Passenger Transport: October 7, 2022

Nine bidders in line for first GM bus franchises

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham announces 50-bus order as bids from nine operators are evaluated ahead of award of first franchises

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has announced an order for 50 new double deck electric buses and revealed the Bee Network brand that will be rolled out across the region’s bus, tram and eventually rail networks.

The order for 50 Alexander Dennis Enviro400EVs and Bee Network reveal come as Transport for Greater Manchester confirms receipt of 33 bids from operators vying to run the first franchise contracts. The bids have come from nine different operators and relate to 11 different franchises that will operate across Wigan and Bolton from next September.

“The countdown to bringing

buses back under local control for the first time in 36 years is well and truly on,” said Burnham.

“The previous government bought into what we are trying to do, and I underlined the importance of this partnership approach continuing during my meeting with the new transport secretary yesterday.

“By working together, we will realise our ambitions and deliver a network that will transform how people get around our city regionnot just in the years ahead but for future generations.”

The introduction of the first franchises in Wigan and Bolton is due to take place on September 17, 2023. Bids for the first tranche were received by September 9 and the evaluation process is now underway. Eight companies bid for both the large franchises in the two towns, two companies bid for all except one of the small franchises with a further company bidding for one small franchise.

“The countdown to bringing buses back under local control is well and truly on” Andy Burnham

Going growth?forThis sector can deliver that

An advertisment for a new managing director for Stagecoach South (you can view it on our website) is refreshingly honest. It states: “As you’ll be acutely aware, public transport, as with many other sectors, has suffered at the hands of Covid-19. We continue to feel the impact of this daily.”

I don’t recall ever seeing an advertisement like this, but I don’t recall times like this. Train operator Southeastern is bringing in a new timetable in response to season ticket journeys being down 32%, while bus operator Stagecoach East has axed 18 routes. While many remain optimistic about the future of public transport, it seems that we must go backwards before we ever go forwards.

The new transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, offers much support in her speech to this week’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. Rail was mentioned, but mainly in regard to ongoing strike action. “I can tell you there is a deal to be done,” she said. Buses didn’t get a mention, despite the implementation of the National Bus Strategy for England, and decarbonisation hardly featured. The mood has changed. “This government is unashamedly going for growth,” said Trevelyan, before talking up road building projects.

The public transport sector must therefore demonstrate its growth credentials to Trevelyan and her colleagues, showing how bus and rail services can combat the anti-growth coalition of traffic congestion and inadequate links between communities and opportunities.

IN THIS ISSUE 18 LESSONS FROM THE 9 E URO TICKET

“People were looking forward to having it. There was a real hype around it. Everybody wanted one.” But Germany’s 2.5bn Euro public transport pricing experiment has ended. Marc Bichtemann considers what we have learnt from it.

ORGANISATION PAGE

Adventure Travel 11

Alexander Dennis 1

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough 8 CrossCountry 11 Edinburgh Trams 4 Equipmake 12

First Bus 12 First Glasgow 4 FlixBus 8

GMCA 4, 5

Greater Anglia 6 HCT Group 8

Ito World 13

Kelsian group 8

London TravelWatch 6 Lothian Buses 4 McGill’s Bus Group 4, 12 Metrolink 5

Network Rail 11 RailPartners 7 RMT 11 Scottish Citylink 4 Southeastern 6

Stagecoach East 8

Stagecoach East Scotland 4 Stagecoach London 8 Stagecoach Wales 4, 11

Stagecoach West 4 Stagecoach Yorkshire 8 Stephensons of Essex 8 Team Pennine 5

Transdev Blazefield

Transport for Greater Manchester 1, 4, 5 Transport for London 8, 9, 10 Transport for the North 4 Transport for Wales 11, 13

Young Bus Managers Network

Zenobe

05 BURNHAM ACCUSED OF ‘COWARDICE’ OVER CAZ

Andrew Gilligan, who served as Boris Johnson’s special advisor on transport, has blasted Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham for scrapping plans for a chargeable Clean Air Zone. He said: “Actually walking the walk, even in a tiny way - he’s not up for it.”

20 D OES EVERYTHING NEED TO B E NEW?

Politicians love nothing better than a photocall. In a world of rapid media and short attention spans, the image is everything. But Nick Richardson explains why unveiling shiny new things does not address the root of the problems.

22

PO L ITICA LLY, D F T IS A P OISONED CHA L ICE!

Our Whitehall insider imagines what’s going on inside the minds of the mandarins at Great Minster House, home of the Department for Transport. “Whichever way you look at this it does seem that the rail reform proposals are unravelling”.

Robert

GMCA’s ‘Plan B’ if bus depot negotiations fail

While looking to secure existing depots, Greater Manchester Combined Authority has also acquired land in Wigan to build a new one

FRANCHISING

Greater Manchester Combined Authority has revealed it is negotiating to acquire the 10 local bus depots across the region identified as being strategically important for the move to bus franchising.

In addition to negotiating the acquisition of the existing depots for the first round of franchises in Wigan and Bolton, GMCA has already acquired land in Wigan to build a new bus depot, if it proves impossible to secure the existing depot infrastructure. Planning permission from Wigan Council is awaited at Martland Park for approval to build a 121-bus depot. GMCA has said construction would commence this month if an agreement cannot be reached to acquire the existing depots.

If it does acquire the 10 depots, GMCA plans to lease them back

NINE BIDDERS IN

LINE FOR FIRST GM BUS FRANCHISES

Continued on page 1

Passenger Transport understands that the bidder list for the large franchises comprises the incumbent major operators in the area, plus at least three newcomers to bus operation in the north west of England. These bidders will find out if they have won on November 25 with contract awards scheduled to take place on December 16.

to existing operators on an interim basis. This would allow normal commercial operations to continue until such time as they are required for the relevant tranche of franchising.

If it is not possible to successfully

acquire the sites, GMCA has said it has “a number of alternative routes for depot provision”. One of these routes is the acquisition of third-party land for temporary and potentially longer-term depot use like that at Martland Park.

IN BRIEF

SCOTTISH AWARDS SUCCESS

McGill’s Bus Group was named as Public Transport Operator of the Year at the Scottish Transport Awards last week. Edinburgh Trams, First Glasgow, Lothian Buses, Scottish Citylink, Stagecoach East Scotland and Glasgow Subway were all highly commended. Transport Scotland won Transport Team/Partnership of the Year for its transport plan for the COP26 summit; Lothian Buses scooped the Excellence in Accessibility Award; Scottish Citylink was named as Best Bus Service; First Glasgow won the Contribution to Sustainable Transport for the electrification of its Caledonia depot in Glasgow; and Scotland’s Railway won two awards for the redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street Station.

SOCIAL EXCLUSION REPORT

Planning permission from Wigan Council is awaited for the site at Martland Park

The Expression of Interest for the second trache of contracts was issued last month and will be operational at the end of March 2024. The third tranche will be contracted by the end of March 2024 and be operational by January 5, 2025.

The bus order and closure of the first round of contracts marks an acceleration of plans to improve bus services by Burnham. Last month a capped single fare of £2 was introduced across Greater Manchester following agreement with local bus operators.

Passengers are also able to make

unlimited journeys across all bus operators for no more than £5 (adult) or £2.50 (child) a day. TfGM has said opportunities are being explored to extend the cap to other ticket types such as weekly passes.

Bus operators are being reimbursed for participating on the scheme on a ‘no better, no worse off’ basis. Combined authority members were told last week that given the considerable uncertainty over public transport funding going forward, the fare initiative is to be reviewed annually to ensure sustainability.

New research by Transport for the North reveals that 3.3 million people from across the North of England live in areas where there is a significant risk of transportrelated social exclusion. “Over one in five people from this region are at risk of exclusion because of the limitations of transport options in their community,” said Lord McLoughlin, TfN’s chair. “This issue is holding the North back and must be addressed.”

STAGECOACH DRIVERS TOPS

Stagecoach drivers secured the top three spots at the Bus Driver of the Year competition which was held in Blackpool last weekend. Stagecoach Wales driver Michael Evans was named Bus Driver of the Year, beating Anthony Quinn of Stagecoach West into second place and Ian Field from Stagecoach East Scotland into third place.

Burnham accused of ‘cowardice’ over CAZ

Burnham’s decision to axe Clean Air Zone criticised by Gilligan

ROAD USER CHARGING

Andrew Gilligan, former prime minister Boris Johnson’s special advisor on transport matters, has blasted Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham for scrapping plans for a chargeable Clean Air Zone.

Burnham, who won a landslide second term as mayor of Greater Manchester in 2021, paused plans for a CAZ scheme earlier this year after the original scheme was deemed unworkable. Instead Burnham has proposed an investment-led, non-charging Clean Air Plan for the region.

But Gilligan, a former Evening Standard and BBC journalist, accussed Burnham of “cowardice and feebleness” for pausing the plans at a fringe event at the Labour conference in Liverpool.

“That is the kind of level of cowardice and feebleness

HEAD OFFICE

STAFF CONCERNS

Fears for job security arise from franchising scheme

FRANCHISING

Head office staff at Greater Manchester bus operators have expressed concern that their jobs may be at risk if their employer fails to win any of the region’s forthcoming franchising contracts. While depot and driving staff would be covered by TUPE legislation, head office staff would not. “We do have some real concerns at what might happen to us,” one staffer told

Passenger Transport

METROLINK PATRONAGE STILL STRUGGLING

that [the last Conservative administration had to deal with],” asserted Gilligan at the Policy Exchange fringe event.

Burnham “can talk the talk,” he continued, but “actually walking the walk, even in a tiny way - he’s not up for it.”

Gilligan continued: “Central Manchester has got the highest levels of asthma, the highest levels of lung disease in the country and despite winning every single one of the 215 Wards in Greater Manchester at the election last

year, despite a plurality of 48 points - he got 67% to 19% in the mayoral election - [Burnham] still doesn’t feel he has the political strength to charge a few vans and taxis a few quid for driving to central Manchester. That is the level of cowardice and feebleness that we’re dealing with.”

Gilligan said he was not anti-car and welcomed the electrification of private vehicles “but I was always quite worried that some policy-makers thought it was the only thing we needed to do or at least the only thing they were comfortable talking about”.

He also warned that the public transport sector would face tough competition if driverless vehicles, which he described as “the revolution that never quite arrives”, became a reality.

“You won’t need a licence or insurance or a parking spot or take a [driving] test so why would anyone bother with public transport?”

Light rail system averages 70% of pre-Covid ridership

LIGHT RAIL

Transport for Greater Manchester has admitted that patronage on the Metrolink light rail system continues to lag behind that experienced prior to the pandemic.

Danny Vaughan, TfGM’s head of Metrolink, last month told members of GMCA’s Metrolink and rail networks sub-committee that patronage has been steadily recovering since the low of circa 41% of pre-Covid levels during the Christmas 2020 period.

“Patronage has continued recovering, punctuated by impacts of national events, holiday periods, planned engineering work on the network, rail strikes and most recently national weather warnings of extreme heat,” he said. “Taking into account the factors referenced above, journeys on the network have recovered to between 70-75% of pre-Covid on a regular basis.”

Vaughan revealed commuter numbers, although still supressed, have also begun to recover. Estimates suggest that approximately 70% of pre-Covid average commuter patronage has returned to the network with some pressure on peak capacities between Tuesdays and Thursdays on the Altrincham, Bury, East Didsbury and Eccles lines.

Meanwhile, Vaughan warned that funding support from central government has only been agreed up to the beginning of October 2022. There have been indications that no further recovery funding will be provided and discussions were continuing. “As a last resort, GMCA has sufficient reserves available to temporarily fund Metrolink’s forecast net deficit for the remainder of 2022/23,” he said.

“So why would anyone bother with public transport?”

Gilligan accussed Burnham of ‘cowardice and feebleness’

NEW LOOK HOME FOR TEAM PENNINE Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, joined Transdev Blazefield chief executive Alex Hornby to officially reopen Team Pennine’s depot at Elland last week after a major refurbishment.

There are now just 28 passengers across the entire Southeastern network who have a First Class annual season ticket

Southeastern’s revised timetable axes First

Train operator’s new timetable aims to reflect changes in way passengers travel following Covid-19 and season ticket slump sees First Class scrapped

NETWORKS

Southeastern has announced it will remove First Class from its services with the introduction of December’s timetable, noting that there are now just 28 passengers across its entire network who have a First Class annual season ticket.

The train operator says the removal of First Class from all of its mainline trains will free up as many as 60 seats per day on each 12-car train. Other operators have already made similar moves. Greater Anglia scrapped First Class on all trains except for its flagship Intercity services in 2020.

Southeastern’s decision forms part of a wider recast of services that aims to take into account changes to travel patters as a result of the pandemic.

The train operator has revealed that compared to 2019 it is now carrying just 56% of its former weekday peak passengers. This increases to 77% at weekday off-peak and 90% of weekend traffic. Southeastern has also revealed that based on sales data, over the six months between February 2022 and July 2022, weekly, monthly and annual season ticket journeys on its network were down to 32% of sales in the six months prior to the

pandemic. Annual season ticket journeys were at 15% of pre-pandemic levels.

“Customers are now commuting a few days a week, not all week, as hybrid working is here to stay for some time,” said Southeastern. “A recent survey said customers are commuting an average of 1.8 days a week.”

These changes in wider society have led the train operator to introduce a new timetable from December 11 that aims to “provide a simpler, more reliable train service”.

However, the new timetable has been criticised by London TravelWatch, which has expressed concerns about cuts to direct train services to Charing Cross, Waterloo East and Cannon Street stations in central London.

The watchdog claims the new timetable will mean that people will have to change at London Bridge to finish their journey.

“As London Bridge is already a busy station, we’re concerned these changes will negatively impact disabled passengers and those with accessibility needs who will have to get off the train and navigate lifts, escalators and stairs down to the main concourse,” said a spokesperson for the watchdog.

“We’re calling on Southeastern to make sure these service changes are well publicised so that people are not caught out when making journeys from December. We’d also expect to see a big increase of staff at London Bridge to assist those people who need extra help getting to where they need to be.”

However, Southeastern said there are a raft of improvements with the introduction of the new timetable, including the restoration of peak time services between Beckenham Junction and London Blackfriars. There will also be a new all-day service between Maidstone East and Charing Cross, via London Bridge. It added that these changes reflected the way in which people now travel.

“The way we all travel has changed post-pandemic, and many of our customers are now using our services differently and at varying times of the day,” said Scott Brightwell, Southeastern’s operations and safety director.

“The simpler structure of the timetable, with most trains leaving stations at broadly the same time each hour, means we can more add more trains into the timetable as demand changes.

“As we continue to recover from the pandemic, our focus remains on providing the most convenient and reliable railway for everyone who uses it.”

“Many of our customers are now using our services differently”

Scott Brightwell

Labour commits to rail nationalisation

Louise Haigh highlights Avanti West Coast failings

OWNERSHIP

Labour has confirmed its commitment to public ownership of passenger rail despite confusion earlier this year about the party’s position on the matter.

Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool last week shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh blasted the recent performance record of Avanti West Coast and said a future Labour government would “build an Elizabeth Line for the North and deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 in full”.

“We can only build a fairer, greener future by taking power from failing private operators and putting it back in the hands of the public,” she added. “Avanti West Coast has become just the latest poster boy of the failing status quo.”

GROWTH PLAN

SUPPORTS RAIL

Truss backs Northern Powerhouse Rail project

PROJECTS

While there could still be some changes as a result of the fallout from the government’s recent ‘mini budget’, there was some good news for transport with chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announcing support for a series of rail schemes. All have previously been proposed, and in some cases work on them has already begun.

The big news is that the government has confirmed it intends

Haigh criticised the train operator’s record, including it receiving “£4m in performance bonuses”. She continued: “Instead of holding those responsible to account for this fiasco - the Tories played their tired, old tune. They blamed the workers who keep our rail network going.

“The workers aren’t failing the British public - the Tories and their disastrous rail system have

catastrophically failed us all.”

While trades unions have welcomed the party’s commitment to nationalisation, the rail industry said that while the pledge was not unexpected it was disappointing.

“To focus on ownership rather than outcomes, is to discount the proven track record of train companies,” said Rail Partners chief executive Andy Bagnall.

NEW MINISTERS JOIN TRANSPORT

New faces but Vere retains brief for buses

GREAT MINSTER HOUSE

The Department for Transport has clarified the reponsibilities for two transport ministers. It has also confirmed that new transport secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan will also have cabinet responsibility for the Northern Powerhouse.

Baroness Vere remains as parliamentary under secretary of state for transport, a role she has held since 2019. Her role is expanded to include aviation and all local transport. Former Home Office minister and Torbay MP Kevin Foster becomes a minister of state with responsibility for the railways.

Former financial secretary Lucy Frazer, the MP for South East Cambridgeshire, has been named as the second minister of state. Her transport responsibilities have not been confirmed. Neither have those for incoming parliamentary under secretary Katherine Fletcher. She is MP for South Ribble and will also hold the post of minister for women.

TAKE

to build the Northern Powerhouse Rail electrified high speed rail route in full from Liverpool to Hull.

During her leadership campaign over the summer, Truss promised to deliver the project in full despite it being scaled back in last year’s Integrated Rail Plan. It had been unclear whether Truss’s support meant that she would deliver the version of NPR set out in the IRP or revert to the plan originally promised by the government in 2014.

She reiterated her commitment to the latter project in an interview with ITV’s Calendar regional news programme for Yorkshire last week.

In terms of timescale for delivery

of Northern Powerhouse Rail, the prime minister said “we will set out the timetable in due course”.

Meanwhile, other rail schemes winning government support as part of the mini budget Growth Plan, are Cambridge South station, the Northumberland Line, White Rose station, Thorpe Park station near Leeds, the Transpennine route upgrade, East West Rail, improvements to Leeds station and in the Manchester area, Midland Main Line Phase 3 electrification.

However, on East West Rail there has been no confirmation whether this includes the final section from Bedford to Cambridge.

ROYAL MAIL STRIKES

CWU union members at Royal Mail have announced further strike action on October 20 that could delay delivery of the next issue of PassengerTransport

If you’re keen to ensure you have access to the latest issue in a timely manner, why not join the distribution list for our digital version? Simply send your name, email address and your delivery address postcode to subs@passengertransport.co.uk. Please note: access to the digital version is restricted to one email address per subscription.

Haigh: ‘The Tories and their disastrous rail system have catastrophically failed us all’

GARY ROBERTS PHOTOGRAPHY / ALAMY

“Avanti West Coast has become just the latest poster boy of the failing status quo”

Mayor battles to saveEast of England buses

Nik Johnson seeks to save 18 bus routes Stagecoach plans to axe

NETWORKS

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor Dr Nik Johnson has said he has launched an “urgent process” with bus operators to save as many of the 18 routes that Stagecoach East plans to withdraw in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough on October 30.

The operator announced plans for a revised network last month. It billed the changes as “introducing a new, sustainable bus network to the communities of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to reflect postpandemic travel patterns”.

While some routes have been enhanced, a total of 18 routes have

been identified for withdrawal. They include services between Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds via Newmarket, the Cambridge to Newmarket portion of which has since been saved after Stephensons of Essex lodged a new service registration, and a sizeable number of services in the St Ives and Huntingdon areas.

Darren Roe, Stagecoach East managing director, claimed the company had made “some tough decisions that reflect the reality of how services are being used after the pandemic”. “Overall, services are operating at around 75% of pre-pandemic passenger levels, with concessionary travel for older people dropping to as low as 55%,” he said.

Roe added that the company could not “continue to operate services which we know are

FINAL CURTAIN FOR HCT GROUP

no longer financially viable”. Stagecoach East added that patronage on the 18 routes identified for withdrawal had dropped to 70% of what it was prior to the pandemic.

“In my time so far as mayor, no issue has evoked as strong a response as this announcement by Stagecoach,” said Johnson.

He added he had instructed officers to scrutinise the routes slated for withdrawal with the aim of keeping as many operating as possible through to next March. The combined authority has identified funding totalling £1.7m to support this drawn from savings derived from reduced payments to bus operators as a result of Covid-19 and a smaller amount from the Bus Recovery Grant.

“While stepping in to support

bus services is necessary in the short term, it is clearly not sustainable in the long term,” admitted Johnson. “There has already been a severe lack of national investment and vision for buses going back decades.”

Hinting that a franchised bus network may be the way forward, Johnson said “change and a new future for our whole bus system is needed”. He continued: “The combined authority has been working on that new future through a dedicated bus strategy.”

Observers have suggested that a move to a franchised regime may actually be welcomed by operators like Stagecoach East who are battling depressed patronage amid a background of rising costs.

“I wonder if the new regime at Stagecoach might actually welcome that,” mused former Brighton & Hove MD Roger French on his blog. “Someone else taking the risk on struggling services, while earning the company a steady income from running them under contract.”

speakers to

meeting

YBMN

The next meeting of the Young Bus Managers Network will be held on October 18/19 in Sheffield and will hear from nine speakers.

Those scheduled to appear include Thomas Ableman, director of strategy and innovation at Transport for London; Ben Gilligan and Matt Kitchin, managing directors of bus operators East Yorkshire and Stagecoach Yorkshire; and Andreas Schörling, managing director of FlixBus’s operations in the UK.

For more information and details about how to book, visit www.youngbusmanagers.org.uk.

Social enterprise bus operator closes down

OPERATORS

After weeks of speculation, London-based not-for-profit bus operator HCT Group collapsed into administration on September 23.

HCT Group’s trustees pinned the blame for the collapse of the bus operator on underperforming acquisitions made prior to the pandemic, the financial impact of the pandemic and the current surge in fuel and labour costs.

“As a small bus operator, this led to a difficult trading position and the group being unable to continue,” the trustees added.

HCT began in 1982 as Hackney

Community Transport and grew into one of the UK’s leading social enterprises, providing transport services in London, Yorkshire, Bristol, Jersey and Guernsey.

However, the deteriorating financial picture had led to a rapid asset sale. That saw the London bus operation sold to Stagecoach and the Channel Islands business passed on to Australian transport group Kelsian. In Bristol, First West of England took back the services they had previously contracted to HCT group, while new operators were identified for the group’s community transport operations in London.

“As a result of these transactions, the vast majority of the jobs at HCT Group have been preserved, albeit with different employers, and the passengers and transport

commissioners that relied on these services will not experience disruption,” said the trustees.

“The closure of HCT Group is an immensely sad day. Everyone worked tirelessly to put the organisation on a sustainable footing, but market forces, lack of scale and multiple adverse events meant this proved impossible.”

Elizabeth line on track to be TfL cash earner

Troubled project is ahead of budget as performance impresses

CROSSRAIL

New figures from Transport for London have revealed passenger numbers and fares revenue on the Elizabeth line are exceeding budget with the line now expected to breakeven within two years.

The news follows quarterly figures from the Office of Rail and Road which found 88.1% of Elizabeth line trains were on time between April and June, making it the most punctual rail service in the country and just ahead of Greater Anglia at 87.4%.

A paper by Rachel McLean, Crossrail Ltd’s chief financial officer, to TfL’s Elizabeth line committee, revealed in the most recent period passenger journeys for the line exceeded budget by 14 million, partly due to the central section opening five weeks earlier than planned, plus higher than

Bond

Transport for London has confirmed the long delayed Elizabeth line station at Bond Street in London’s West End will open on October 24, subject to final approvals.

The station is expected to be be transferred to station manager London Underground within days. Work will then take place to familiarise staff

expected passenger numbers across the whole line. Fares income was, therefore, £20m above budget as a consequence.

Meanwhile, in the year to date direct operating costs were £8m lower than budget, and the net operating deficit for the Elizabeth line was £101m, £28m favourable to budget. Elizabeth line capital expenditure was £2m lower than budget for the year to date and

the Elizabeth line is on target to breakeven in the year 2023/24.

At the same meeting, Elizabeth line director Howard Smith confirmed that in terms of reliability, the Public Performance Measure (PPM) has remained steadily above 95% on the central core between Paddington and Abbey Wood. He added this demonstrated “that inherent ‘background’ reliability is high”.

Smith continued: “There is no single major contributing factor or systemic issue impacting PPM, however the team [at TfL and operator MTR Crossrail] continue to work to improve resilience, driving down response and recovery times to one-off events.”

Meanwhile, Sunday services on the central core will commence on November 6 and from this date services between Reading and Heathrow in the west to Abbey Wood, and from Shenfield in the east through to Paddington will start. At this point, train frequency will also increase significantly, with 22 trains per hour (tph) between Paddington and Whitechapel at peak times and 16 tph off-peak, up from the current 12 tph.

Following train software debugging over the summer, it is planned to install a new version of the train operating software (codenamed ELR300) over the Christmas period. This will allow the introduction of the innovative driverless auto-reverse function at Paddington which will pave the way for high frequency 24 tph on the central core.

opening

and undertake final trials before opening for passenger services.

“When we opened the brilliant central section of the Elizabeth line earlier this year, I promised that Bond Street station would open this autumn and I am extremely pleased that Londoners and visitors will be able to use this magnificent station from 24 October,” said outgoing London

transport commissioner Andy Byford. “The new Elizabeth line station at Bond Street will be the jewel in the crown of the West End’s transport provision.”

London mayor Sadiq Khan heralded the opening of the new station as a landmark moment.

“As London continues to recover from the pandemic, it’s vital that we encourage people back on to public transport and out into our city in order to help build a cleaner, greener and more prosperous London for everyone,” he added.

TUBE

RIDERSHIP GAIN

Five million trips for Northern line extension

PATRONAGE

Transport for London has revealed over five million passenger journeys were made on the Northern line extension to Battersea Power Station in its first year of operation. Battersea Power Station is the busier of the two new stations on the extension with approximately 80,000 passengers per week. Nine Elms station attracts more than 40,000 trips. It is expected 10 million trips will be made by 2024/25.

Project is moving towards operating 24 trains per hour on central core

“It’s

that

encourage people

on to public transport and

into our city”

‘Welsh proposals arenot bus franchising’

A retired local authority transport officer says it would be more appropriate to term Welsh Government bus reform proposals as ‘tendered network’

BUS REFORM

Franchising is a misnomer for the contracting method the Welsh Government plans to introduce across Wales, according to retired local authority transport officer Bob Saxby. He said “tendered network” would be more appropriate, as with Transport for London. “Franchising implies big, area-wide contracts that might exclude small operators. London has a contract for each route.”

Consultation on the government’s proposals revealed concerns about the impact of franchising on Wales’ relatively large number of independent operators. Saxby, who formerly worked for Gwynedd and Conwy councils, said local authorities should invite bids for individual routes in urban areas or individual bus workings (covering the daily duties of each vehicle) in

rural areas. He said this would enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to compete.

This approach would not preclude bidders from proposing to deploy resources across multiple routes or bus workings for economies of scale. Such efficiencies were essential in rural areas, he said. The local network would have been designed before tendering to optimise efficiencies and connections between services.

Having various companies operating the local network would make no difference to passengers because fares, ticketing and branding would be uniform.

Saxby recalled a tendering

exercise by the pre-1996

Gwynedd County Council where bidders were invited to submit prices based on revenue risk being taken by the council or the operator. The council had taken the revenue risk where that option would generate a saving of at least £5,000 to £10,000 (depending on contract size). For other contracts, the council saved money through the operator taking the revenue risk.

“Before we started, Crosville had 88% of the coverage,” he said.

“By the time we had done the tendering, it was down to 58%.

A lot of the contracts went to operators who had only ever done schools work before.”

Crosville’s new contracts were ones where the operator took the revenue risk. The option of the council taking the revenue risk had enabled and inspired smaller

operators to bid for and win contracts. This had reduced prices and increased competition.

Saxby said the Welsh Government was expecting local authorities to take revenue risk and set fares under the proposed franchising model, but there was no reason why bidders should not be allowed to propose taking the revenue risk if they wished. However, he said TfL had started with this dual approach and now took the revenue risk on all contracts itself.

The government’s White Paper, published in April, acknowledged the risk franchising poses to smaller operators and said the government and Transport for Wales were working with operators to consider how to reduce barriers to entry and the capital risk of bidding.

“We are proposing that when exercising franchising powers, all feasible steps should be taken to seek to ensure that franchising plans and forms of contracts used to operationalise them will give small and medium sized bus operators an equal chance to compete with corporate players and will support a healthy SME sector. We are proposing that this includes a specific legislative duty to consider the impacts on SMEs when franchising.”

It continued: “The scale at which contracts are let for services will be determined on a case by case basis, from individual routes to entire local networks.”

Saxby said public consultation on each proposed network was vital as this would identify pitfalls and minimise objections after changes had been introduced. He recalled an occasion when Gwynedd CC had published a proposed new timetable in local newspapers and used the feedback to modify its proposals and avoid unintended consequences.

Franchising authorities

“Franchising implies big, areawide contracts”

Operator hires agencydrivers to fill the gaps

Adventure Travel’s strategy aims to unlock Welsh expansion

NETWORKS

Temporary use of agency drivers is enabling Cardiff-based ComfortDelGro subsidiary Adventure Travel to expand in areas where Stagecoach has surrendered contracts during staff shortages.

Adventure Travel has branched out into new territory with the capture of contracts for three local routes in the Abergavenny area and the Abergavenny to Monmouth route. Two vehicles are required. They and the drivers are initially based in Cardiff but the operator is considering opening an outstation closer to Abergavenny. It has also taken on a tendered route in north Cardiff which was previously

MARCHES LINE

SIGNALLING WOES

STAFFING

Shortages of staff able to operate the mechanical signal boxes along the Marches line caused thousands of delay minutes to Transport for Wales services new statistics reveal.

The line between Newport, Hereford and Shrewsbury is vital to two of TfW’s longest and highestearning services, from Cardiff to Manchester and to Holyhead. Its importance has increased since the pandemic because it is used by some passengers who previously would have travelled via CrossCountry services northwards from Bristol.

CrossCountry has not restored its

contracted to Stagecoach.

In recent months, Stagecoach has reduced various services in response to a shortage of drivers. Passenger Transport asked Adventure Travel how it was able to expand its territory while Stagecoach South Wales was short of drivers.

“A significant number of agency workers were engaged by us in 2021, to enable us to continue running registered services during the height of the driver shortage when people were leaving the sector in very significant

numbers,” said an Adventure Travel spokesperson.

“Gradually, we are returning them and replacing them with employees, but the process is slow and torturous because of the churn within the bus and coach industry (bus much more so than coach, in our experience). Some agency drivers who were due to leave have been temporarily retained whilst we staff up for additional contracts. We now have 20% less agency drivers than we had at the peak, in mid-2021.”

They added: “We would be expanding at a greater rate of knots if it were not for the well-documented national driver shortage.”

Stagecoach remains one of the largest bus operators in South Wales and recently opened a new £7m depot in Cwmbran.

COST OF LIVING CRISIS

The Welsh Government has been urged to provide support to people who are living in transport poverty as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.

A new report by the Senedd’s climate change, environment and infrastructure committee says it found evidence that the issue affects some groups disproportionately. Those particularly affected include disabled people as well as older people and women.

To make bus and rail travel more appealing, the report urges the Welsh Government to look at and learn from the examples set by other countries. The committee makes specific mention of Germany, where a recent experiment allowed a month’s unlimited travel on regional public transport networks for €9. It also references Spain, which has introduced free travel on short and medium distance trains.

full services there.

By the spring, TfW’s inter-urban revenue had returned to 99% of pre-pandemic levels and passenger numbers were exceeding capacity on the Marches and North Wales Coast lines at weekends (PT270).

However, services on the Marches line have been disrupted by shortages of signallers who are trained to operate the mechanical signal boxes along the line. Following a Freedom of Information request, Network Rail has revealed that in the year to July 15, the line was closed on five occasions due to a lack of signalling staff. This resulted in 26 train cancellations, causing 645 delay minutes.

As an example of the scale of disruption, on March 22 Network Rail informed passengers that the line would be closed from 11.00 to 18.00

because it did not have a member of staff to operate Hereford signal box. Replacement buses were requested and passengers were invited to make a long diversion via Birmingham.

The problem has continued since the period covered by the statistics. Another closure on a Sunday in August knocked out Hereford’s services to London and Birmingham as well as Marches line trains.

During the year to July 15, the operating capacity of the Marches line was reduced on 49 occasions although the line was able to remain open, with one or more of the signal boxes temporarily closed. This resulted in longer block sections than usual, causing many trains to wait for preceding services to clear. In total, 2,613 delay minutes were attributed to the 49 incidents.

Network Rail had previously proposed to resignal the Marches line in the current Control Period. However, funding reductions led to Network Rail focusing on life extension work for the Marches line’s existing signalling. This has included a £250,000 refurbishment of Severn Bridge Junction signal box in Shrewsbury, the largest mechanical signal box in the world.

Another consequence of the reliance on mechanical signalling technology is that the Marches and North Wales lines have closed completely during RMT rail strikes this year. The RMT is not in dispute with TfW but Network Rail does not have enough cover during strikes to open the large number of signal boxes. The Wales Route is signalled from 49 different locations.

Staff shortages lead to significant rail delays

‘Slash ticket costs to cut transport poverty’

WALES URGED TO COPY GERMANY

“We now have 20% less agency drivers than we had in mid-2021”

“We would be expanding at a greater rate of knots if it were not for the welldocumented national driver shortage”

Bus use boost if greenbenefits were known

First Bus data provides snapshot of UK travel habits and attitudes

PUBLIC OPINION

Half of UK adults have agreed that they would take the bus more often if they knew that decision would have a direct, positive impact on the environment, according to new research.

The three main factors people say are the biggest benefits of choosing to travel by bus over a car are the no parking hassles (45%), saving money (36%) and protecting the environment (29%).

The data, which provides a snapshot view of UK travel habits and attitudes towards the benefits of sustainable transport, was commissioned by First Bus to highlight the benefits of bus travel for World Car Free Day on

FIRST BUS AND EQUIPMAKE

RENEW YORK FLEET

12 electric Optare Versa buses to be converted

ELECTRIC BUSES

First Bus is partnering with electrification specialist Equipmake to repower 12 of the operator’s firstgeneration electric buses in York.

Equipmake has been awarded a contract to convert the electric Optare Versa buses using its pioneering electric drivetrain at the company’s base in Snetterton, Norfolk. Equipmake expects each converted bus to have a range of 150 miles in all UK weather conditions, thanks to a larger battery and a patented HVAC system, extending the

September 22.

First Bus has recently placed the UK’s single largest ever electric bus order outside of London (193 vehicles) and will have over 500 zero emission vehicles in active service on UK roads by March 2024. By replacing older buses, this latest zero emission bus order saves approximately 11,745 tonnes CO2e per annum - the equivalent of removing 5,555 diesel cars from our roads.

The research by First Bus shows, that 46% of 16–24-yearolds have started taking the bus

because of the cost-of-living crisis as it is seen as a great way to save money on petrol, help the environment and also considered more relaxing than driving.

With good health and wellbeing perhaps more important than ever post-Covid, 43% would choose going by bus as this is a more sustainable travel option with a further 35% admitting it helps with their mental health more than other modes of transport and 21% believing it makes them less stressed while 20% said it made them happier.

First Bus UK’s chief sustainability and compliance officer, Isabel McAllister, said: “We feel that bus is a huge part of the solution to help clean our air, tackle congestion on our roads and take back more of our public spaces.”

ZENOBE AND ZEELO

Zeelo, the UK’s largest smart bus platform, and Zenobe, the EV fleet and battery storage specialist, have announced a partnership to drive the electrification of private bus transport in the UK. The two companies have signed an agreement that will enable Zeelo’s network of 200 bus and coach operators to trial electric vehicles, including temporary charging infrastructure provided by Zenobe.

The partnership has already seen Zeelo and Zenobe support operator Airsym to launch new electric services, including the provision of an electric bus service for students at Dwight School London, and an electric coach that will operate at London Heathrow airport and as a shuttle service for staff at McLaren Automotive.

ZENOBE AND MCGILL’S

life of existing zero-emission buses.

Both single-deckers, such as the Versa, and double-deckers, can be repurposed to incorporate Equipmake’s unique, scalable, modular Zero Emission Drivetrain.

Equipmake repowers are tailored to specific requirements provided by the operator, with service routes simulated to ensure the optimum battery power level is selected to secure driving ranges of 150 to 250 miles. This range is more than sufficient for a complete duty cycle, allowing buses to be recharged faster, overnight and operate for longer during the day.

Equipmake’s repower programme has both environmental and cost benefits, with each conversion costing less than half the price of a new electric bus. With most buses

in service for 14 years or more, operators can make significant savings by repowering a bus halfway through its usable life. Work is already underway on the first Versa conversion, and following the successful trial, 11 more buses will be repowered over the coming months, with delivery of the first vehicle scheduled for next month.

EV fleet and battery storage specialist Zenobe is extending its relationship with bus operator McGill’s. The continued collaboration will see the electrification of a bus depot at Greenock, due to go live in the first quarter of 2023, and the expansion of the electric depots at Inchinnan and Johnstone, facilitating the operation of 41 new electric buses. This brings the total number of electric buses in the fleet to 109.

HYDROGEN TRAIN TEST

A hydrogen-powered train project led by the University of St Andrews has successfully completed its next phase of testing. Testing of the train took place at the Scottish Rail Preservation Society located in Bo’ness last month, including demonstration runs of the train and workshops to define the future strategy for rail decarbonisation in Scotland.

Equipmake’s repower programme has both environmental and cost benefits

“We feel that bus is a huge part of solution”

Isabel McAllister

Ito World and Optibus link up

Partnership will enhance insights into passenger journeys, route performance and driver behaviour

INSIGHTS

Optibus, the cloud-native, end-to-end software platform for public transport planning and operations, is partnering with Ito World, the SaaS solutions provider enabling better data-driven decisions to improve network performance. The partnership will enable more efficient public transport by enhancing insight into passenger journeys, route performance, driver behaviour, and more, using real-time data. The partners say that agile, responsive transportation management is essential for efficiently addressing today’s unpredictable and constantly changing operating environment. Tools that use real-time data sources can enable the rapid, data-driven decisions and insights needed to achieve that agility. Optibus brings to the table its optimisation algorithms and artificial intelligence. Ito brings its toolset and powerful data management platform which provide actionable insights that improve service and operational performance through sophisticated analysis of underlying real-time data.

“The ability to draw insights from real-time transportation data is the key to delivering reliable, customer-centric services

and improving operational agility. We look forward to working with Ito World to bring real-time data insight technology to the market and to helping the industry improve operational performance,” said Optibus CEO and co-founder Amos Haggiag.

Ito World’s real-time data solutions have supported initiatives worldwide, serving customers such as Google and Microsoft and delivering the data platform underpinning the Department for Transport’s Bus Open Data Service (BODS) and for major cities and transport authorities in the UK, North America and Europe.

Optibus’ data analytics tools are used in over 1,000 cities worldwide by clients of all sizes, from family-owned operators to large public transportation agencies.

“When transportation agencies and operators have access to sophisticated tools to derive insight from real-time data, they eliminate guesswork surrounding service performance,” said Ito World commercial director, Andy Walker. “The increased transparency enables data-driven decisions that were previously unachievable, and paints a picture of customer and driver experience that is as close to reality as possible.”

ROUND-UP

WM CONTACTLESS

£18m project launched to develop tap and go

TICKETING

Transport for West Midlands is working with bus operators to launch a major fare capping project. Over the next two years, a system will be developed to allow passengers to use their contactless cards across transport modes and operators.

Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Our new investment into multi operator contactless ticketing will help to make public transport here even more convenient, even more cost efficient and even greater value for money in the future.”

OMNIDAS

Transdev Blazefield uses depot allocation solution

SOFTWARE

Bus operator Transdev Blazefield is rolling out Omnibus’ cloud-native depot allocation solution to its bus operations in the north of England after successfully using the software at Team Pennine.

OmniDAS, a complete depot allocation system for real-time driver and vehicle management, will support the group to increase flexibility and efficiency of multi-depot working and reduce operational costs.

DRT LAUNCHES IN

HIGH WYCOMBE

Service supported by Buckinghamshire Council

DRT

Go-Ahead subsidiary Carousel

TFW UNVEILS

TRAWSCYMRU APP

New app will include mobile ticketing

APPS

Transport for Wales has launched a new app for its TrawsCymru long distance bus network. The app will help users with journey planning, bus timetables and will provide them with live vehicle tracking options, so they can check where their bus is on the network. It will also offer mobile app ticketing and display the carbon savings made by choosing to travel by bus.

Buses has relaunched its PickMeUp demand responsive transport service in High Wycombe after ending its Oxford experiment in 2020. The new service is supported by funding from Buckinghamshire Council. Passengers can book their travel via the PickMeUp app although a special telephone booking service is also available.

App and telephone booking are available

“The increased transparency enables data-driven decisions that were previously unachievable”Andy Walker

NORMAN BAKER

Pay-as-you-drive could be popular

the more difficult any transition will be. This is because more and more people are buying electric cars and getting used to the idea that they have nothing to pay for the privilege other than when they charge their vehicleno road tax, no fuel duty. That is clearly not sustainable as we go forward.

The stumbling block has been the politicians, terrified that any move towards pay-as-you-drive will cause uproar among motorists, a group the Conservatives in particular are very wary of upsetting.

Ministers have to date gone as far as saying that in the future, the amount of revenue raised from motorists needs to stay about the same, but no further. Even that statement was slipped out so that hardly anyone noticed.

Last week saw the release of a groundbreaking report from the Campaign for Better Transport on the familiar subject of pay-asyou-drive, or road pricing as those in the transport world tend to call it.

Familiar because pay-as-you-drive is not a new idea. It was first suggested, as far as I can see, way back in the mists of time in 1964. It was given new life in the early years of the Blair government which correctly identified the environmental advantages of switching to this form of vehicle taxation.

It was then killed off by a huge petition against the idea on the Downing Street website, and by the vote against a Londonstyle congestion charge in Manchester.

I managed to get the idea into the Lib Dem 2010 manifesto for government, in the teeth of stiff opposition from my Scottish colleagues, but after the coalition was formed, the Treasury pair of George Osborne and Danny Alexander (who represented Inverness), sat down together to lose bits of the two parties’ respective manifestos they disliked, and quickly dumped it.

In 2016 Edmund King at the AA came up with an interesting concept called Road Miles, effectively a trading scheme based on miles undertaken, but that too ran into the sand.

A decade earlier, the then transport secretary Alistair Darling, opined that road pricing was 10 years away, and always would be.

So what is different now? The answer is the arrival of necessity.

In the past, those advocating pay-as-youdrive were arguing for radical change to an existing system which many people regarded as well-established and perfectly acceptable.

In short, no change was seen as necessary. Given the choice to do something or do nothing, the latter usually wins. Changes mean winners and losers, and while the winners keep shtum, the losers complain noisily. It is the reason that to this day, water rates for households are absurdly still based on the 1989 rateable value of the property, although rates were abolished in 1992.

But change is certainly necessary now. Each year the Treasury collects about £35bn from motoring taxes, a huge sum that is then deployed to those parts of the public sector that do not raise income but which need massive expenditure, such as schools, hospitals and the armed forces. That income stream will soon be disappearing fast as electric vehicles replace those powered by petrol or diesel.

Treasury officials I have spoken to are acutely aware of the need for change and acutely aware that the longer they leave it,

We must replace fuel duty as we transition to electric cars but politicians are afraid to support road pricing. They shouldn’t be “Pay-as-you-drive, far from being a hand grenade, can actually, if sold sensibly, be a vote-winning policy”

But here is the second change. The report from the Campaign for Better Transport does not simply rehearse the environment, economic and social benefits that a pay-as-you-drive system can deliver, although it does do that.

The potential game changer is that the charity has conducted extensive surveys involving 3,000 people from across England, and conducted in-depth focus groupsthe first such survey I can remember. And the results are striking.

The results should give ministers the confidence they need to act. Pay-as-you-drive, far from being a hand grenade, can actually, if sold sensibly, be a vote-winning policy.

The survey revealed a high level and mature understanding that the present system has to change as fuel duty from petrol and diesel vehicles decline to zero. 60% who took part in the research agreed that there is a need to reform the present taxation arrangements.

Moreover, support for pay-as-you-drive increased within the focus groups as the potential applications of such a system were explained. At the start, 41% of participants expressed support for a change to pay-as-you-drive. At the end, that figure had increased to 49%. Those opposed had declined from 21% to 18%.

Another element that attracted the participants was the direct link between how far you drive and what you pay, welcomed both for the concept itself, but also for the transparency it provides.

It might be argued that this link already exists in terms of payment for fuel, which of course is related to distance travelled, but it is

an obscure link, and also it ignores the fixed cost, akin to a standing charge, that is Vehicle Excise Duty (VED). In fact once the annual payment for VED has been made, there is to a degree a perverse incentive to drive to get your money’s worth, as it were.

At present, people generally will simply fill up their tanks and not then think too closely about how many miles they are travelling. By charging per mile, participants felt it put them more in control of what they pay, and would mean they would question whether each journey was one they wanted to make by car, or indeed at all.

At this time when we have a cost of living crisis, that control proved to be quite an attractive idea.

Clearly, there are many different ways in which a pay-as-you-drive scheme could work. The Campaign for Better Transport report identified three of these options as potential front runners.

In the first, a simple per mile charge for electric vehicles is introduced, to run alongside fuel duty and VED for existing non-electric vehicles. Over time, the first income stream will increase and the second decline.

This option has the benefit of simplicity and minimal disruption to the existing vehicle fleet, but it could be seen as disincentivising the uptake of electric vehicles, although at worst this would delay the uptake, given that the government has a set a date beyond which new diesel or petrol vehicles will not be available for purchase.

In the second, a change to pay-as-you-drive is made for all vehicles at the same time. This could be related to the cleanliness of the vehicle, meaning a lower charge for electric vehicles and a higher one for those which pollute.

In the third, a more complex model is introduced which varies the charge according to when and where a journey takes place, and possibly to the emissions from the tailpipe. Such a scheme would be more focussed and enable government objectives to be more closely met, but there is a danger that an overcomplicated scheme could put people off, as well as potentially generating unforeseen loopholes.

In reality, there are many tunes that can be played on this instrument. As well as the variables referred to above, there could, for example, be a different charge for specific

groups such as blue badge holders, or essential workers.

There could be a lower charge per mile for those who live in rural areas where public transport is not a realistic option, although it might be argued that those who moved there did so in the knowledge that this was the case.

In the survey, 63% of those opposed to pay-as-you-drive said their main concern was that it would penalise people who in practice have no alternative means of transport other than the car.

On the other hand, 69% of those who opposed the idea said they would be more supportive if public transport was cheaper and more accessible.

One surprising finding was that people seemed less bothered about a system that tracked them in real time than a system based on automatic number plate recognition via roadside cameras. Perhaps people have become comfortable with the mobile phone in their pocket being continually live tracked.

In any case, the clear conclusion from this exercise is that the public is much more willing to embrace pay-as-you-drive than the government believes, though this was predicated on the fact its introduction did not constitute some sort of stealth tax.

Nevertheless, it is a complex and radical

At present, people generally will fill up their tanks and not then think too closely about how far they are travelling

change, and open to misleading attack by the extreme petrolhead brigade. It is good therefore that pro-motorist organisations like the AA and the RAC Foundation are in favour of the concept which will go some way to blunting the noise from the petrolheads.

It is also vital in my view for a consensus to be arrived at across the political parties, or the opportunity to attack it may prove to be too electorally tempting for one of them.

The reason HS2 is still on track, despite its grotesque overspend and other problems, is because Andrew Adonis, as the Labour transport secretary, took steps to involve and sign up the Conservatives and the Lib Dems (although the latter did not really need signing up). Without that approach, HS2 would have been killed off by now.

So the message to the government is clear: seek to get agreement from the other parties on the principle, get some non-political experts to come up with options, but most of all, get your head out of the sand and get a move on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.

“The public is much more willing to embrace pay-as-you-drive than the government believes”

ALEX WARNER

Rail is trapped ina state of paralysis

Perennial political uncertainty is used as an excuse to do nothing while civil servants gleefully shut the door on entreprenuers

They often say the best time to invest in shares is when the market has crashed and is at rock bottom. This was broadly my sentiment when, on Friday, just after having appeared live on BBC local radio trying to apologise for and explain the strike situation, I met a senior manager from a very big and impressive overseas transport company with one eye on the UK rail market. What I was telling him was doom-laden but also a great opportunity for his company to make an impact.

With decent government support, a company with a track record of success, fresh experience and ideas would do well over here, but what might put them off is the seemingly eternal paralysis and dilly-dallying that gets in the way of delivering a strategy for the rail industry. For over a year, I’ve been trying to pull together a consortium to bid for new Passenger Service Contracts as well as attract interest in other opportunities in the sector, including acquisitions, JVs and the like, not just from an operational, but also an infrastructure perspective. There’s been some interest from fresh faces, but they are put off by the lack of certainty, or even moderate clarity.

Therein lies the problem, in that traditionally those responsible for the direction of the UK rail industry seem to perceive that the almost stubborn slowness at which they operateshuffling policy papers and documents back and forth, waiting for tectonic plates to shift elsewhere (as an excuse for their own inaction) - is a trait that is acceptable to those in the

private sector, particularly those with a global lens and a pipeline of different opportunities that they can go for instead.

During the past week, the stultifying inertia has become even more intensely frustrating with speculation that legislation to confirm the existence of Great British Railways has been delayed even further and indeed the whole concept may never happen. Rumours also abound of a disconnect between the Department for Transport and the Treasury, which isn’t exactly helping the situation. GBR’s eloquent lead director, Anit Chandarana, spoke with extreme frustration about the potential impact of further uncertainty on the UK’s railway, whilst Rail Partners - the new UK trade body for private operators - seized the moment to urge greater involvement of the private sector. Meanwhile, when pointedly asked about the future of GBR, the DfT’s press statement notably referred to future investment in the railway and the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP), which has increasingly seeped into railway rhetoric and is in danger of displacing GBR as the ‘go to’ panacea for the ills of the past and current set-up. So, if Williams-Shapps is no

more, then we can start asking: “When’s the IRP being implemented?” A process that, like all these reviews and reports, can be strung out for years as a reason to postpone decisions and frustrate railway executives and serving as an excuse for the indolent and unaccountable among them to do diddly squat.

All this faffing around is deeply concerning and places the sector in an irrecoverable position. There are, as I’ve oft argued, few true leaders left in the industry - indeed, at the highest level, we’re placing almost all our hopes in the excellent messrs Hendy and Haines, but with each passing month or year, it becomes less likely that genuine change and the ascent of GBR will happen within their careers. At the level below, can we count on the continued goodwill of the TOC MDs - two of which told me last week they’d never ever felt so disenfranchised by the existing set-up and the DfT’s stranglehold? And below them, how sustainable is it for their lieutenants to have so little, if any, genuine autonomy?

What of the entrepreneurs out there? They don’t exist anymore and even if they did, they wouldn’t know where to go to present their idea with any confidence that the audience would have the clout or conviction to help make it happen. I’ve stumbled across two such examples in recent times. The first involved an excellent concept called Red Star, and a smart ticketing system linked to geo-fencing that enables price capping. It was formed by a consortium of the UK’s most entrepreneurial of operators in the modern era, Stagecoach and Virgin. In one of my roles, I was trying to help this see the light of day and watched the Red Star team and interested TOCs - MDs and directors with commercial and entrepreneurial acumen - thwarted with almost deliberate and gleeful pleasure by bureaucrats everywhere they turned. On one call I watched mid-ranking civil servants talked to them with such suspicion, contempt and disdain it made me question why I worked in the sector.

The second example of innovation being sapped into submission involved one of the more impressive entrepreneurs I have come across, a chap called John McArthur who co-founded AIM-listed technology and people business, Tracsis Group. John, IPO’ed Tracsis when he was just 32 and subsequently grew a tiny software business into a successful public company now worth almost £300m. He is

“All this faffing around is deeply concerning and placing the sector in an irrecoverable position”

also a proud Scot and a passionate advocate of the Forth Bridge and for 10 years, he has been trying to unlock an opportunity to transform it into a tourism attraction a la Sydney Harbour Bridge where folk can climb to the top and feast on panoramic views.

John was prepared to invest his own money and raise additional cash from the private sector to make this happen quickly and effectively. Moreover, he wanted all of the profits of such a venture (which would be considerable) to go to charitable causes. His experiences are typical of others I have spoken with; good ideas and sound strategy thwarted by blockers from all parts of the industry. Painstaking meetings of tut-tutting bureaucrats suspiciously giving reasons why it couldn’t happen, or - worse - saying it would be driven internally by the rail sector within “a few years”.

A decade on and nothing has changed. A Google search brings up The Forth Bridge Experience homepage but the last news update is from April 2017! Transport Scotland’s website says the initial proposals were raised in 2019 and the ‘full planning proposals’ will be submitted in 2022, so one wonders when or if anything will get built. I have John’s original slide deck in my possession and it’s dated June 2012!

That’s the lot of an entrepreneur or anyone who wants to create meaningful change, you come up against behaviours created by those who prefer to take a regular salary, coasting through their working hours, not needing to take risks. Their idea of making a decision is to kick it into the long grass or file it under ‘too difficult’. The industry and the cogs within it know that the annoying upstart behind it will eventually move on to annoy someone else.

There’s little space or outlet for entrepreneurs in today’s railway, despite all the job adverts, awards nights and trade press advertorials with corporate bigwigs wittering on about innovation. I love the phrase ‘innovation hub’ - it’s the new fad in town, companies have these ‘laboratories’ where ideas are spawned in a melting pot to change the nature of our industry. I ask you genuinely, have any of these actually created anything of material impact?

The problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that even if you had an idea or two, there is nowhere for it to be discussed and noone in authority to sponsor it. Can today’s entrepreneurs even be bothered with the rail industry to generate and execute their idea?

Have they the persistence and patience to navigate their way through the labyrinth? Can they bring themselves to face off with jealous jobsworths and their ‘not invented here’ eagerness to kill off concepts at inception?

For me, autumn is always my time to dream up ideas, to do something new, often as a means of refreshing my energy and motivation levels as the cricket season depressingly expires and the clocks go back. I’ve a few ideas that have been buzzing away in my head, some of which are about to get off the drawing board. These range from a prospect to transform and better market scenic services across transport, through to an idea around helping tackle the workplace reform conundrum in rail by creating privately funded social enterprises under a national support framework to run remote stations. I’m working with entrepreneurs to attract investment to acquire some companies, I’ve also an idea or two around mastering the multi-modal integration challenge and it’s my burning desire to bring together new customercentric operators to bid for Passenger Service Contracts when they eventually emerge.

But, seriously, who would I present these concepts to in the industry and who could I count on to invest the time to genuinely help pull them together and the conviction to drive them through? Can I also count on the industry being quick enough before I run out of steam?

After the excitement of the supplier workshops and follow-up meetings a year ago, we’ve heard nothing about the Passenger Service Contracts and there are still fundamental and very basic unanswered questions about the format. I gather they’re going to be delayed by a further 12 months. Is it really that difficult to complete the specification and take it to market? After all, the concept itself seems uncontroversial. Can we just get on with it please?

I know I’m not renowned for being the sharpest tool in the box but I can’t get my head round the delay. I don’t buy this excuse around there being a new transport secretary. Why can’t we create strategies and reviews, such as the Williams-Shapps contribution that everyone agrees will not be so intrinsically linked to the author and his or her longevity in a role? There’s this fear of actually committing to a course of action because there might be a change of prime minister or government. There will always be reasons not to do something and

we’ll always be in a state of interminable crisis.

The problem is, indeed, cultural and the industry’s inability to be ‘completer finishers’.

I accept there have been times in my career when I have been as guilty as most, but there’s many more CVs I stumble across with half-finished projects and initiatives, their incompletion blamed on some policy re-think or political situation. Really, it’s down to a deep-set, instinctive malaise and intransigence that’s in-built into the way in which businessnotably government and corporate activity - is undertaken. It’s a mindset that has infected whole swathes of the decision-making population in industry, including rail.

The challenge we have though is that the situation really has never been bleaker. Rail’s best leaders are getting closer to retirement age or just becoming so fed up they are jacking it in. The emerging talent is operating in an environment bereft of any creative inspiration or without the foundations of clarity around the future strategy within which they are likely to function. Entrepreneurs have fled forever more or are prevented, inadvertently or otherwise, from pursuing their dreams and making a difference because of a culture that denigrates and stultifies their passion and the the absence of any structure and framework to help nurture, guide and bring to fruition their concepts. Meanwhile, new entrants have long become disengaged and they’ve moved on to bequeath their talents, resources and money on places and sectors that provide more inspiring and supportive landscape.

The vibe I’m getting from the industry right now is almost an indifference towards what might or might not be the right approach going forward. Is it private or public, or a mix of both? Should we have a national guiding mind at the centre? Is it right to have very defined, if not constrained concession-type contracts with no revenue risk for suppliers? We’ve almost got to a point of no return whereby folk have lost interest in what the future make-up of the industry will resemble; they just want to get on with it. Any action is better than none.

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

“The vibe I’m getting from the industry right now is an almost indifference”

Lessons from the 9 Euro ticket

It’s been dubbed a huge success all round, and as the numbers for the 9 Euro Ticket in Germany come in, it certainly makes for a pleasing read. Over 52 million tickets sold in three months, 20% of travellers opted for public transport instead of the car, leading to 1.8 million tons of carbon saved. All very impressive figures which VDV, the German association of public transport operators, is keen to point out via its social media channels.

So, all good?

Well not quite. The 2.5bn Euro experiment also led to delayed and overcrowded trains, - though there are very few stories about crowded buses - and very little long term modal shift. One survey suggests that just 9% of those who purchased a 9 Euro Ticket

will use public transport more often after the promotion ends, though the sample included a share of regular public transport users who are likely to just return to their normal travel patterns. Incidentally, the headline 52 million ticket sales also counted those who had monthly or annual tickets and whose subscription were turned into 9 Euro Tickets for the three-month period.

Overseeing a regional bus company, I was out and about during the first week in June when the 9 Euro Ticket launched, speaking

to customers and staff about their initial impressions.

Reach

My encounter with Christine, a council worker who had bought the 9 Euro Ticket to “try and use the bus to get to work” really intrigued me.

She normally drives and told me that taking public transport, due to the connection required, adds about 30 minutes each way to her commute. Yet she tried anyway! Why? She was prepared to spend nine Euros on “this experiment”. She could have tried before the introduction of the 9 Euro Ticket and it would have cost her only 5 Euros for a day ticket. So, was price the driving factor to make Christine think about using public transport?

No. See, the crux is that we would have never reached Christine with a local ticket offer unless we had invested our whole annual

“Was price the driving factor to make Christine think about using public transport? - No”

Germany’s 9 Euro Ticket offered unlimited travel on local and regional public transport for just nine euros a month during June, July and August

Marc Bichtemann

turnover into marketing.

Instead, the 9 Euro Ticket was the talk of the town on a national level. It was in the news every day since it was first mentioned in February. It became a brand. People were looking forward to having it. There was a real hype around it. Everybody wanted one.

Simplicity

The second aspect is simplicity - in her article from August 31, BBC correspondent Jenny Hill explained the success of the ticket with its nationwide validity which meant the user did not have to deal with the fragmented fare structure in Germany. There’s some truth in that, though the fare system is still nowhere near as fragmented as in some areas in the UK. Operator-specific tickets are rare in Germany as most are organised in regional transport associations where cross operator ticketing is standard. Still, the 9 Euro Ticket took away the fear of having the wrong ticket because you traveled across various fare zones.

As the 9 Euro Ticket was not valid on long-distance trains and coaches, few users have used the tickets to make longer inter-regional journeys across several fare boundaries, but it was good to know you could have without having to research and buy a range of ticket options.

The simplicity also benefited some of the operators. Our bus drivers loved it. No more searching for the correct fare on the ticket machine. Not having to worry about change made their life a lot easier and add to that with most customers having a 9 Euro Ticket after the first week or so, we started to see a real drop in dwell times at bus stops, improving punctuality. It is worth noting that cash sales on regional bus routes still represent a fair share of the revenue taken. In urban centres, the picture was quite the opposite with patronage growth causing crowding at interchanges and slowing down trams, buses, and regional train services due to the sheer number of people.

Revenue impact

Revenue protection was difficult too. Due to the short-term nature of the ticket, there was just no way to validate a 9 Euro ticket issued by another operator 300 miles away whose design and set up a driver or RPO had never seen before.

Then there is the issue of revenue allocation.

In a multi-operator regional transport association with commercial and tendered routes, cross fare border agreements, route subsidies, etc. this was a real science. It is safe to say that the calculations of the balancing payments to make up for revenue loss, were crude and payments therefore higher than they would need to be. In the end, it involved a lot of guesswork.

Lessons for the UK

So what should a similar offer in the UK look like to make it a success?: Here are four tips:

knowing they have the security of an attractive offer to fill those additional trains and buses.

£2 single fare

All these points draw into question how successful the planned £2 single fare offer for England will be. It barely made the headlines and circumstances (death of The Queen, new prime minister, and strong focus on household energy bills) as well as not being applicable in London, did its reach no favours.

Make it big. The price is not the deciding factor - yes, it needs to be attractive, catchy almost, but the key is to keep it in the news so that you reach the biggest possible audience. With a coordinated marketing effort, supporting the public discussion, reach would be amplified significantly.

Stick to the simplicity. One ticket, for the whole country and all local and regional modes of transport - no need to reinvent the wheel here. It worked.

Clearly the challenge in the UK, even more than in Germany, would be a fair revenue allocation and reimbursement. I would have suggested that an additional criterion for success of a ticket offer, is plenty of time to prepare. I fear though that this would have led to failure. Drawing up agreements, allowing legal challenges and so on would just have seen the ticket disappear into the box labelled “too difficult”. Instead, the spark and (almost unreasonable) deadline provided by the political parties when the 9 Euro Ticket was announced, acted as an enabler to just get it done.

1 2 3 4

Make it digital. Though this will limit access to the ticket somewhat, the data gained will by far offset the loss of a small customer group. Additionally, a digital ticket will be much easier to validate via On Board QR code scanners and ticket gates and potentially a huge data source on behaviour. Make it longer. Three months was simply not enough to drive modal shift on a more permanent basis. People just won’t sell their cars if they know they’ll be back to square one in 12 weeks’ time. But a longer offer, even if more expensive, gives people an opportunity to plan, adjust and adopt a new habit. It also enables operators to extend and improve their networks and timetables,

If the offer is successful in attracting more first-time customers, it is likely to make things more difficult for operators. A sharp increase in the share of sales of single tickets on board, would result in additional dwell time at bus stops, reliability issues and a diminished customer experience, affecting particularly those who use the bus every day.

A similar point had been raised in Germany whereby regular users of public transport were suddenly faced with crowding and delays particularly on local railway services. However, the 9 Euro Ticket benefited those customers in equal measure as their monthly tickets were automatically discounted or part reimbursed, and their validity extended across the nation. This somewhat smoothed the anger.

In England, regular customers will not really benefit from the £2 fare but will face the potential consequences if more first-time customers take up the offer.

Germany in the meantime has agreed to have a follow up offer. Starting in January, it will be longer, digital, and valid across the country. But being priced somewhere between 40 and 60 Euros it will require most areas to completely change their fare structure. Lots of work ahead but there hasn’t been a day since the 9 Euro Ticket ended when the question of the new offer and the future of public transport in Germany wasn’t debated in the media for some reason or another. Now that can only be good news.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marc Bichtemann is managing director at Kahlgrund-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (KVG), a public transport operator in central Germany. He previously worked in the UK as managing director of bus operator First York and in various management roles with Virgin Trains East Coast.

“People were looking forward to having it. There was a real hype around it. Everybody wanted one”

NICK RICHARDSON

Does everythingneed to be new?

Politicians love nothing better than a photocall, but unveiling shiny new things does not address the root of the problems

Politicians love the photo opportunities provided by something new, a shiny train or a row of buses complete with a few middle aged white people or a deliberately posed set of people to represent diversity. In a world of rapid media, the image is everything, especially because many people appear not to have an attention span of no more than a few seconds. This pursuit of newness seems to be becoming the norm, replacing the boring old conventions of upgrading and upcycling equipment even though assets have plenty of life left in them.

Judgement by appearance

Surely any item of road or rail rolling stock should be judged by its performance and suitability, not just by its age. If it does the job it was intended to do and presents a good appearance, there is no need to hide the fact that it may not be a recent acquisition. For buses, hiding the obvious has been going on for years with some operators re-registering vehicles to disguise their age. Meanwhile some contracts specify a requirement for buses under a certain age; this then starts the cascade of older vehicles to somewhere else. The recipients might be relieved at acquiring a decent asset at a decent price, but although everything was once new, not everyone can have new equipment all the time.

However, some in the railways have managed to discard most or all of their trains to replace them with ‘state-of-the-art’ new fleets. This

may reduce maintenance costs but purchasing new trains is a costly business, not least when it involves third parties to finance the deal. It also requires depots to be reconstructed to deal with new fleets. However, there is nothing wrong with using trains that are not new - they have been designed to last thirty years at least with some carrying on for longer.

If a train continues to do what it is designed to do, then where is the problem? It is customary to undertake half-life refurbishments which make old trains look new. Transfer to another operator inevitably means a new livery and possibly an interior re-fit. However old it is, passengers often don’t notice or care – they are more worried about it turning up on time, going along as intended and being clean and

safe. In some cases they might even prefer the older trains which don’t have hard seats but do have seats that line up with windows. Rolling stock is often adaptable and adapting must be a more responsible approach than throwing it away to start afresh.

Untimely ends

Some of the assets disposed of illustrate the problem. The end has arrived for the first tranche of Eurostar stock, anything in Greater Anglia territory, Heathrow Express and South Western’s Class 442 units. The latter were refurbished (again) at great expense then scrapped before any passengers could use them. While this was in part related to pandemic-related falls in demand and incompatibility with some parts of the signalling network, there was still plenty of life left in them. Originally these used the motors from older stock, carrying on a tradition that some components or even whole underframes would form part of new-build stock. Some now-redundant stock is incompatible with other stock, depot facilities or signalling but this illustrates a failure to plan ahead without a coordinated approach; it’s also coupled with an obsession for the new. This throwaway fashion is reminiscent of the production of Mk III sleeper cars which were unused the moment they came off the production line and the planned regional Eurostar service, another spectacular failure.

Needless to say there are rolling stock designs that are universally unpopular. The design of Pacer units improved a bit from the early designed-by-committee horrors and they

Most of the first generation of Eurostar trains have been scrapped

plugged a significant gap for a very long time. I was amused to hear someone claim that they were ‘made from old buses’, a damning statement both of the trains and the bus sector. Quite a number of Pacers survive in various locations on heritage lines but the type of service they were created for now needs something rather better.

Missing the point

For buses and coaches, purchasing decisions made now will be around for at least 15 years for buses, 20 years for coaches and many survive beyond this. Deciding on the fuel type needs to be thought through because they will be operating for some time into the future. As with trains, if the bus performs its function then users will be satisfied, particularly if the interior is decent and presents as well looked after. Many would prefer a decent vehicle with a good driver and clean interior at an affordable price than a shiny new one just because it is new. No-one is going to boycott a bus simply because it is a few years old. The national bus strategy for England document includes lots of pictures of buses which, in common with so many bus publications, misses the point – buses are about people, not about vehicles. Unfortunately one of the illustrations in the strategy features a bus with a nasty scrape on it. The frenzied cleaning regimes created through the pandemic have been a noticeable improvement and serve to show that an older bus can be a perfectly acceptable bus.

The problems facing bus and coach services are not about new vehicles at all. Instead, new users need reassurance that the bus arrives on time, doesn’t get held up along the way and offers a good journey experience. This is clearly possible irrespective of the age of the vehicle. There have been some unintended consequences of the rush for newness. Because electric/hydrogen/other non-diesel buses are very costly, some hybrid vehicles have been converted to diesel. Others have been upgraded to Euro4 from their as-built state. Surely this is expedient and reasonable. Bearing in mind the rising price of electricity, decisions are not clear-cut.

Vivarail has demonstrated that taking old trains and completely re-fitting them is possible and a responsible approach in terms of sustainable provision. However, the

production line stops when all the source vehicles are used up. It could be argued that re-purposing should be prioritised over new builds in the interests of resource consumption. An interesting fashion with rail freight operators is to rebuild old locomotives to meet the regulatory requirements for emissions from new locomotives. The result is that some operators employ locomotives that are sixty or more years old and some have been substantially rebuilt to become, in effect, new assets.

Some trains have not only survived but improved, Class 43 power cars with High Speed Trains being a good example. They continue in service in the West of England and Scotland although their crash-worthiness has been questioned after recent incidents. Users liked them from the outset and their design deficiencies around doors and toilets have been remedied. Adaptation is possible and often cost-effective. The introduction of new trains has not been trouble-free, and entire fleets have had to be withdrawn temporarily to enable inspection for defects, notably

cracking above lifting points in the various manifestations of Hitachi IET units.

For light rail operations, additional rolling stock has provided an opportunity to replace older units having discovered their operational quirks. West Midlands Metro has re-equipped, Manchester Metrolink has acquired new units and the Tyne and Wear Metro will be introducing new stock to replace the original units that were refurbished some time ago and have now reached the end of their natural life of forty years. Similarly, Merseyrail is introducing new trains to replace life-expired units. There is justification for many rolling stock replacements but not necessarily all.

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.

Vivarail has demonstrated that taking old trains and completely re-fitting them is possible

GREAT MINSTER GRUMBLES

Politically, DfT isa poisoned chalice!

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

What a week or two we’ve had! I hardly know where to start! Liz Truss has been prime minister for barely a month and already there’s speculation that she will be subjected to a no-confidence vote by her parliamentary colleagues. It’s worth remembering that only 31% of Conservative MPs actually supported her in the final ballot of MPs during the recent leadership contest, so her hold on power is hardly rock solid! But I’ve checked with a friend who follows politics more closely than I do, and he tells me that party rules do not allow a new leader to be subject to a no-confidence vote for a year - unless the rules are changed, which they could be of course. I’m guessing that the recent opinion polls which give Labour a lead over the Conservatives of anywhere between 17% to a whopping 33% will send Conservative MPs into a state of blind panic. One political commentator has said that the YouGov poll giving Labour that 33% lead would translate into the party securing a parliamentary majority of around 350 seats and the Conservatives reduced to a rump of just 60! I can’t see the party tolerating this, so unless the opinion polls improve dramatically for the Conservatives there must surely be a real chance that the leadership rules will be changed and a no-confidence vote forthcoming.

But, for now, we are in the process of briefing up a new ministerial team here in Great Minster House. The reshuffle was, of course, paused by the Queen’s death but has now been completed, and we have a new parliamentary

under-secretary in Katherine Fletcher, the new MP for South Ribble elected just three years ago. She replaces Robert Courts. Baroness Vere stays, so at least we have a modicum of continuity. We’ve all had the opportunity to meet the new ministerial team when a couple of weeks ago staff were invited to a gathering so they could introduce themselves - although Baroness Vere needed no introduction, of

course. I did have to chuckle when Lucy Fraser told us that it had taken her a while to come to “the best department in Whitehall”. How kind! I chuckled because my politically active chum had previously told me she wanted to be Attorney General so is less than happy at coming to Great Minster House! We are used to new ministers saying how thrilled they are to be at this department, of course, and I’m sure all ministers say it about their new appointments - they can hardly say much else. So I take Lucy Fraser’s comments with a slight pinch of salt, even though it was a nice thing to say.

For the public transport industry we now know that Baroness Vere keeps the local transport brief (alongside aviation, as I understand it) and Kevin Foster takes all things rail. Good luck Kevin! With speculation already growing that we might be forced to scrap the eastern leg of HS2 from the West Midlands to East Midlands Parkway on affordability grounds, and with others urging us to scrap the western leg from the West Midlands to Manchester for the same reason, Kevin Foster is going to find out very quickly that investment in rail infrastructure has passions running high.

Because of the economic storm raging around us at present you can see why many will say that HS2 is no longer affordable - or even necessary now that rail patronage is depressed compared to pre-pandemic levels. Indeed, we have now been asked by the Treasury to find “efficiency savings”. That’s not necessarily the same thing as “spending cuts” of course. Nonetheless our departmental budgets are already under significant pressure because of the impact of inflation, so finding meaningful “efficiency savings” won’t be easy. Notwithstanding the political outrage that would follow, announcing scrapping HS2 north and east of the West Midlands would make a real contribution to the demand for savings - indeed, on its own it would go a long way to paying for the tax cuts or the energy rescue package. And I just can’t shake the feeling that the economic case for HS2 is seriously diminished because of the reduced demand for rail travel. Perhaps, if we do go after HS2, ministers won’t actually say they are scrapping it, just “mothballing” it - although in reality the two are one and the same, as we have effectively seen with Crossrail 2.

Then Kevin Foster has to quickly get his head around the proposed rail reforms and the details of the forthcoming High Level Output

“You can see why many will say that HS2 is no longer affordable - or even necessary”

Specification (HLOS) and Statement of Funds Available (SoFA) for Control Period 7.

As I have said before, I can’t believe that the Treasury is going to be anything like as generous with the CP7 settlement as it was for CP5 and CP6, and with rail revenues depressed by as much as £2bn a year compared to prepandemic levels, the Treasury must surely be sharpening its knife.

Meanwhile, there is growing speculation that the proposed rail reforms are hitting the buffers, if I can be excused the pun. The Guardian has reported on growing tensions between this department and the Treasury, which, I am told, are real. I’m hearing there is disagreement within this department over the construct of the proposed Passenger Service Contracts (PSCs). Indeed, I’m even told that potential bidders for these contracts, including incumbent operators, have signalled that they may not bid for the new contracts when, or perhaps if, they come to market since the rewards simply aren’t sufficient to make it worthwhile - something I have pointed out on more than one occasion. All this would explain, of course, why the Dutch government

wants to sell Abellio.

My colleagues even seem to be implying that the Transport Bill putting effect to the rail reforms and putting Great British Railways onto a statutory footing may not be introduced this autumn as originally planned. We need to legislate on other matters of course, such as autonomous vehicles, so I guess a slimmed down Transport Bill excluding rail matters may still appear, but confidence seems low. In this circumstance you can see a scenario where no legislation on the rail reforms sees the light of day before the general electionand then the Williams Shapps Plan for Rail will be unceremoniously binned by a new Labour government! Interestingly, our current official line when asked about the plans is that GBR neither confirms nor denies that these plans are being robustly taken forward - which seems to me to be a kind of non-denial denial.

The rail review was, of course, imposed on this department in 2018 by No 10, spooked by the third collapse of the East Coast Main Line franchise and by the 2018 timetable debacle. It’s hard not to conclude that the government at the time might well have

been better off leaving things well alone. The justification for the review was that rail franchising was no longer fit for purpose, but it seems to be increasingly clear, as previously expressed, that the problem wasn’t with franchising as a concept, but the way this department managed franchise competitions by encouraging ever more ambitious bids.

Whichever way you look at this it does seem that the rail reform proposals are unravelling. We haven’t even announced where the new GBR headquarters will be located - a decision which surely can’t be that difficult to make or announce. The time it’s taking to announce the winner of the competition seems to me to provide further confirmation that things are not going well, and if the market really is saying to us that they don’t like the new PSCs then a central plank of and justification for the rail review is pulled from under our feet.

In addition to Lucy Fraser, both Anne-Marie Trevelyan, our new secretary of state, and Kevin Foster also told the recent staff meeting that they were thrilled to be at the DfT. They may soon come to the conclusion that, politically, it’s a bit of a poisoned chalice!

“Whichever way you look at this it does seem that the rail reform proposals are unravelling”

MARKET

that it is not only used for day-to-day capacity, but also as a back-up for when there is no renewable generation. Which in turn means that a limited number of advance gas supply contracts can be entered into and thus, the spot gas price must be paid…

Right now, there areno good options

Various

We have to acknowledge that the world is in the midst of an energy crisis. The reasons behind this have been a hot topic for many months and started with the end of Covid stimulating a significant rebound in consumption and a sector that was not ready to meet this increased demand. This situation then developed into a full-blown crisis when Putin invaded Ukraine and the western world applied sanctions on Russian oil and gas. These issues are widely understood, but many have been caught off guard by the corresponding rises in the cost of electricity, which now threatens economies just as much as spiraling oil and gas prices.

James Spencer Portland

In Europe, the Americas and not least the UK, electricity pricing is “complex”. Over many years, power generation and transmission has been nationalised, privatised, renationalised, quasi-privatised, rationalised, taken over, split apart, legislated against, legislated for and in general, morphed (year after year) into extremely complex entities. If you want evidence of this, just look at your latest electricity bill and try to make any sense of it! Electricity costs are made up of several different charges (in the UK there are 11!) and broadly speaking these can be split into four different categories; generation, transmission, distribution and taxes.

All of these costs may be high or low, but at least three are consistent, which is not a word

that can be used to describe the final “killer” price factor; the cost of power generation. This charge is now so high that many British businesses are facing five or sixfold electricity bill increases and much of this is due to the problematic way that the cost of power is calculated. Basically, instead of looking at actual generation costs, the electricity price in Britain directly correlates with the marginal cost of gas (ie, the current global spot price). On the surface this seems scandalous as not only does the majority of gas generation emanate from long-term (non-spot) North Sea contracts, but up to 50% of UK electricity actually comes from nuclear and/or renewables!

There are, however, a number of reasons behind gas indexed prices and the first is to ensure that generators who are having to pay the market price for gas (for whatever reason) have an incentive to produce UK electricity. Otherwise, why would they – as private companies - bother generating power at all? The logical response to this might be to ask why any well-run generator would have to buy gas at spot prices at all - surely that is where competitive long term supply contracts come into play? This should be true, but the nature of electricity generation from gas is

The second reason behind gas indexed electricity prices is to incentivise and reimburse the nuclear and renewables generators, who incur significant investment costs to build the generation in the first place. Over the last 10 years, gas prices have generally been so low (because of plentiful supply) that nuclear and renewables have all lost money – or as a minimum, failed to cover their original capital investment. Now that gas prices are so high, the nuclear and renewable players are finally beginning to make money on their electricity, so it is controversial (to say the least) for the government to turn round and tell them that they must reduce their prices!

This though is easily the most logical measure if we are to take control of soaring electricity costs. Far better than simply borrowing further billions to reimburse end-users, and also better than windfall taxes, where the money is rarely (if ever) ringfenced to directly reduce bills. On the other hand, diminished electricity tariffs on both renewable and domestically produced gas supply would immediately bring costs down (without borrowing), whilst still generating more than satisfactory returns for the generators. Naysayers will point out that any revised rates will still be higher than anything we have seen over the last 25 years, plus they will have to be fixed for a long period to appease the power generators. But at least today’s immediate economic challenge of sky-high power prices will be addressed.

At this juncture, there are no good options and such is the depth of the current crisis that we have little choice but to deal with the most pressing problems. Over-complexity of the generating system, years of cheap energy (lots of it from Russia), a lack of understanding of how fast decarbonisation could take place, the upheaval of Covid and now the war in Ukraine have all contributed to the current energy meltdown and, in due course, governments may want to reflect on these issues - many of which have been self-inflicted. But here and now, we have an immediate requirement for a solution and moving electricity tariffs away from the spot gas price is the logical action.

“We have little choice but to deal with the most pressing problems”

Byford quits commissioneras

Andy Byford is to leave TfL after becoming disillusioned with the organisation’s ‘brain drain’

London transport commissioner Andy Byford has announced the surprise decision to step down from the role after a little over two years. He will leave Transport for London at the end of October, with current chief operating officer and deputy commissioner Andy Lord taking on the role of commissioner on an interim basis.

Byford said he had made the decision to leave after having delivered against the priorities he set at the start of his tenure - namely to get the Elizabeth line opened without any further delay, and to lead TfL out of the financial crisis caused by the pandemic.

He has also overseen the creation of a new organisational structure at TfL and the introduction of a new vision and set of values, with the organisation now focussed on winning back customers, supporting the city’s economic recovery and helping to build a greener city with

sustainable transport at its centre.

“It has been a huge privilege to have served as commissioner, back where I first started as a station foreman,” said Byford. “I have been blessed to have had such an amazing transport and public service journey and now is the right time to bow out and resume life in the United States with my wife.

“None of this would have been possible without the dedication and brilliance of the TfL leadership team, including Andy Lord who will now take up the mantle of interim commissioner.”

It is understood Byford had become increasingly disillusioned with the so-called ‘brain drain’ at TfL in recent months. The departure of a number of senior managers is claimed to be as a result of the uncertainty surrounding continued funding and the status of major projects.

Last month saw Gareth Powell, TfL’s chief customer and strategy officer and Lord’s predecessor as deputy commissioner, leaveTfL to join Stansted Airport as managing director.

PEOPLE

GO-AHEAD

LONDON Go-Ahead Group has announced the appointment of

David Cutts as managing director of Go-Ahead London. He succeeds John Trayner who is retiring from day-to-day leadership of the capital’s biggest bus company.

Cutts (pictured) has been operations director of Go-Ahead London since 2006. He began his career as a London Buses management trainee and he was operations manager of London Central’s Peckham depot when Go-Ahead bought the business in 1994. He has held senior positions for Go-Ahead in Manchester and Singapore as well as in London.

Cutts will take on the top job at Go-Ahead London on January 1, 2023. Trayner, who has been Go-Ahead London’s managing director for 16 years, will remain on the group’s executive committee with responsibility for strategic oversight of the group’s bus businesses in London, Ireland, Singapore and Sweden.

STAGECOACH YORKSHIRE

TRENTBARTON

Wellglade, the parent company of Heanor-based bus operator Trentbarton, has announced the appointment of Tom Morgan to the new role of managing director (buses) where he will have responsibility for all of the group’s bus operations.

The appointment follows the news that Trentbarton and Kinchbus managing director Jeff Counsell is to retire in February 2023 after 24 years with the company and almost half a century in the bus industry.

Morgan (pictured) joined Wellglade in 2009 to work on the Nottingham Tramlink project and has subsequently been Trentbarton’s assistant operations manager for Derby and then general manager at Loughborough-based Kinchbus.

Meanwhile, Wellglade has also announced it is also recruiting for the newly created roles of group chief executive officer and group engineering director.

RHONDDA CYNON TAF COUNCIL

Andy Byford

Meanwhile, earlier this year Vernon Everitt, TfL’s managing director of customers, communication and technology, left to become Greater Manchester’s transport commissioner. Other senior figures who have departed have included chief financial officer Simon Kilonback, who left TfL after 12 years of service to join G.Network.

Stagecoach Yorkshire has announced the appointment of Bill McCartney as operations director. McCartney (pictured) is no stranger to the business as he started his career as a graduate trainee with Stagecoach Yorkshire in 2013. Since then he has worked his way through a number of operational roles in the wider Stagecoach group including assistant operations manager in Oxford, operations manager in Peterborough, Swindon, and Cheltenham.

Local authority officer Charlie Nelson has retired from Rhondda Cynon Taf Council (RCT) after a 40-year career.

Before joining Mid Glamorgan County Council, Nelson (pictured) worked as a bus driver and in other roles for a number of bus operators. After local government reorganisation in 1996, he worked for Caerphilly Council before heading RCT’s Integrated Transport Unit. He was also a leading light in the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers Cymru and in Sewta, the pre-2014 Regional Transport Consortium.

Operations Director

Go-Ahead London is the largest bus company in the capital, with a modern feet of around 2,250 buses, including about 400 electric vehicles. We operate approximately a quarter of the iconic red network on behalf of Transport for London (TfL) from 17 garages, mostly in East, North and South London. At a time of change within the industry, we are looking to recruit an Operations Director, following an internal promotion to Managing Director.

This strategic position is responsible for the delivery of an essential public service to millions of people, which is achieved on a day-to-day basis by approximately 6,000 drivers and around 500 service control personnel.

The Operations Director makes a signifcant contribution to the company’s future direction, so the successful applicant must be adept at fnancial budgeting and stakeholder engagement. The job is subject to intense public scrutiny and a challenging TfL performance measurement regime.

At the heart of the company’s output, the Operations Director manages the Service Planning and Performance teams, which develop and deliver timetables. The end user experience, and the company’s reputation, is largely based on their quality.

This is a challenging, infuential, safety frst and high-profle executive role that requires someone with exceptional leadership and communication skills, along with a pedigree of London bus knowledge. The ability to lead from the start is also crucial, along with a proven capacity to manage a large group of people from diverse backgrounds and with widely different responsibilities.

If you believe you have the skills and knowledge to succeed, please apply by sending a CV and covering letter to the HR Manager - Debbie Lambshead debbie.lambshead@goaheadlondon.com

The closing date for applications is Monday

October

Mary is the master of the tardy invoice

Reading star Mary makes sure there are no bad debts

Bad debts are a nightmare for any business (oh, we could tell you some stories...), but councilowned operator Reading Buses has a secret weapon, and her name is Mary Xavier. Thanks to Mary’s work on credit control neither Reading Buses nor sister company Newbury & District have faced writing off any bad debts for several years.

Mary, who has worked at Reading Buses for 12 years, has been

Debt of gratitude

invoices, finds the relevant contact, and perseveres until the debt has been paid and cleared.

Reading Buses HR director Caroline Anscombe said: “Mary has proven how essential credit control is to the company overall and means that we haven’t had to write off any bad debts over the last few years.

What will coach travel

like

honoured with a Star of the Month award for her ‘relentless tenacity’ in pursuing company debtors.

Her Star of the Month nomination stated that she “quietly and efficiently” chases any outstanding

“She never gives up and has recently taken on additional responsibility for Thames Valley Buses. She maintains a positive attitude towards learning new tasks, a logical approach to work and a willingness to help others in the team so I’m thrilled that she’s been awarded Star of the Month.”

THE PRIZE OF A LIFETIME

Coach operator National Express is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary and one lucky passenger stands to scoop the prize of a lifetime - well, most of a lifetime, a special one-off money can’t buy 50-year free travel pass.

All aboard!

HANNAH IS SET FOR LIFE ON THE ROAD

Dorset teen Hannah Samways is celebrating this week - after passing a test that will allow her to become a bus driver with Poolebased MoreBus.

Hannah, who only turned 19 last month, completed her Passenger Carrying Vehicle licence test first time, under expert tuition from the bus operator’s training team.

“I’ve always lived in Poole and went to Poole High Schoolregularly travelling by bus,” said Hannah. “When I left school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I was into gymnastics so, at 16, I got a job involving that.

“Then I tried a few other roles - including waitressing, and working in a warehouse. When Covid hit, I worked at the test

centre at Creekmoor.

“To be honest, after that, I was struggling to find a job I was really interested in. My gymnastics coach, Chris Hardstaff, had joined Morebus in 2018 - and he knew I’d passed my car driving test in 2020. He recommended I contact MoreBus about a career.”

Now Hannah is set to enjoy a life on the road with a job that will pay a respectable £27,000-a-year salary too. On that she says: “I’ll be paid more than many of those who left school at the same time as me!”

National Express MD Chris Hardy said: “As part of our celebrations, we wanted to give away something extra special. And just think of the hundreds of destinations from Exeter to Edinburgh and Newquay to Newcastle they will be able to explore with National Express!”

Thing is, what will the famous fleet of white coaches look like in 50 years time?!

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