, but the case for transitioning is stronger than ever. And as the world becomes more uncertain and the challenges facing urban transport become more complex I hope this collaboration between UITP and UTG can help provide those considering the future governance of their urban transport networks with the arguments and evidence they need to take the next step.

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.

15 July 2022 | 23

13/07/2022 16:25

COMMENT

ALEX WARNER

My half-term report for public transport

Recruitment woes, collaboration in the rail sector, reorganisations within bus groups. These are just some of the big issues of 2022 We’re just over halfway through this fun-packed year and I’m due my customary half-term report on the state of the transport industry so far in 2022. Let’s crack on folks…

CrossCountry customer centricity Amidst a morass of mediocrity when it comes to customer service across large swathes of the TOC community, there’s a beacon of excellence out there in Arriva CrossCountry. Time and time again, I travel in Standard and First Class and the trains are spotless, the staff buoyant with the joys of spring and the on-board proposition pretty good. Managers are also very visible on the network and there’s a localised feel to the approach, but framed by an overall consistent nationwide product. Managing director Tom Joyner - who is extremely visible in all parts of his manor - has done a fantastic job in bringing this TOC right up there to the very top of the customer service tree.

Hard times It’s a challenge for customer service obsessives like me to complain too much about bus drivers when I realise that we’re really down to the bone in terms of ‘headcount’ and that recruitment and retention feels almost impossible. A combination of Brexit, sluggish wages, negligent resource planning and this being an employee’s market has meant that staffing is the most herculean of challenges for bus companies. Not even those traditionally customer-focused companies are immune 24 | 15 July 2022 PT269p24-25 24

- witness the criticism of Blazefield’s Rosso subsidiary recently when it made a mass of cancellations. The driver shortage has its tentacles everywhere and it is creating an almost existential threat to the sector.

Collaboration can happen!

It was the buzzword of 2021, helped by the Department for Transport putting a requirement for train operators to collaborate as part of their contracts and also suggesting it will be a key tenet of the passenger service contract awards. However, I’ve genuinely seen a change, dramatic in fact. In the main, gone are the days when TOCs, FOCs, Network Rail, DfT and other bodies all used to point score and fight among themselves. Now everyone is largely bending over backwards to collaborate for the good of the industry.

Obviously it helps that operators don’t take the revenue any longer nor currently bid against each other for franchises - but it very much feels more than just rhetoric and that collaboration is actually happening. It only took 26 years of privatisation for this matey state to occur, but better late than never.

“Collaboration is actually happening. It only took 26 years of privatisation ... but better late than ever”

Self-defeating strikes Of course, the only non-collaborators have been the railway trade unions who continue to resist coming to the party. What can I say that hasn’t been uttered before about this senseless act of destruction of the transport industry at a time when it is in the fight for its life in the face of pre and post Covid societal change? When I come home from the cricket and talk the wife and kids through the day’s entertainment or regale them of my scorecard from a round of golf, my audience says in unison either, “Nobody cares” or “When?”, as in ‘“When did we ask?”. With the railway’s relevance diminishing with each passing month, this, sadly, will be the response of the public to future strikes if we’re not careful.

Endangered local old-timers The pandemic has hit transport companies hard, particularly bus businesses. No surprise, therefore, that many of the owning groups have made brave decisions to have a less localised organisation structure and in turn lost a lot of experienced subsidiary managers.

These structures tend to be cyclical, owning groups oscillate between big and small regions every half a decade or so and time will tell what works best in adversity. History tends to suggest that the bus market demands a more localised approach, responsive to the nuances of the individual communities it serves.

That Go-Ahead has belligerently chosen to continue with its very de-centralised approach and create bright, local brands with a smallish span of command by comparison to its peers, and have stayed out of negative headlines about poor services or a lack of engagement, is a sign of faith in their brands, products and approach and a desire to avoid unsettling reorganisations. Age and experience tends to feel unfashionable in the bus sector particularly now. In trying to dig itself out of a hole, it’s hoped that the big owning groups don’t go too far in unwieldy structures shorn of the kind of sector and market experience that is needed, alongside fresh talent.

Be nice to suppliers I’ve been a longstanding employee and supplier to the transport industry for nigh on three decades now. During this time, I’ve been privileged to have some wonderful customers. www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:41

“I feel confident that new trains will be commissioned with customer comfort at the heart” However, it still baffles me how bad suppliers can get treated by some. It tends to be the heads of department or those in procurement who turn their nose up at us enthusiastic suppliers as if we are something you’d pick up on your shoe, belittling our enthusiasm and energy and seemingly intent on doing everything possible not to try a new approach.

Or they just delight in saying ‘no’ as though they are rewarded to do so. Those more senior are sometimes not much better, lording it over suppliers, just because they can, or taking our goodwill and work ethic for granted. They either think we are serving them just for fun, because we’ve nothing better to do or they have this instinctive view we are some kind of rapacious parasite, leeching the industry of what dosh it has. And they’ll be as rude as possible to our sales people, not realising that they are only just trying, like all of us and them, to earn a livelihood. One fellow supplier said to me last week, “they’ve just forgotten how to be a nice person”. These same people tend also to say they don’t use headhunters out of policy, but they are the first to call you when they fall out with their employees.

Self-praise is no praise I’ve said it before and I will say it again until this fad disappears but halo head-banging transport top dogs really ought to concentrate more on running trains and buses on time than popping up on LinkedIn or other social media channels carping on about how great they are or taking photos of themselves doing what I consider to be ‘the day job’, such as being on their network. There are a few exceptions - GWR’s Mark Hopwood’s videos are informative and create a sense of momentum about his TOC, but most LinkedIn posts from those who should know better, are absolute piffle. As ‘Er Indoors regularly says to me, “selfpraise is no praise” - spot on.

Commonwealth Games energy In around three weeks, the Commonwealth Games will commence in Birmingham and its environs. I’ve witnessed at first hand the planning undertaken to make sure it is a success from a transport perspective and I take my hat off to everyone. If all goes smoothly, public transport should receive gold medals in aplomb. Last week, Network Rail’s Denise Wetton organised and hosted an event with www.passengertransport.co.uk

PT269p24-25 25

over 100 volunteers in Birmingham. We all wore lovely pink hi-vis with the BR logo on the back and after precision-led, perfect speeches from transport top brass, performing arts experts Rada spent two hours whipping us into a singing and acting frenzy. They even managed to energise someone as un-touchy-feely and introverted as I. It was a brilliant afternoon that bodes well for the Games to follow.

Great scenic journeys I’ve spent some time across the UK in the last six months travelling on scenic bus journeys and increasingly I am seeing that in these postpandemic times and with staycations booming and commuting declining, these are more vital than ever for the bus sector. Some of these routes go through the most jaw-dropping scenery and by comparison with other transport attractions are a snip at the price.

What’s more, drivers are friendly, the vehicles increasingly smart and I’m seeing very happy customers. There’s more to be done for these services to realise their incredible potential and without wishing to plan a spoiler for my gripping soap opera, you’ll hear me talk more about this very shortly, watch this space...

Elusive e-scooters As someone who doesn’t have a car licence, this e-scooter lark has piqued my interest.

It may just be me, but I read lots of headlines about saner people than I crashing them and suffering a debilitating injury or worse. I haven’t really fathomed out how they work either - where can you hire them, for how long and how much? Do you need a helmet? Furthermore, I’ve also seen people just leave them in the street, not appearing to lock them up. How do they not get nicked? This all feels a bit like the London cycle hire system (I’ve also not fathomed out how that really works). Yet, in many a meeting, I hear transport bods throw in phrases like ‘multi-modal’ and ‘e-scooters’, almost as though they get more points in their appraisal the more times they mention them. So, when are e-scooters going to take off? When will they genuinely feel like a big feature of the transport landscape and fully integrated into our network maps? Or will they it be forever an aspiration, just like me kidding myself that I will one day pass my driving test at the fifth time of asking?

Ironing boards ironed out By making reference to it, the Williams-Shapps Review in 2021 legitimised the acceptance that mistakes have been made in modern rolling stock, such as uncomfortable seats, and that this hardly constituted ‘progress’. TOCs and the manufacturers were previously in denial in their press releases and subsequent utterances that they’d got it wrong by designing trains that had seats so stiff, upright and devoid of any cushion that you’d be better off spending a four-hour journey against an upright ironing board. But the first six months of 2022 has seen a gradual condemnation of this situation.

Under Great British Railways, I feel confident that new trains will be commissioned with customer comfort at the heart and, dare I say it, I genuinely believe we may see some retro-fitting. It seems unlikely that 25 years from now, we will still be expected to endure the seats, as they are now, on those trains that entered service in the last half-decade.

Why, oh why, is Wi-Fi worse?

I’m one of those dimwits who doesn’t really know who to blame when the Wi-Fi is patchy or non-existent. Is it the bus or train operator, or the Wi-Fi provider or the government?

Is it to do with phone masts? I don’t really know, but during 2022 I’ve been frustrated by the lack of Wi-Fi signal, particularly on long distance train trips. It’s fortunate for those fellow customers stuck in a carriage normally listening to my loud claptrap - I think I’ve been banned from every ‘Quiet Coach’ across UK rail. The reception has got so bad, I’ve given on doing Teams Calls on my travels now.

Passenger Service Contracts silence After all the brouhaha and market engagement days late in 2021, the silence has been deafening on rail Passenger Service Contracts (PSCs) in rail. And there’s us thinking that it was a slam dunk that c2c would be first off the blocks this year, followed by TPE and then SWR. Don’t hold your breath for the rest of 2022 in relation to PSCs. Or 2023, even.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex Warner has over 29 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector

15 July 2022 | 25

13/07/2022 16:41

COMMENT

NICK RICHARDSON

How can we reform railway ticketing?

Ticketing is a key part of reforming Britain’s railways, but that process should have already been well underway by now Buying a rail ticket needs stamina and patience. Recent experience shows that nothing has improved and, if anything, has got worse despite a plethora of options that are supposed to be helpful. This vast array of information underlines the problem of too much going on and a lack of consistency. All this is baffling to many would-be rail users for whom logic and customer-friendliness are absent, amplified by the opening gambit of most relevant web sites that because of strike action, there probably won’t be any trains anyway.

Lack of evidence so far We were promised some time ago that train fares would be simplified and ticket transactions would be easier; the result of this appears to be very little to date. Arriva CrossCountry was to be the test bed but all that seems to have happened is a combination of increased prices and fewer trains. The latter is explained by the Covid-19 pandemic in which the north-south core service (broadly Bournemouth and Southampton to Birmingham and Manchester) has become a train every two hours instead of hourly.

Pre-pandemic, what was shaping up to be a reasonable level of service with several destinations now has reduced journey options.

It does however have longer trains because two units are used instead of one, but not all the time - so overcrowding remains the problem it has been for years, particularly 26 | 15 July 2022 PT269p26-27 26

when the lower off-peak fares kick-in.

Regarding pricing, over the past few years CrossCountry fares have essentially doubled, with some tickets well beyond affordability when compared to other options such as coach (affordable but incurring long journey times) or car if there is more than one person, even with the price of fuel increasing by the day. An example is Southampton Airport (Parkway) to Manchester Piccadilly which is usually over £125 return, hardly incentivising anyone to use the train. There are numerous types of Railcard and discounts but each has its own set of conditions, so the selection of tickets is far from straightforward.

The concept, we were told, was to reintroduce distance-based pricing which For some journeys, a combination of ticket media may be required

would overcome the several-tickets-for-onejourney trick, split tickets often saving quite a lot even if it involved changing seats on the same train at the changeover point. Distancebased tickets would be fairer in many respects but it has been clear for decades that it won’t work in practice. It could be appropriate for what used to be ‘InterCity’ trains but charging the same for commuter journeys to London as other journeys away from major centres presents the dilemma of reducing prices on busy routes (with less revenue) or increasing them elsewhere (deterring users).

Affordability Inconsistency is the name of the game. Where there is a genuine choice of train, the prices can be different. I can travel to Southampton from my local station with an all-operator ticket (valid for Great Western, Southern or South Western) or a Southern-only one that is slightly cheaper despite the route being exactly the same. While it appears to be a choice of service, it isn’t really because Southern in particular is unreliable, the Great Western service is to and from Cardiff so anything can happen along the way and the South Western service stops at every station.

Similarly, Gatwick Airport offers a choice of London destinations either via Southern (Victoria or London Bridge) or Thameslink or Gatwick Express non-stop to Victoria. For airport arrivals who are not familiar with the options, this is a dilemma, and similar occurs in a number of places.

On the question of price, my daily commute cost £7.80 in 2013, rising steadily to £9.20 in 2022. Or rather it hasn’t because thanks to the pandemic, I am not using the train daily anymore so my revenue for the train operator(s) is very much less than it used to be. With former regulars like me now being intermittent users, the commuter market for train services is very different. For anyone travelling for leisure purposes, price is allimportant, particularly if there is more than one person and a car is available.

Negotiating ticket purchase Ticket selection and purchase remain baffling and frustrating. Starting at the beginning, the National Rail web site holds many of the answers but has an annoying habit of crashing with ‘Bad request’ which halts the process www.passengertransport.co.uk

13/07/2022 16:28

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and it all looks rather dated. Turning to other web sites requires users to be well-informed.

Are there really price differentials between providers? Which of the train operators would it be best to buy from? In principle, all tickets should be available from all operators but some may offer other incentives. National Rail causes confusion in redirecting the user to a particular operator’s web site to buy the ticket even if it is not the one providing the service.

One neat trick is for National Rail to include some discounted prices but when it comes to buying them via South Western Railway, they disappear. This is the fragmented railway revealed in all its glory with a multitude of tickets, prices and conditions. Each operator arranges their online ticket purchase as they wish with no consistency; users need to have fortitude and a means of recording everything along the way. Actually buying the most appropriate ticket online is quite an achievement and can even take longer than the actual journey!

Purchase does not mean that the exasperated user now has the ticket because the next step is get hold of it. There are different ways of doing this - a QR code by mobile phone, although not everyone has one, printing at home which generates a bit of paper with the details and a code or collection from a station ticket machine. The latter requires an alpha-numeric code and can be collected after 30 minutes, an hour or something else depending on who sold the ticket. There are also postal options for which there is an extra charge but no guarantee that it will be delivered. For some journeys, a combination of media may be required such as a paper ticket printed at home plus one collected from the machine or a mobile phone.

What used to be a reasonable option is now under fire. Getting advice from a real person at the station and selecting the right ticket is being edged out in the interests of cost savings. Anyone who doesn’t have internet access or a suitable phone is then unable to take advantage of the many choices available, particularly if the intended journey is complicated. Keeping the ticket offices and staff presence at stations has wide benefits which shouldn’t be restricted to consideration of the revenue generated alone. Ticket purchase is best when the user has some idea of what they want, but for anyone investigating www.passengertransport.co.uk

PT269p26-27 27

Purchase does not mean that the exasperated user has the ticket because the next step is get hold of it. M-ticketing is one of the many options

“We were promised some time ago that train fares would be simplified” options, it is totally baffling. To add to the fun, prices change day to day so what you thought would be the price is different when you want to buy the ticket.

Must-have improvements This brings us to the key issues: consistency of price, consistency where journeys are similar, coordinated sales processes and clarity. We can’t pretend any of these are simple but in the digital age, it could and should be massively simplified. Even definitions of peak and off-peak vary depending on where the train is going rather than when the user travels.

Single fares should not be the same as return fares. Prices should better reflect the length and quality of the journey to avoid the crush for the cheapest seats. Now is the time to make changes so that Great British Railways is

open for business rather than providing niche services for those who can afford it. Ticketing is a key part of the change process and should have been improved already. With the changed relationship between passenger train operators and government, revenue should not be the only goal. It is accepted that maintaining and improving the railway incurs a necessary cost so trying to make it pay its way is an outdated concept. As a state asset, albeit with private sector involvement, the railway should be a shining example of how to provide quality and organisation at a national level; this could start with ticketing. The alternative route is to bypass the opportunity for real change.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nick Richardson is Technical Principal at transport consultancy Mott MacDonald, chair of CILT’s Bus and Coach Policy Group and a former chair of the Transport Planning Society. In addition, he has held a PCV licence for over 30 years.

15 July 2022 | 27

13/07/2022 16:28

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l

“I’m told that polls of the party membership say they want HS2 scrapped”

COMMENT

GREAT MINSTER GRUMBLES

The herd moved, but where is it going?

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

What a carry-on! The speed with which the cabinet and large numbers of ministers turned against Boris Johnson was dramatic, to say the least. “When the herd moves, it moves,” the prime minister lamented outside 10 Downing Street last week. Before he eventually accepted his fate, I couldn’t tear myself away from the news and Twitter feeds as with each passing minute another minister announced his or her resignation. How many resignations will it take, I wondered, before Boris Johnson realises the inevitable and that his time in No 10 has come to an undignified end? When our very own secretary of state, Grant Shapps, cleared his diary to go and tell Boris that his time was up I assumed that we would get a resignation announcement that evening. Grant Shapps is known for his ultra-loyalty to Boris Johnson so that message would surely be the final straw.

Of course, it was Boris’s initial refusal to resign that evening that triggered the large number of resignations from cabinet and junior ministers the following morning, and it still took more than 24 hours before the announcement of the resignation came - but not before Boris dispensed with Michael Gove in one last act of defiance!

What struck me as odd about this whole saga was Boris’s constant reference to the mandate given to him by 14 million voters at the 2019 general election. Had he not spotted that since then, and since the inept handling of the Owen Paterson affair, the Conservative Party had lost by-elections in constituencies that were www.passengertransport.co.uk

PT269p28-29 29

historically ultra-safe seats? Had he not spotted that the mandate given to him at the 2019 election had effectively been withdrawn?

Still, we now have to prepare for a new secretary of state for transport as it’s hard to imagine that Grant Shapps will remain as secretary of state once a new prime minister is in place and the new cabinet appointed.

I was startled when he announced he was standing in the leadership contest as he had absolutely no chance of winning, but it wasn’t long before he withdrew and threw his weight behind frontrunner Rishi Sunak. Since I can’t believe that Shapps himself ever believed he had any chance of success he can only have

been looking to position himself for a more senior cabinet position when this is all over.

Good luck with that, Grant, as the new prime minister may not want your services given your unquestioning loyalty to the Boris regime!

Meanwhile, we have a new parliamentary under-secretary of state here at the Department for Transport, following the wide-ranging ministerial appointments made in the wake of the mass resignations last week.

Andrew Stephenson, the HS2 minister, was moved to become chairman of the party and minister without portfolio, prompting the promotion of Trudy Harrison to minister of state - in turn leading to the appointment of Karl McCartney to back-fill for her. I’ve watched McCartney question witnesses appearing before the Transport Select Committee and I can’t say I like what I’ve seen. He comes across as a touch aggressive, even rude, and seems far too pleased with himself even if his questions show a lack of real understanding of the issues. I suspect his private office, and officials generally, are going to have a bit of a tough time dealing with him.

Still, the good news is that he may not be in post that long. Ministers are no more than caretaker ministers while the leadership contest takes place. They’ve been told they can’t take any new policy decisions, so I suspect McCartney is going to have very little to do. Indeed, it begs the question why new parliamentary under secretaries needed to be appointed anyway for this interregnum period. They will have nothing to do other than sign the odd letter and answer the odd parliamentary question. McCartney strikes me as somebody who will now think he’s really rather important now he’s a parliamentary under secretary of state. Nice title Karl! But I’m afraid you will rapidly discover that being a PUSS is a dull job at the best of times, but even duller when you have absolutely nothing that you are able to do in this interregnum period.

I very much doubt that we will see any changes to transport policy once we have a new prime minister and secretary of state with the possible exception of HS2. I’m told that polls of the party membership say they want HS2 scrapped - so I wonder if the final two leadership contenders who are subject to the final vote of the party membership might commit to scrap it to increase their chances of success!

15 July 2022 | 29

13/07/2022 16:29

CAREERS

Leydon named as MD of Arriva in Europe Chief transformation officer lands new role at European operation Arriva has announced the appointment of Sian Leydon to the role of managing director for mainland Europe.

Leydon has been an Arriva management board member since March 2021 when she joined the business as chief transformation officer with responsibility for evolving the strategic vision of the Arriva Group, including all its businesses across Europe.

Prior to joining Arriva, Leydon held executive management positions at Sydney Water, Australia for over four years including customer, strategy and regulation where she led the longterm strategy and transformation of the business.

Leydon also led frontline operations and customer service during a time of unprecedented operational challenges.

In her new role, she will oversee the leadership of Arriva’s presence in 10 European countries, including Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Slovakia and Slovenia. She

Sian Leydon

will report directly to Arriva chief executive Mike Cooper.

Commenting on her appointment, Leydon said: “Working in partnership with our client authorities to deliver increasingly more sustainable transport solutions is fundamental to achieving that vision, but from a social perspective delivering affordable, reliable, and accessible transport services are also key.”

Cooper said Leydon has “extensive leadership experience of developing and driving growth and transformation strategies, as well as a deep understanding of how to deliver business performance outcomes”.

He continued: “I am excited about the focus and energy she will bring to the role, ably supported by excellent teams across Europe.”

TINSON JOINS WRIGHTBUS

Former JCB manager takes on parts and service role Ballymena-based bus manufacturer Wrightbus has announced the appointment of Harry Tinson as sales director for parts and services.

Tinson joins the firm following almost a decade of working within the heavy equipment manufacturing industry. He brings with him a wealth of experience, having spent the past three years leading the parts and service team at JCB to achieve record sales. Tinson has also recently received his MBA from the University of Warwick.

Commenting on his new role with Wrightbus, Tinson said: “I am thrilled to be joining the business at a key period where I can bring my experience of leading global aftermarket sales teams.”

Ian Gillott, managing director, parts and services, said: “Harry is an absolutely superb appointment. I am absolutely delighted that he has joined the Wrightbus team.”

SPECIAL HONOUR FOR CONTROLLER Stephen Eaves career celebrated with loco naming After 50 years of service across the railway, Network Rail Kent controller Stephen Eaves has retired and been honoured by having a locomotive named after him.

In his career, Eaves worked in many areas of the railway, including time as a locomotive controller at Liverpool Street and Swindon, and deputy chief controller of Network South East’s operations, based at Waterloo.

Latterly he was based at the Kent Integrated Control Centre.

Speaking about having the GB Railfreight locomotive named after him, Eaves said: “It feels unreal... It’s a dream turned into reality”.

30 | 15 July 2022 PT269p30-31 30

Stephen Eaves pictured in the cab of Stephen Eaves

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13/07/2022 17:16

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15 July 2022 | 31

13/07/2022 17:16

DIVERSIONS

Metro worker recalls Thunder Thursday

landslide on the East Coast Mainline.

It also brought the entire Metro system to a halt after stations, including Haymarket and Monument in the city centre, and large sections of track were flooded.

Despite the scale of the damage the Metro was back up and running by 6am the next morning thanks to the efforts of an army of staff who worked around the clock to get it fixed.

John Eagle was a signalling supervisor who was on call on the day of the storm.

“For us it was a case of all hands to the pumps to get the lines back open as quickly as we possibly could,” he said. “The way the staff all pulled together was unbelievable. It was a brilliant effort. It was the worst weather event we have dealt with in terms of the sheer volume of water that flooded the network.”

The most recent discovery is of an Anglo-Saxon burial site in Wendover, Buckinghamshire.

Almost three quarters of the graves contained high-quality grave goods, suggesting the site was the final resting place of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon community.

The items uncovered are dated to the fifth and sixth centuries, a period in which there are gaps in historical and archaeological record. The discoveries made by HS2 archaeologists will contribute a significant amount to the understanding of how people in

Anglo-Saxon Britain lived their lives, and what culture and society was like at that time.

Archaeologists noted how the goods with each burial appeared to be tailored to each individual - suggesting the items would have held some relevance and significance to the deceased and the mourners at the graveside.

It would be interesting to speculate about how finds from the HS2 project could be interpreted by archaeologists 1,500 years from now. Anti-HS2 placard anyone?

Vivid memories of storm that took out the Metro Workers on the Tyne and Wear Metro have recalled their battle to restore services after the super cell storm dubbed ‘Thunder Thursday’ shut the network 10 years ago.

The storm - which hit North East England suddenly on the afternoon of June 28, 2012 - saw lightning strike the Tyne Bridge, flooding close the Tyne Tunnel, power cuts leave over 23,000 homes without power and trains north of Newcastle cancelled after a

Another incredible find by HS2’s archaeologists

A GLIMPSE INTO THE ‘DARK AGES’ Whatever your thoughts about HS2, what’s undeniable is the sheer quantity of archaeological material the project is uncovering.

All going swimmingly

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Up in the clouds with SkyCycle...

A REAL LEGACY FOR JOHNSON Prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to step down was like catnip for infamous clickbait website MyLondon. It hastily bashed out a few hundred words on “Boris Johnson’s craziest London transport plans and what happened to them”.

These included SkyCycle, a plan to put giant cycleways above railway lines; the ‘Boris Island’ airport in the Thames estuary; and, of course, the Garden Bridge, which Transport for London sunk £24m on before it was scrapped.

Fun fact: Johnson, who was by then foreign secretary, refused to appear in front of the London Assembly to give evidence on the Garden Bridge after the project collapsed in acrimony in 2017!

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