Passenger Transport: March 22, 2024

Government u-turn on bus lane restrictions

The

National Bus Strategy

says bus lanes ‘should be full time’ but new guidance from DfT says they should ‘only operate when it makes sense’

In the week that marked the third anniversary of the publication of Bus Back Better, its national bus strategy for England, the government has ditched support for full-time bus lanes.

Launched in March 2021, the national bus strategy called for significant increases in bus priority to speed up bus journeys. It declared: “In Bus Service Improvement Plans, we expect to see plans for bus lanes on any roads where there is a frequent bus service, congestion, and physical space to install one. Bus lanes should be full-time and as continuous as possible.”

However, reflecting the shift

The Tyne and Wear Metro line through South Tyneside is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The line has carried 200 million Metro customers since it opened in March 1984, helping people get to work, education and leisure activities. Nexus, the public body which operates Metro, marked this latest Metro milestone with a special birthday cake cutting ceremony at South Shields Interchange - which included handing out free cupcakes for Metro customers (pictured).

in policy under the leadership of prime minister Rishi Sunak, bus lanes were last week among a range of local transport policies that will have new Department for Transport guidance as part of its ‘Plan for Drivers’ initiative.

Local authorities are no longer urged to implement full-time bus lanes. In stark contrast to the

“At the moment, restrictions on bus lane use are too rigid” DfT

national bus strategy, the DfT said: “At the moment, restrictions on bus lane use are too rigid, creating delays and causing regular fines for drivers. New guidance on bus lanes has also been issued today [March 17], to make sure they only operate when it makes sense, like when traffic is heavy enough to delay buses. This will prevent drivers being hit with unfair fines.”

Additionally, a consultation will be conducted on allowing motorcycles to use bus lanes by default - “a further initiative to reduce congestion and speed up journey times”.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

National Bus Stategy is childorphaned

When Rishi Sunak peers out of the window of his helicopter at the congested streets beneath him, what solutions does he have to improve the way we get around? He doesn’t appear to share the view of one of his more recent predecessors, Boris Johnson, who was unequivocal in his support of buses, and public transport more generally, as a way of revitalising cities and unlocking economic growth. Ask yourself this - if Boris Johnson had not had the time to publish a National Bus Strategy for England, would Rishi Sunak have bothered to draft one?

Sunak’s preferred vibe is his ‘Plan for Drivers’, which isn’t so much of a plan as a denial of reality. Failing to address the cause of congestion - too many cars - doesn’t do motorists any favours. And, of course, many motorists are also public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists. The plan exists only to grab headlines and set traps for any future government that wants to make progress.

Bus lanes, for example, should be full-time, as the national bus strategy for England said just three years ago. If traffic is not heavy (and congestion does not always arise in a clear and consistent way), then why would you want to drive in one?

The national bus strategy just celebrated its third birthday but it’s an orphaned child, living in a home where it is not seen as a priority. A strategy cannot deliver much in three years and this one hasn’t taken long to start disintegrating - but it’s not too late to save it.

22 P OETRY IN MOTIONTHE PARIS METRO

Anew book has been published about the Paris Metro and it led Jonathan Bray to reflect on the city’s fascinating confluences and divergences with London.“This is a book that also might make you want toskipthetraditionalsights,”headds.

20 WHY A NDY M ELLORS IS MY LOW KEY HERO

AlexWarner speaks toAndy Mellors, the managing director of train operatorAvantiWest Coast.“I am not saying that problems don’t exist, but my experiences ofAvantiWest Coast have been good - and it’s going to get better,”he says.

24 T RANSPORT POLICY IS STUCK IN A TREND

Anew report by the UrbanTransport Group probes recent transport trends. It suggests there is too much focus on the car.“Fundamentally,car use remains dominant and those who are car dependent are difficult to influence,”says Nick Richardson

27 T HIS IS NOTHING SHORT OF A DELAYING TACTIC

OurWhitehall insider imagines what’s going on inside the minds of the mandarins at Great Minster House, home of the Department for Transport.“It’s all pretty shameless... ministers trying to pretend that the pre-legislative scrutiny is critical.”

SPT says franchising is the only game in town

A new report by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport has concluded that bus franchising is the only option to stem long-term network decline

Garnett Deputy Editor

Strathclyde could become the first region in Scotland to franchise its bus network after Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) members approved plans for a consultation about the future of buses. It could shake up a bus network that takes in a broad swathe of the west of Scotland and includes Argyll and Bute, Glasgow, Inverclyde, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire.

In a report to partnership members, Bruce Kiloh, SPT’s head of policy and planning, said the organisation’s work in developing the new Regional

Transport Strategy had reaffirmed significant concerns in terms of the efficiency, performance, affordability and overall sustainability of the bus network in Strathclyde.

“The development of the Strathclyde Regional Bus Strategy (SRBS) seeks to address these issues and aims to deliver a clear vision and strategy for the future of bus services in our region,” he added.

The SRBS appraised five options for the network: ‘business

as usual’; ‘voluntary partnerships’; ‘bus service improvement partnerships’; ‘local service franchising’; and ‘municipal operation’.

SPT has concluded that the business as usual option did not perform well against the appraisal criteria as it did not deliver enhanced levels of provision or more affordable fares. On voluntary partnerships SPT concluded there is no evidence these have generated significant or sustained growth in patronage

“It gives us opportunities to build for growth, and deliver a network that is attractive, accessible, and affordable”

or that they are likely to “break the cycle of bus decline” within its area.

While the BSIP option “may have a positive role to play in delivering the objectives of the RTS” they would be “wholly dependent on early positive and ambitious engagement and agreement between partners”. “Any delay or reluctant behaviour by principal partners would fundamentally undermine the BSIP’s credibility and successful delivery,” added Kiloh. “On balance, the positives outweigh these potential negatives, but it would be remiss not to acknowledge the question marks which would ultimately remain.”

SPT acknowledged the municipal operation option could, if started from scratch, entail strong on-road competition from incumbent operators. Kiloh warned that a new municipal would need to start from scratch or be based on the acquisition of an existing operator. Both of those options would be capital intensive. The appraisal concluded that the municipal option would also offer few significant benefits.

SPT’s appraisal process has therefore concluded that franchising offered the greatest potential to deliver the objectives of the RTS and would closely align with initiatives of national significance, such as the Clyde Metro project.

However, the appraisal identifies crucial caveats in relation to franchising. These are:

Affordability: Franchising to improve the network would require funding. SPT said without it bus services decline, necessitating significant investment and diversion of resources;

Feasibility and timescales: The experience of introducing bus franchising in Greater

SPT expressed concerns about the state of the bus network

Andrew

“A competitive franchising model... has the potential to harness the best aspects of the public and private sector”

Manchester suggests that regional implentation of franchising in the Strathclyde region could take between five and seven years; Competition: Design and development of the franchising process crucial for scope, scale, risk, finance and potential competition levels.

Challenging processes: The franchising process from the Transport (Scotland) Act is untested and there is potential for delays. Any franchising proposal in Scotland would face an independent review panel which must agree to the authority’s proposals before franchising can proceed; and

Risk sharing and uncertainty: The greater control offered by franchising also come with increased risk for the public sector, such as taking some, if not all, revenue risk and requiring it to react to uncertainties such as passenger demand.

Despite these concerns, Kiloh informed members SPT was of

the view that franchising offered a way forward to achieving the aspirations of the RTS.

“Franchising is a proven model for delivery of local bus services across Europe and beyond and provides the greatest certainty of making significant improvement to the network to achieve passenger growth and better accessibility for all and deliver on wider public policy outcomes,” he said. “Therefore, SPT should initiate the franchise process in line with the requirements of the Transport (Scotland) Act.”

He said the cost of carrying the franchising process to the point of implementation is estimated to be around £15m and would take up to seven years to complete.

Kiloh continued: “SPT is in a position to initiate the franchise assessment process of its own accord at this stage but will require financial support from government to see through the processes to later stages, and ultimately in the

Mixed feedback on SPT’s franchise plan

Bus operators offers blunt response to proposals

Reaction to the news of SPT’s plans for bus franchising in the Strathclyde region was mixed.

The Centre for Cities think tank welcomed the news, noting that compared to other cities its size in Europe, Glasgow’s economy underperforms by approximately £7bn. “A better functioning, integrated public transport network that helps connect people to jobs and education is a sure way to get the economy firing,” said chief executive Andrew Carter.

However, one local bus

operator offered a more robust response to the proposals.

McGill’s chief executive Ralph Roberts claimed franchising was “effectively confiscation of a business that has been built in good faith over many years with investors’ funds and it raises a host of legal implications, including issues under Article One of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Roberts continued: “It goes against every sense of natural justice and we would take this to every court in the land and

implementation.”

However, SPT is also backing the Bus Service Improvement Partnership option in the interim. This would provide a firm basis for private and public sector commitments to arrest further passenger decline, stabilise and improve the bus network while SPT and its partners “work collectively” to establish the franchise model.

SPT will now consult the public on its recommendations for a six week period during April and May 2024. The full appraisal report will be made available at the time of the consultation and the results of the public consultation and its impact on the SRBS will be reported to partnership members later in 2024.

Speaking after members approved Kiloh’s report and plans for the consultation, SPT chair Stephen Dornan said the proposals were a “bold and ambitious plan from SPT which sets a strong approach to tackle a

declining bus market”.

The SNP Glasgow councillor continued: “It gives us opportunities to build for growth, and deliver a network that is attractive, accessible, and affordable to both passengers in our communities who rely on the bus to get around and those who we need to get ‘onboard’ by offering an attractive alternative to the private car.”

However, Dornan warned that any franchising option will take time and investment to establish and the BSIP option offers the opportunity to arrest decline in the short to medium term “while we work to establish the worldclass local bus franchise model the people of the West of Scotland deserve”.

He continued: “In order to progress any of these options, we need investment from the Scottish Government which now has to step up with real funding and a commitment to support public transport, particularly bus which for too long has been forgotten and now requires urgent action.”

beyond. Franchising can be introduced in a different way and our opposition to it will be absolute until the threat of theft of a private business is lifted.”

Roberts also said local authorities had failed to implement bus priority measures that would free services from the constraints imposed by ever increasing traffic congestion.

“Remove buses from congestion and take business confiscation off the table,” he added. “These two simple steps will build trust and show that this is about bus users rather than a power trip for politicians and quangos, most of whom never set foot on a bus.”

SPT’s proposals appear to have won cross-party consensus. SPT vice-chair Alan Moir, a Labour councillor for East Dunbartonshire said the preferred options had the potential to “revolutionise local bus services in the west of Scotland to the clear benefit of bus passengers and local communities”.

Meanwhile, fellow vicechair David Wilson, a Scottish Conservative and Unionist councillor for Inverclyde, said there was a clear need for a longterm plan for buses in the region.

“Delivery of a competitive franchising model, as proposed, has the potential to harness the best aspects of the public and private sector collaboration in delivery of local bus services,” he added.

NAO exposes delays to rail reform agenda

Progress so far has ‘not been good enough’ says National Audit Office

RAIL REFORM

A new National Audit Office (NAO) report has highlighted ongoing delays in the government’s rail transformation plans, and there remain longstanding issues with the rail sector that need to be addressed, such as financial sustainability and the service offered to passengers.

The report, Rail Reform: The Rail Transformation Programme, reveals that the Department for Transport has made limited progress in its plans, with significant delays in most of its work and savings initiatives.

By December 2023 the DfT had made only limited progress toward its 12 high-level benefits for rail reform, with five rated as red and seven as amber.

Despite aiming for total savings of £2.6bn by 2024-25, primarily from workforce reforms, the DfT

ALSTOM PLOTS OPEN ACCESS PLAN

New service would link London with Wrexham

OPEN ACCESS

Rolling stock manufacturer Alstom has unveiled plans to venture into the train operating market, partnering with consultancy SLC Rail for a new open access operation linking London Euston with Wrexham.

The move aligns with the growing interest in open access services, highlighted by the recent approval from the Office of Rail and Road for Grand Union Trains to operate

anticipates achieving only about three-quarters of this target. Additionally, anticipated annual savings of £1.5bn from 2026-27 have been postponed due to the delayed establishment of Great British Railways.

The NAO’s report scrutinised the progress made by the DfT in delivering value-for-money three years after the white paper on rail reform was issued, originally intending to implement key

changes by early 2024. During the NAO’s fieldwork, the government confirmed delays to reform legislation, prompting the DfT to revise its approach.

With legislation delayed, the DfT is currently implementing interim arrangements, although it remains uncertain whether these will be effective. The relevance of ongoing work, such as developing the future operating model for the rail sector, depends on the policy

NAO: ‘DfT has made limited progress on rail reform’

direction in the next parliament.

Despite initial intentions to establish Great British Railways and a new operating model for the rail system by early 2024, many commitments outlined in the rail reform white paper are still in progress or on hold, with around a third requiring legislation. Governance arrangements for the programme have been deemed complex and ineffective, with unclear accountabilities and disagreements between the DfT and the Treasury from the outset.

The NAO recommends that as part of the DfT’s reset of rail reform in the next parliament, a comprehensive delivery plan with a realistic timetable and clear benefits should be established. Furthermore, collaboration with the rail industry and a focus on culture change are essential ahead of any legislative changes.

“The rail sector’s performance for passengers and the taxpayer has not been good enough for some time,” said NAO head Gareth Davies. “While the DfT identified key problems that need to be addressed as part of its rail reforms it has not been able to translate this into a deliverable programme.”

between London Euston and Stirling.

FirstGroup has announced plans to launch a new open access service linking London with Sheffield through its Hull Trains operation. Additionally, its Lumo service has proposed extending its routes from London to Edinburgh to Glasgow.

Alstom and SLC Rail’s proposal outlines five trains daily in each direction from Monday to Saturday, with four return trips on Sundays. Stops at key stations like Gobowen, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, and Milton Keynes are planned along the route between Wrexham and London Euston. This service would also partly

replace Avanti West Coast’s London to Shrewsbury service, scheduled for withdrawal in June.

Dubbed Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway (WSMR), the new service harks back to the former Wrexham and Shropshire open access service, which operated between Wrexham and London Marylebone from 2008 to 2011.

“As the country’s leading supplier of rolling stock and train services, it makes perfect sense that we now move into operating our own fleet to serve passengers directly,” said Nick Crossfield, managing director of Alstom’s operations in the UK and

Ireland. “Having been part of the fabric of UK rail for two centuries, we’re excited to enter this new era as an open access operator.

“Alstom is also committed to embedding sustainability into every element of our organisation, and WSMR will help drive a modal shift from road to rail by offering a greener alternative for travellers across England and Wales.”

Ian Walters, SLC Rail managing director, added: “Our proposal will support sustainable housing growth, nurture communities, and unite business, leisure, and commerce along the corridor.”

Van Hool restructuring could lead to bus exit

Van Hool Recovery Plan aims to switch focus to coaches

MANUFACTURERS

Belgian manufacturer Van Hool is reported to be preparing to exit the bus sector and transfer production of its range of coaches to its lower cost production facility in Macedonia in a bid to shore up the troubled business.

Earlier this year Van Hool announced the appointment of corporate troubleshooter Marc Zwaaneveld as co-chief executive officer (PT305). Zwaaneveld has now launched the Van Hool Recovery Plan which aims to refocus the company “towards market segments where customers consciously choose the high quality of Van Hool products”.

KENT CONFIRMS FASTRACK PLANS

Go-Ahead London to operate new Irizar fleet

CONTRACTS

Kent County Council has signed a 15-year contract with Go-Ahead London to operate the Kent Thameside Fastrack bus rapid transit network. The deal will see the Go-Ahead subsidiary take on operation of Fastrack from Arriva in November and introduce a fleet of 28 fully-electric Irizar ie Tram buses which have been partly funded by the government’s Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) fund.

EV will provide charging infrastructure for the new buses with opportunity charging facilities installed at two locations.

It will see over 1,000 members of staff at the Belgian production site at Koningshooikt laid off between 2024 and 2027 with 830 of them leaving the company this year. The site will continue to make specialist products and semi-trailers for the HGV market.

Zwaaneveld has reportedly set a deadline for the end of this month for Van Hool to secure new funding to implement the plan, without which the company faces an uncertain future.

The bus and coach division will see all production switched to the Skopje factory in Macedonia, but its knowledge centre, research and development, prototype building and after-sales service will remain in Koningshooikt.

Van Hool has also said it will be “more selective in accepting new orders from public transport”.

However, Belgian media reports have suggested that bus production will cease entirely as a result of increasingly strong competition within the zeroemission bus market, particularly from Chinese manufacturers.

It is notable that Belgian operator De Lijn, a long-standing Van Hool customer, recently placed a significant new bus order with Chinese rival BYD, which reportedly offered vehicles 20% cheaper than European rivals.

Local sources have also pointed to disputes within the Van Hool family about the direction of the company in recent years. This resulted in the company favouring hydrogen fuel cell technology at the expense of more popular battery-electric propulsion for its zero-emission bus offering until relatively recently.

BRABIN OPTS FOR BUS FRANCHISING

West Yorkshire to switch to franchising from 2027

REGULATION

Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, has made the decision to re-regulate the region’s bus network, implementing a franchised regime within three years.

The move is being pursued despite local operators proposing an alternative Enhanced Partnership Plus approach. By pressing forward with franchising, West Yorkshire joins Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region in the endeavour to reregulate their bus networks.

“I’m delighted to announce that we are taking back control of our buses in West Yorkshire, empowering the public to hold me to account for better services,” said Brabin.

“For too long, buses have been run in the interests of private companies, not passengers. Franchising will help us build a better-connected bus network that works for all, not just company shareholders.

“But we know that change will not happen overnight - the hard work we’ve been doing to improve the bus network continues while we work at pace to bring this new way of running the buses to our 2.4 million residents.”

The combined authority has confirmed its adoption of a phased approach to franchising, with the initial services slated to commence in parts of Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield from March 2027. Until then the region will uphold its Bus Service Improvement Plan commitments in the deregulated market, with plans for a new package of bus service improvements set to be announced in May.

Adopting franchising is expected to cost £20.4m in transition costs over four years. A further £85.5m will be spent on depot infrastructure and £252.0m on vehicles over 15 years.

director (right), and Erik Olijslagers, Van Hool area sales manager RHD and Northern Europe.

ORR to act after use of P-coding increases

Regulator asked train operators to find better way of making late changes, but use of ‘inappropriate approach’ has risen. Rhodri Clark reports

PERFORMANCE

The number of train operating companies making use of P-coding has increased since the Office of Rail and Road asked them to find a better way of making late changes to timetables. The ORR told Passenger Transport it was disappointed and will set out further actions for the industry in the coming weeks. Pre-cancellations, using the process known as P-coding, can be confirmed as late as 22.00 the previous evening and are not included in the timetables that railway performance statistics are measured against. A train someone expects to catch when they go to bed can disappear from the timetable by the time they leave for the station the next day.

Historically the process has been used for emergency

WELSH BUS FUNDING

Government has allocated a third to bus policy support

FUNDING

The Welsh Government has allocated more than a third of its bus support budget for 2024/25 to specific projects and to organisations which are helping to implement government policies, as opposed to funding operation of scheduled bus services.

After many cuts were made to the bus network in 2023/24, there was relief in the bus industry in December when the Welsh

timetables when poor weather or infrastructure damage requires a whole-scale change to train services on a route. Service performance is measured against the published emergency timetable.

In January 2023, the ORR said the mechanism was being used differently, with TOCs making late changes to timetables by withdrawing services when insufficient staff or trains were available. The ORR said this was an inappropriate application of the Network Code’s provisions on emergency timetables and

wrote to all TOCs “telling them to stop using this inappropriate approach and to ask Network Rail to coordinate the industry to come up with a better way of doing things”.

While this change was being prepared, the ORR said it would require all train companies to supply specific data on any “resource availability shortage pre-cancellations”.

The first release of this data covered January to March 2023, when 10 operators reported the use of P-coding. Statistics for October to December 2023,

“The overall rate of passenger service cancellations - including ‘P-coded’ precancellations - remains disappointing” Office of Rail and Road spokesperson

Government’s draft budget for the next financial year allocated over £60m of revenue funding to “bus support”, in addition to funding for the concessionary travel schemes.

On March 14, the government announced £39m for the new Bus Network Grant from April 1 for 12 months. BNG is the successor to the funding which helped sustain the bus industry during and after the pandemic.

The government explained to PassengerTransport: “The remaining £21m is being provided to support the activities of several organisations that are helping to implement Welsh Government’s policies in supporting

published this month by the ORR, reveal that 17 operators used P-coding. This represents a large increase during the year, although four of the TOCs made so little use of P-coding that their “official” and “adjusted” scores are the same when rounded to one decimal place.

An ORR spokesperson said: “While ORR’s intervention has led to better passenger information and greater transparency, the overall rate of passenger service cancellations - including ‘P-coded’ pre-cancellations - remains disappointing.

“Prior to our work, the rate of ‘P-coded’ pre-cancellations was invisible. In some areas trains were routinely disappearing from timetables at 22.00, with no information available for passengers and no count of how many trains were affected. To address this, ORR has published detailed statistics to ensure we are providing an accurate picture of cancellations for each operator, and Network Rail has published ‘good practice’ guidance to all train operators on how to ensure passengers are

the delivery of bus services across Wales in 2024/25, as well as revenue funding for specific projects. Such organisations include Bus Users Cymru, the Community Transport Association (CTA) and the Office of the Traffic Commissioner.”

The predecessor funding, before BNG, was paid to operators to bridge the gap between costs and revenue on services which were already operating when the pandemic began. The BNG is channelled through local authorities to support networks which reflect post-pandemic travel demand. Councils have been awarding new contracts for services, including many which were

commercial before the pandemic but no longer cover their operating costs.

In some areas, including Cardiff and Neath Port Talbot, some of the recent service cuts will be reversed next month, following the BNG tendering process.

The government’s statement on BNG also said councils would be required to meet specific conditions to receive funding. “These include ensuring routes and timetables support improved journey times, deliver opportunities for greater connectivity where possible, and provide improved information about the times of bus services.”

However, the new bus timetables

informed.

“In addition, in the coming weeks we will be setting out actions for industry to further address the use of ‘P-coding’.”

For the rail network as a whole, the adjusted cancellations score, taking P-coding into account, was 0.3 percentage points (pp) higher than the official cancellations score in the first quarter of 2023. It was 0.5pp higher in the final quarter.

This gap between the scores was largest at TransPennine Express, at 5.1pp, but this is a major reduction for the TOC since the Q1 2023, when the gap was 14.4pp. LNER had the highest adjusted cancellation score, 11.6% of services.

Avanti West Coast’s score, 11.3%, was the second highest, with official and adjusted scores being the same when rounded to one decimal point. Other FirstGroup TOCs also made relatively little use of P-coding.

TOCs which did not use P-coding during the quarter were c2c, Greater Anglia, Southeastern, London Overground, Merseyrail, Elizabeth Line and CrossCountry.

from 1 April generally replicate existing routes and running times, without improving journey times for passengers. Will authorities have to implement timetable changes in 2024/25 to meet the BNG funding conditions?

A government spokeswoman responded: “As a base level, local authorities must ensure that like for like services are being provided following their assessment of local needs and in accordance with their statutory duties, which includes the output from the regional planning meetings that are being held involving local authorities, bus companies and Transport for Wales.

Open access operators more likely to run late

Are non-franchised TOCs inherently prone to poor punctuality?

PERFORMANCE

New rail performance statistics from the Office of Rail and Road record that the open access operators on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) were some of the least punctual in Britain in the last quarter of 2023.

The poor punctuality record of open access services last year and earlier could raise questions about whether open access is inherently prone to poor punctuality, and whether the growth in open access services over the years to come will be a drag on attempts to reduce primary and secondary delays on the network as a whole.

The ORR has approved two new services which are due to commence next year - bringing open access to the West Coast and Great Western main lines for the first time - and other applications are being evaluated.

The ORR’s performance statistics for October 1 to December 31, 2023 show that the rail network as a whole achieved On Time punctuality of 62.2%. Open access operators achieved significantly less: Lumo with 44.4%, Hull Trains 42.9% and Grand Central 37.5%.

Only one other operator was less punctual than Grand Central: Avanti West Coast with 37.2%. Other long-distance InterCity operators were also below average: CrossCountry with 40.3%, East Midlands Railway with 44.8%, LNER with 48.3% and Great Western Railway with 56.4%. The overall picture

is of under-performance in the long-distance market, whether by DfT-sponsored or open access operators.

Network Rail’s management of infrastructure and operations is a common factor, and last month Network Rail said it would bring forward £140m of investment to improve Great Western performance following a series of infrastructure faults.

The ORR’s statistical report also records an average cancellations score of 4.9% for the network as a whole. While Hull Trains cancelled 4.3% (or 4.5% including trains which were pre-cancelled, or P-coded), other open access operators cancelled higher percentages: Lumo 5.3% (or 5.4%) and Grand Central 7.6% (or 11.1%). LNER - which shares the ECML with the open access operators - cancelled more: 8.9%

“They all operate on the ECML and all operators on the route have been suffering”

Grand Central’s

On Time punctuality was just 37.5%

or 11.6% with P-coding included. Commenting on the open access punctuality picture, an industry source said: “They all operate on the ECML and all operators on the route have been suffering.”

He added: “In respect of the cancellation situation, it can significantly be affected by a resource issue and the problems of having larger gaps in the timetable. It’s not too easy to ‘step up’ if your next service is over two hours away.

“If you lose one train out of, say, 10 operating [in a day], then that’s an instant 10% hit, whereas if you’re operating 100 it’s 1%.”

His comments about stepping up reflect the open access operators’ intensively used small fleets and their relatively small numbers of train crew. If an up train is delayed, LNER is more likely than an open access operator to have a train and crew available at King’s Cross to take over the inbound train’s next outbound working from London on time.

For the network as a whole, the ORR reported that performance in the quarter was worse than in the same quarter of 2022, although only marginally so on punctuality - a decrease of 0.1 percentage points. The biggest declines in punctuality were at Heathrow Express, Elizabeth Line, Merseyrail and TransPennine Express. Greater Anglia was the most punctual operator and witnessed the largest improvement in punctuality.

The official cancellations score, excluding P-coding, was 11.1% higher than in the corresponding period in 2022.

Bus funding winners and losers revealed

On the third anniversary of the publication of the national bus strategy, analysis of bus funding has exposed a striking imbalance across the country

FUNDING

Campaign for Better Transport has released figures which reveal “a shocking state of winners and losers when it comes to government bus funding”, with up to £230 per head difference between local authority areas.

Analysis by the charity has revealed a striking imbalance across the country with 12 councils receiving over £50 per head to improve bus services from central government, compared to 15 councils that have received less than £6 per head. At the top end, Portsmouth City Council received £235.76 per head, while Swindon Council received just £3.98 per head.

The figures have been released on the third anniversary of the publication of Bus Back Better, the government’s national bus strategy for England which was meant to address the decline in local buses and provide £3bn in

‘GIVE THE NORTH A RAILCARD’

TfN chair backs calls from transport charity

FARES

With transport leaders from across the north of England set to meet in Manchester this week to set out a vision for better, greener, cleaner and faster connectivity across the North, Campaign for Better Transport has called for a discount railcard to help address regional inequalities and boost northern economies.

funding to improve services across the country. But with buses still in decline and funding unevenly spread between areas, Campaign for Better Transport is calling for reforms to bus funding to help realise the ambitions of the national bus strategy and ensure all areas receive the funds they need.

“We are now three years on from

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Highest funding per head:

Portsmouth City Council (£235.76), Reading Borough Council (£168.68), North East Combined Authority, including North of Tyne (£152.57), Stoke-on-Trent City Council (£133.06), Brighton and Hove City Council (£101.89).

Lowest funding per head: Swindon Borough Council (£3.98), Isle of Wight Council (£4.20), Dorset Council (£4.84), Slough Borough Council (£4.90), Suffolk County Council (£5.16).

The charity wants to see a ‘Northern’ Network Railcard to give people living or working in the north of England a third off off-peak rail fares to help make rail travel more affordable, encourage people to take the train and reduce road congestion. It claims that the new railcard would help to address regional inequalities by bringing passengers in the North into line with those in the south east of England who have enjoyed discounted rail fares for almost 40 years thanks to the £30 a year Network Railcard.

the admirable ambitions published in Bus Back Better, and while improvements have been made in places, local authorities are still being let down when it comes to funding,” said Silviya Barrett, director of policy and research at Campaign for Better Transport.

“Despite having the powers to improve bus services, many are

A NEW APPROACH TO FUNDING

To help realise the ambitions of Bus Back Better and restore local bus networks, Campaign for Better Transport is calling for:

The competitive system of bus funding to be replaced with a single, long-term funding pot for all. Commitment to guarantee minimum levels of bus service provision for all communities, with funding allocations to match.

Ringfenced bus funding to ensure it is not reallocated to other local authority priorities.

still left without the funds to do so.

“By asking areas to compete for bus funding, it is inevitable that there will be winners and losers with passengers suffering as a result. It’s time to change the way buses are funded, so that no matter where you live, your bus services can be protected and improved.”

A year after Bus Back Better was published, the government invited local authorities to bid for a share of £1.1bn in Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funding to help improve bus services in their areas. 31 local authorities were initially successful but were awarded less than they had applied for. Almost two-thirds received nothing, with smaller, rural county councils losing out to larger combined authorities with more experienced transport teams. For 2023-2025, all local authorities who had originally been unsuccessful received a cut of additional funding (BSIP +), but these sums were smaller.

An additional £1bn of bus funding was made available through ‘Network North’, a £36bn pot reallocated from the cancellation of HS2 north of Birmingham, but only councils in the North and Midlands were eligible for this. £150m of this has so far been allocated.

Michael Solomon Williams, campaigns managers at Campaign for Better Transport, said: “The Network Railcard has been a huge success reducing the cost of travel for passengers and bringing much needed revenue to the railways. We think it’s high time the rail fare NorthSouth divide was closed with rail passengers in the north of England given access to the same discounts as their southern counterparts to help boost northern economies and tackle road congestion by making rail travel more affordable.”

A Northern Network Railcard has support from Patrick McLoughlin, chair of Transport for the North. “A Northern Network Railcard would contribute to rebalancing the UK economy, finally offering travellers in the north of England a benefit that the South East has enjoyed for almost 40 years,” said the former transport secretary. “Cheaper off-peak rail tickets would also help to reduce carbon emissions from transport in our region, where almost 70% of car emissions come from non-employment related travel.”

“Go-Ahead was ranked second most-admired overall in the transport sector, behind Ryanair”

Go-Ahead among most admired in transport

Group scores well in BMAC study - but Arriva finishes bottom

CORPORATE REPUTATION

The Go-Ahead Group is the most-admired of the UK’s largest passenger groups, according to the longest-running annual survey of corporate reputation in the UK.

Partnered by the London Stock Exchange, Britain’s Most Admired Companies (BMAC) studies corporate reputation as judged by competitors and financial influencers across 28 sectors. Board-level representatives, financial analysts and city commentators - including Passenger Transport - are asked to rate companies in their sector on a scale of 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent) across 13 key criteria.

The 2023 edition of BMAC includes 10 companies from the transport sector: four land-based passenger transport groups -

Arriva, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead and National Express (Mobico)and six airlines.

Go-Ahead was ranked second most-admired overall in the transport sector, behind Ryanair. The bus and rail group also achieved the highest score of all transport companies in four criteria - ‘Capacity to innovate’ (8.5), ‘Effective environmental, social and governance (ESG)’ (8.0),

‘Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion’ (8.5) and ‘Effective corporate governance’ (8.0).

At the other end of the transport league table, Arriva had the lowest overall ranking in the transport sector. The group received the lowest score in nine of the 13 criteria. Its lowest scores were for ‘Inspirational leadership’ (3.0) and ‘Quality of management’ (3.0) and ‘Quality of marketing’ (3.8).

Other measures announced last week restrict the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 20mph limits. Transport secretary Mark Harper told parliament: “These measures demonstrate our intent that drivers should be treated fairly.”

Responding to the package of measures, Paul Tuohy, chief executive officer of charity Campaign for Better Transport, said: “Divisive rhetoric which pits drivers against public transport users is a nonsense. Many drivers are public transport users too, and many more would like to be.

“Bus lanes and other busfriendly measures, such as phased traffic lights, are a tried and tested way to reduce congestion by speeding up bus journey times and boosting bus passenger numbers. Any measures which reduce their effectiveness will not just result in longer journey times for bus passengers, it will also result in longer journeys for drivers too.”

In an article in this edition of Passenger Transport, David Begg, a former chair of the government’s Commission for Integrated Transport, writes: “The ‘war on the motorist’ has been weaponised by a desperate government facing oblivion in the polls in the same way as identity politics and Islamophobia have been aimed at whipping up fear and hatred.”

DAVID BEGG: PAGES 18-19

“Divisive rhetoric which pits drivers against public transport users is a nonsense”

Go-Aheadimpressedwith

CPT eyes alternatives to £2 single bus fare cap

Bus and coach trade body publishes new research by KPMG

POLICY

The Confederation of Passenger Transport has published new research by KPMG examining policy options that might be used to support a sustainable transition away from a £2 fare cap in England once this ends in December 2024.

Guided by objectives to provide cheaper travel for customers, increase bus use, encourage people to switch from cars to buses, and support broader social and economic aims, including levellingup, Alternatives to the national fares cap - how can the next government make bus travel more affordable for more people presents the findings of a study that considered the pros and cons of various forms

FLIX LAUNCHES AIRPORT ROUTE

A new way to get to Manchester Airport

AIRPORT SERVICES

FlixBus is launching a new Manchester Airport service for Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham on March 28, in time for Easter, serving the airport twice a day.

The route will also directly connect Manchester (Shudehill Interchange) with Stoke-on-Trent (Hanley Bus Station) and Birmingham (Summer Row- Great Charles Street) twice a day, adding more FlixBus services between the cities.

With around 19 million people travelling to and from Manchester Airport each year, this dedicated

of support. These include a continued fare cap, providing free travel for key groups such as under22s or jobseekers and a ‘tax-back’ scheme for regular commuters.

Welcoming participants joining the first of two stakeholder round tables taking place in March to promote discussion of the research, Graham Vidler, CPT’s chief executive said: “Government investment that improves services and keep fares low generates significant economic, social, and environmental benefits.

“Policy-makers must now consider how to avoid long-term damage to bus use”

Graham Vidler, CPT

route will offer sustainable transport to the UK’s 3rd busiest airport.

The service will be provided by FlixBus partner Belle Vue, based in Stockport, which also provides FlixBus services between Manchester, Leeds, Middlesbrough and Newcastle. The companies announced an enhanced partnership last year.

Andreas Schorling, managing director of FlixBus UK said: “We’re on a mission to build the largest coach network in the country, and this new service gives our customers more choice than ever, connecting key cities like Manchester and Birmingham. We expect this new Manchester Airport route to be as popular with passengers as the first dedicated airport services we launched last year.”

“The £2 single bus fare cap has proved popular, and it has supported many people to take the bus through the ‘cost of living’ crisis. But this short-term measure that’s set a new norm in English bus fares in not without drawbacks. It is also due to end this coming December so policymakers must now consider how to avoid long-term damage to bus use, improve efficiencies and services, and - above all - persuade more people to catch the bus.

“With that in mind CPT commissioned this research to enable a robust and productive discussion about the options to maintain low fares for the long term. Given the importance of bus to so many parts of our society, we hope all key stakeholders and policy-makers will read this report closely and join this crucial debate.”

LONDON-BOUND READING BUSES TO DOUBLE

Changes to take effect on March 25

EXPANSION

Reading Buses has announced that it is doubling the number of buses on The London Line 702 and Flightline 703 routes.

The changes which take effect on March 25 will see up to four buses an hour between Windsor, Slough and Langley during the morning and evening peaks.

The council-owned operator has also undertaken a thorough review of The London Line 702 and Flightline 703 timetables and will introduce additional resources designed to help ensure services run on time.

Commenting on the changes, Reading Buses chief executive officer Robert Williams said: “We are delighted to confirm that the new timetables are in response to growing customer numbers and are being introduced in time for the busy Easter holidays.”

‘POSITIVE IMPACT’ FlixBus welcomed shadow transport minister Simon Lightwood (pictured left, with FlixBus UK managing director Andreas Schorling) to its UK office on March 11. Lightwood commented: “It was fantastic to see the advanced digital platform FlixBus is bringing to the UK and it’s impressive to see how FlixBus uses its technology to offer small and medium operators an opportunity to grow. The company’s rapid growth is supporting the country’s transport system as well as local economies. We cannot overlook coach’s fundamentally positive impact on society.”

Alex Warner meets Avanti West Coast boss. Page 20

Northern leaders vote to end Avanti contract

First Rail MD failed to convince Transport for the North’s board

RAIL FRANCHISING

A meeting of the Transport for the North board this week in Leeds officially passed a motion to write to transport secretary Mark Harper asking for Avanti West Coast to be taken off the key West Coast Main Line route “at the earliest possible opportunity”.

It comes after a report to the board that stated, “a continuation of the current situation is unacceptable to the North”.

Avanti West Coast is owned by FirstGroup (70%) and Trenitalia (30%), a subsidiary of Italy’s state

railway company. It took over the West Coast Partnership franchise in December 2019.

Two options were considered by the Board - to set a target for improvement by June or face ‘further measures’ or to terminate the contract straight away. After hearing from First Rail MD Steve Montgomery about the poor performance over many months the board opted to take immediate action.

TfN will now write to the secretary of state for transport that Avanti West Coast’s contract should be terminated at the earliest possible opportunity, with the Operator of Last Resort taking on responsibility in the short term for the delivery of long-distance services on the West Coast Main Line. DfT OLR Holdings Limited (DOHL) already operates LNER, Northern Rail, London & South Eastern Railway and TransPennine

“The performance on the West Coast Main Line by Avanti has been so poor, for so long that action now must be taken”

Lord McLoughlin, Transport for the North

Express.

In December, TfN wrote to the transport secretary asking him to instruct officials to conduct a critical review into Avanti West Coast’s operation given the deteriorating service, after the operator announced a number of cuts to services over the busy Christmas period.

Responding to this week’s decision, Lord McLoughlin, chair of TfN, said: “Today’s board was very clear. The performance on the West Coast Main Line by Avanti has been so poor, for so long that action now must be taken.

“We will be writing statuary advice today to the secretary of state calling for Avanti to be relieved of its contract. The travelling public deserve a service they can rely on. But Avanti has fallen far too short of expectations for far too long now.”

Warrington gets ready for electric bus future

Council-owned bus operator unveils one of 105 eye-catching Volvo BZL electric buses which will replace its entire fleet over the course of this year

ELECTRIC BUSES

With a new depot, a new fully electric bus fleet and a new bright yellow identity for vehicles, along with a comprehensive Bus Service Improvement Plan for the town, Warrington’s Own Buses is hailing the start of a new era.

The council-owned company invited its stakeholders, suppliers and press to its impressive new depot for the unveiling of one of its new Volvo BZL electric buses - decked out in yellow rather than the company’s current red and blue livery. The change reflects the direction of travel in the neighbouring conurbations of Greater Manchester and Merseyside, and desire to create a cohesive framework for seamless travel across the North of England.

The buses are yellow but Warrington’s Own Buses will go green with the introduction of 105 fully electric buses between the summer and Christmas, replacing the firm’s entire fleet of diesel buses. This investment has been supported by the Department for Transport’s Zero Emissions Bus Regional Area (ZEBRA) scheme.

Warrington’s deal with Volvo for the BZL Electric vehicles is one of the biggest orders of electric buses by any town or city in the UK to date. The Swedish bus builder has worked in close partnership with Egyptian manufacturer MCV Bus and Coach to develop the bodywork for the BZL Electric range.

Warrington Council has also

signed a deal with EO Charging - a leading provider of electric vehicle charging solutions for fleets - to supply the chargers at Warrington’s new bus depot which will power the new electric vehicles. As part of the council’s commitment to tackling the climate emergency, all the charging will be powered by 100% green energy.

Speaking at last week’s

unveiling, Andy Carter, MP for Warrington South and a parliamentary private secretary at the DfT, said his colleagues were going green with envy at the investment being made in the town’s buses. “We got the best deal out of any town in the North of England - by a mile,” he said. Warrington Borough Council leader and cabinet member for

BETTER BY BUS

Fares capped at £2 single for adults in Warrington.

£1 single anywhere in Warrington for young people aged 5-18

£1 single anywhere in Warrington expanded to 19-21 year olds from April 1.

Free concessionary pass travel at any time of the day, seven days a week.

Free travel to be introduced for care leavers from April 1. Enhanced timetables.

Brand new bus shelters across the network.

highways and transport, Hans Mundry, said: “These are exciting times for Warrington, with the introduction of our all-electric fleet set to transform bus travel in our borough. Our 105 buses will bring massive benefits for passengers, providing safe, quiet and comfortable journeys. These are buses which are truly fit for the future, with zero tailpipe emissions, which will improve air quality and support our work to tackle the climate emergency.

“We’ve made our ambitions clear, through our Local Transport Plan, to reduce emissions and congestion, increase the share of journeys made by bus and build sustainable transport into everyday life in Warrington. Our new electric buses will play a massive role in us achieving this.”

Warrington’s Own Buses covers 85% of the bus mileage in the borough, and the conversion of its entire fleet to all-electric supports Warrington’s ambitions to introduce greener, cleaner and more sustainable transport options throughout the borough.

Speaking at the launch, Warrington’s Own Buses managing director Ben Wakerley said: “We will take a massive step forward by shortly replacing our whole bus fleet with brand new, state-of-theart, Volvo electric buses.

“It is really important that we do this and convert away from cars and fossil fuels. The climate is getting dangerously hot. Poor air quality leads to avoidable deaths, calculated to be 150 a year in Warrington alone. Animals and nature are losing their home. This puts the planet out of balance.

“We can see how this how this is starting to affect people and so we must all act. The UK can lead other nations by showing that a green transition can happen, and it can help to unlock economic growth.”

At the Volvo BZL launch

Warrington Borough Council has been working closely with local bus operators to build a better bus service to support the arrival of the new electric bus fleet at Warrington’s Own Buses, as part of it’s Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). Under the banner of ‘Better by Bus’, a range of improvements have been made to services, including:

CitySwift to help TNE with BSIP delivery

Partnership marks

150% increase in firm’s customer base last year

ANALYSIS

Data intelligence specialist CitySwift has announced a new partnership with Transport North East (TNE), covering bus journeys across the North East region. The partnership contributes to the company’s continued growth across the UK, coinciding with its opening of the first UK office.

TNE covers the seven local authority areas within the North East (Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland) on behalf of the North East Combined Authority and North of Tyne Combined Authority. This partnership will support delivery of the objectives laid out in the North East Bus Service Improvement Plan, with CitySwift’s platform

LNER SIGNS UP FOR BSL

Announcements translated into British Sign Language

INFORMATION

East Coast intercity operator LNER is introducing fully integrated British Sign Language (BSL) on digital departure screens at its stations in a UK rail industry first. Claire Ansley, people and customer experience director at LNER, said: “By introducing BSL on our screens, we are taking a significant step towards making our stations more inclusive and accessible for everyone who travels with us.”

being leveraged to improve bus punctuality and increase passenger satisfaction.

Additionally, CitySwift will work with TNE to monitor bus priority investment impact, examining congestion, passenger delays, and network pinch points.

Heather Jones, head of enhanced partnerships at TNE, commented: “CitySwift’s platform offers Transport North East an exciting opportunity to use data to revolutionise bus services and enhance the overall passenger experience.

“Partnering with CitySwift aligns with the objectives of the North East Bus Service Improvement Plan, enabling us to address congestion, reduce

passenger delays, and identify network pinch points more effectively. This collaboration will play a crucial role in delivering more efficient, sustainable, and customer-focused public transport to the communities we serve.”

Founded by Alan Farrelly and Brian O’Rourke in 2016, CitySwift works with public sector transport authorities and private bus operators to break down the barriers to accessing and interpreting transport data.

This recent partnership marks a 150% increase in CitySwift’s customer base last year, which now includes transport networks in all major UK cities, including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast, and the

“This collaboration will play a crucial role in delivering more efficient, sustainable, and customer-focused public transport”

Heather Jones, Transport North East

entire country of Wales.

Notable clients in addition to Transport North East include National Express, Go-Ahead Group, Transport for Wales, Metroline, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Translink, and Blackpool Transport.

This news comes in conjunction with the opening of CitySwift’s first office in the UK, as the company has plans to expand its team and foothold in the UK market. Fifty jobs will be created over the next two years, including roles in data, product, engineering, customer success and account management.

Brian O’Rourke said: “This is the latest milestone in our journey at CitySwift, with our new office and partnership with Transport North East, we aim to reaffirm our continued dedication to delivering real value to our customers.

“We’ve seen incredible growth in the last year, having closed our latest funding round a few weeks ago and we are eager to drive on and focus on expanding CitySwift’s offering across the UK, and to continue growing our exceptional team.”

Wide variations in bus passenger satisfaction

Published by Transport Focus, the Your Bus Journey

survey of bus users shows that some parts of England need to work harder to improve services

It’s been four years since Transport Focus last published an in-depth bus passenger survey. The Bus Passenger Survey used to take place every year and the last one, for Autumn 2019, was released when the country was in lockdown. So there was much interest surrounding last week’s publication of the independent watchdog’s Your Bus Journey survey, which assesses satisfaction with bus journeys made in 2023.

Your Bus Journey is an evolution of the previous Bus Passenger Survey series. The initial report covers bus passengers in England, although survey work was also undertaken in Scotland and Wales and will be released in due course.

In its first year, the survey has gathered passenger feedback on more than 35,000 journeys in England. The survey looks at how satisfied passengers are with their most recent journey and a range of other key factors such as their experience on board the bus, at the bus stop, with the bus driver and if they think the journey provided good value for money.

The results for 2023 reveal overall satisfaction of 80%, down from 89% in Autumn 2019a significant decrease.

As in previous years, overall passenger satisfaction varies widely, with passengers in East Riding of Yorkshire and Bournemouth, Christchurch

and Poole the most satisfied overall with their journey at 90%. Meanwhile, passengers in West Yorkshire, which has this month announced its intention to introduce bus franchising, were the least satisfied with 73%.

Transport Focus says that nearly half of passengers surveyed in Transport Focus’s survey (48%) say that the bus was the only real means of transport available to make that journey - so it’s vital that services are on time, reliable and offer good value for money.

Overall, 67% of fare paying passengers say they are satisfied

with value for money. Against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis, the introduction of the £2 single fare cap and other ticket deals, Transport Focus says that the results appear to have held up - with those in rural areas taking longer distance journeys often benefiting the most.

Where value for money ratings are lower, Transport Focus suggests that it may be attributed to less reliable journeys or tickets and passes used by frequent travellers that have increased in price in the past year.

David Sidebottom, director

“80% overall satisfaction is a good start. However, wide variation in scores show that some passengers are being let down”

David Sidebottom, Transport Focus

‘Partnership more important than cash’

Good collaboration can drive up bus user satisfaction

A culture of strong partnership working can be a more effective way of improving bus services than grant payments from central government, a senior civil servant has said.

Speaking last week in Newcastle at the launch of Transport Focus’ Your Bus Journey survey, Stephen Fidler, director, local transport at

at the independent watchdog Transport Focus, said: “It is good to see many passengers are satisfied with their journey. 80% overall satisfaction is a good start. However, wide variation in scores show that some passengers are being let down.

“As congestion continues to bite, government, bus operators and local authorities must work together so that passengers see the improvements in reliability, journey times and better value for money fares promised in the national bus strategy.”

Following the significant government investment to make buses better in the national bus strategy and £2 bus fare cap, Transport Focus wants to see the industry deliver on its commitment to make buses more reliable and frequent and better value for money.

As a key metric to monitor and evaluate Bus Service Improvement Plans, Transport Focus will work with transport authorities and bus operators to fully understand the results and focus on plans to improve the passenger experience and attract new passengers onto bus.

the Department for Transport, observed that areas with higher levels of bus user satisfaction were typically those where local authorities and bus operators were working closely together.

Fidler commented: “I am struck that some of the places towards the top of the list did not necessarily have that first phase of BSIP [Bus Service

Improvement Plan] funding, but they did have that really good collaboration - which arguably feels more important to me than the money.”

He continued: “Some of that stuff around road works, disruption, information, how are you getting that information on services out to passengers, what you can join up in some of the highways planning, actually that doesn’t take lots of cash. That takes lots of partnership working and that can hit some of those real drivers of satisfaction.”

Robert Jack Managing Editor

“The survey ought to ring alarm bells at Arriva. Only two of its operations appear in the top half of the table”

Operator league table

Your Bus Journey contains a league table of bus operators in England, ranked in terms of the overall satisfaction of those who made journeys with them in 2023 (see table). It’s an opportunity for operators to benchmark themselves against each other and chart trends.

The top 10 operators in terms of overall satisfaction were similar to those of previous surveys. Go-Ahead Group subsidiaries morebus (91%) and East Yorkshire (88%) rubbed shoulders with six operators from the ALBUM group of independent bus companies, providing further evidence that devolved operations with empowered local management teams are more in touch with the needs of passengers than the large groups.

However, bucking that trend was Stagecoach in Portsmouth, which, backed by strong partnership working and significant Bus Service Improvement Plan investment, took the top spot with overall satisfaction of 91%. First in Leicester City also made an appearence, supported again by a culture of partnership working.

Previous operator league tables revealed that First Bus subsidiaries were lagging behind their rivals, but the latest survey reveals that the group has more operations in the top half of the table (six) than the bottom (four). Stagecoach appears to have gone the other way, with more operations in the bottom half (nine) than the top (six).

Meanwhile, the survey ought to ring alarm bells at Arriva. Only two of its operations appear in the top half of the table versus eight in the bottom half. And the lowest rated individual operation was in Arriva in West Yorkshire, where only 66% of passengers said they were ‘satisfied’.

SATISFACTION WITH THE JOURNEY: A CLOSER LOOK

OVERALL BUS PASSENGER SATISFACTION (%): THE BUS OPERATOR LEAGUE TABLE

DAVID BEGG

What is the strategy for transport?

A pragmatic consensus on transport policy has been shattered by the return of ‘war on the motorist’ rhetoric. We must do better

I have been on a sabbatical for a few years and have been catching up on transport policy from a fresh perspective. I have been shocked by the vacuum when it comes to strategy. What exactly is it that the government is trying to achieve?

The ‘war on the motorist’ has been weaponised by a desperate government facing oblivion in the polls in the same way as identity politics and Islamophobia have been aimed at whipping up fear and hatred. We can surely do better than this.

When the Conservatives took over from Labour in 2010 there was no dramatic shift in transport policy. Rail investment was seen as virtuous and essential if we were to achieve our economic and climate change commitments as well as regional levelling up. I worked closely with the then secretary of state for transport, Philip Hammond, on promoting the case for High-Speed Rail. It was after all promoted by David Cameron when he was leader of the opposition, and riding with the huskies in the Artic, as a key policy to back up his electioneering slogan: “vote blue, go green”. HS2 was originally adopted as an alternative to building a third runway at Heathrow to show that the Conservatives were not antitravel. That was before Cameron would go on to say “get rid of all the green crap”, but nevertheless the direction of transport policy, while not as radical as many of us would have liked in terms of changing travel behaviour, was not bottom of the class. Even Boris Johnston - a PM who had a better grounding in transport than any of his predecessors and who certainly talked about it more - appreciated the importance of buses and trains to the economy. It wasn’t transport policy that made many of us angry with him as PM.

But now, anyone who promotes what we had thought had become mainstream common sense transport policies risks being demonised as being part of the car-hating sinister mob. Would someone please explain to me why the concept of 15-minute cities has been described by none other than the secretary of state for transport, Mark Harper, in this way? Being able to access work, leisure and shops easily without having to drive by car was always seen as a desired holy grail by transport planners. Now it’s ‘Big Brother’ local authorities telling us where and when we go, Soviet-style.

Our current PM has boxed his government into being the motorist’s friend

“Keir Starmer is not ideological and will be guided by what works”

In my view this has crossed a line. If I were working as a civil servant or in one of the government’s transport agencies I would not hesitate to call him out for it. It’s fine to have legitimate debates about ownership and control and the merits of HS2, but to resort to fabricated rhetoric that you would associate with Putin or Trump is unacceptable and not something we should have any truck with in this country. The comments were made some six months ago, but I’m still incensed by them.

If you want proof that the Conservatives’ record on transport while in office has been deteriorating you only have to read ‘Network North’, the cobbled together response to the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham. What exactly are the strategic outcomes that this rag bag of commitments - many of them announced before and mainly unfunded and lacking any investment appraisal - expected to achieve? A few headlines in the tabloids and regional press perhaps, but this is no substitute for a considered strategic document you would expect from government.

It’s against this political background that a potential future Labour government will have to operate as well as an inheritance on public finances which is the worst in living memory and probably much worse than we currently expect. The landscape could not be more different than 1997 when the finances were much healthier and there was a wider acceptance that we couldn’t deal with traffic congestion just by building new roads and that we had to focus on modal shift away from the car.

The toxicity around paying for road use and cutting pollution will mean that we are unlikely to experience the radical shift in transport policy associated with the last time Labour replaced a Conservative government. It’s harder to win consensus for any measure which increases motoring costs during a cost-of-living crisis, although ironically there is not the same backlash when public transport fares go up. This explains why you have to go

“The comments were made some six months ago, but I’m still incensed by them”

back 13 years for the last increase in fuel duty and why politicians are like a rabbit caught in a car headlight when it comes to discussing how we pay for roads when the road fleet is electrified. Labour needs to set up both a cross-party commission and a citizens jury to look at the options.

There has been much talk following the budget about the £40bn funding gap if National Insurance is to be abolished. Why no focus on the £40bn revenue lost when fuel duty goes? Many people argue that this funding gap will force a future government to act and introduce a new tax/charge on road use. If this government is anything to go by, then I wouldn’t bet on it. They have boxed themselves into being the motorist’s friend regardless of the financial, social and environmental consequences. If we don’t replace fuel duty, then the projected growth in traffic will double. The congestion associated with this makes it anti-motorist in my book. And what about the equity implications of people on low incomes paying for road infrastructure and not owning a car?

The centrepiece of Labour’s transport plans is public ownership of rail and more freedom for local authorities to regulate buses and set up municipally-owned bus companies. This would bring the UK more in line with how public transport is delivered across most of Europe.

While both are popular with the public don’t expect them to move the dial much when it comes to patronage. I would classify them as second order issues as opposed to first order issues such as motoring taxation, car parking charges and bus priority which all would have a much bigger impact on modal split. They are all, however, more difficult to deliver politically, and unpopular with the public.

When Labour came to power in 1997, they implemented these first order policies and what was unique during this period was that a politician as senior as the deputy prime minister John Prescott held the transport brief. This gave a priority and gravitas to the portfolio not been seen before or since. Policies then were aimed at changing travel behaviour. Now they are aimed at not upsetting the motoring lobby. The challenge for Labour is to convince sceptics that shielding road users from paying their true social, environmental and congestion costs, and in future even covering road infrastructure

costs, will not only have a negative impact on the economy and impose a brake on economic growth but will also mean traffic congestion becomes even more intolerable.

Keir Starmer is not ideological and will be guided by what works. Ideologues on both the right and the left have a jaundiced and simplistic view of ownership. They claim that the doubling in rail patronage was all down to privatisation and the decline in bus use is all down to bus de-regulation. Neither is accurate. Rail growth was propelled more by the first order issues I mentioned and by generous taxpayer funding. The economy was also growing which generated more rail journeys as well as road congestion which gave a competitive edge to rail. While road congestion is a friend for rail it is the enemy for buses which get snarled up in slow moving traffic. For every 10% decline in bus speeds, we lose 10% of patronage. The only way round it is to mitigate the impact of congestion with effective bus priority.

With unrealistic budget cuts set for public services and transport at the lower end of the pecking order compared with protected services such as health, education and defence, we face a drastic financial outlook for the DfT. Throw into the mix the fact that around a third of local authorities are facing bankruptcy then you get a view of the mountain that will have to be climbed. If bringing rail franchises into public control when they expire and regulating bus services can demonstrate better value for money and improved service levels, then you can anticipate extensive roll out.

With all the headwinds you had best buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor David Begg is a former chair of the government’s Commission for Integrated Transport and was the chair of the Transport Committee of the City of Edinburgh Council when the radical Greenways bus priority measures were introduced in the 1990s. He has been a board member of FirstGroup, TfGM and TfL. He will be the keynote speaker at the Transport Times conference, Transport after the General Election, in London on May 23. Visit transporttimes.co.uk for details.

ALEX WARNER

Why Andy Mellors is my low key hero

I am not saying that problems don’t exist, but my experiences of Avanti West Coast have been good - and it’s going to get better

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of folk suggest that the railway is in the worst shape ever. Even those who haven’t been on a train for years. I sit in meetings and see low morale and schisms between organisations and, of course, we’d all love clarity around the future government strategy. But, as a customer that travels almost daily to all parts of the UK, handon-heart, I can’t recall the last time I had a bad experience. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I think the problem is exaggerated.

With my irritation in mind, it was timely that I caught up last week with Avanti West Coast managing director Andy Mellors, someone who took on - not for the first time in his 35-year career - a perceived poisoned chalice, and who, despite some of the brickbats thrown at his organisation, is doing a stellar job. He’s not one of those show-boating top dogs, but instead has a low-key profile and doesn’t blow his own trumpet. I was, therefore, interested in meeting up to try and lift the lid on him.

Mellors took up the hotseat at Avanti a year ago, having spent a few months since August 2022 helping work on a number of initiatives to improve operational performance. The West Coast, though, is very much in his DNA. He joined the industry as a sponsored student on the British Rail engineering management training scheme. Mellors completed a mechanical engineering degree and that gave an opportunity to work in the sector in the summer holidays. He graduated his final placement before a formal role was offered in

the technical office at Willesden Depot and then his first proper management post was as shift production manager at Wembley Depot, which is one of Alstom’s depots now and supports Avanti’s Pendolino fleet. In between times, Andy went to Merseyrail in 1995 and then First North Western and ScotRail - all roles entwined with the West Coast Main Line.

A key career deviation for Andy, though, was as managing director at South Western Railway. Mellors must have felt a sense of groundhog day, taking over SWR from popular Stagecoach and then arriving at Avanti not too long after the departure of well-lauded Virgin on the West Coast. The challenge was SWR had been in the same owning group since privatisation and different owning

groups have different ways of governing their businesses, and there’s also the backdrop of the market you’re operating in to exacerbate the challenges. In the case of Avanti, in quick succession, the 2019 launch of the business under First was followed by lockdown and the emergency measure arrangements that changed the whole franchise landscape.

As Mellors explains: “Coming out of the pandemic, the fundamental business model has changed. We still have fewer customers and particularly on an operation such as Avanti, the make-up of customers now means there is a greater reliance on leisure, which is lower yield products. So we had the double whammy of not having fully recovered volumes and revenue line disadvantaged.

“Ultimately, the message is pretty similar - how do we get customers back onto the railway? [The answer is] reliable product and value for money. It is a challenge coming into a business with a lengthy history of being run in a certain way and overlaid on this, every passenger and freight business has had to change, and those two seismic things happened in quick succession.”

The real challenge for Avanti I had observed was the expectation among staff that a new culture would emerge, particularly given that the previous franchise co-owner, Virgin, was so synonymous with an almost showbizstyle, strong brand vision and derivative personality exuded by its people. However, with the pandemic ensueing so soon, it was impossible for First to inject its own DNA and communicate and deliver on its plans. Mellors agrees, though explains that the headline commitments have actually been enacted, the Pendolino refurbishment for instance and also the introduction of the new Hitachi stock.

The longer-term rolling stock requirements of this business will be heavily influenced by HS2. “The contract we have with government is part of the West Coast Partnership Development (WCPD), shadow operator of HS2,” Mellors explains. “Shamit Gaiger [managing director of WCPD] is influencing those discussions around timetable, rolling stock fleet, customer experience. Two teams work closely together, particularly in terms of rolling stock and timetable development, but clearly the HS2 announcement has quite a profound effect on these requirements and overall capacity.

Whilst leisure patronage has bounced back

Andy Mellors

“If we have to spend £1 to make £2 then DfT have been supportive”

Andy Mellors

and is higher than pre-pandemic, this creates some opportunities and also challenges. “Engineering work at weekends is one where the industry has a fundamental challenge in front of it,” Mellors observes. “Equally leisure customers are more flexible, so we find that when we have engineering work or industrial action, we do get a reasonable migration of journeys either side of a period of interruption.

“There are signs of the market continuing to recover but it’s small steps. Delivering the timetable promise, particularly for business travellers, who are more time sensitive, and the on-board offer is important.

He continues: “If you view the train as an extension of the office, connectivity is important - this month we complete a programme of work with BT to install or upgrade 200 lineside masts at a cost of £45m.”

Mellors explained that the pandemic also provided the opportunity to reposition some First Class lounges. At Runcorn, for instance, the lounge has a dual use as a community space, so too at Coventry. For business customers a good on-board product is key “as it is an extension of the office space for many” and the fleet refurbishment and new trains, manufactured by Hitachi, help. Mellors says that Avanti and Alstom continue to be less tolerant in terms of equipment faults, including the ‘point of sale’ interface in the on-board shop where investment has been made on a system that isn’t dependent on Wi-Fi: “You won’t hear the ‘we only take cash’ announcements, anymore and we’re also rolling out new coffee machines on the Pendolino fleet.”

Old lags, like I, bemoan the more prescriptive franchise era in which we currently reside, however, Mellors contests that improvements have been made easier because of the roll out of the new National Rail contract for Avanti which started in October and “has provided a level of contractual certainty for this business that has been lacking for over a decade”.

I’ve feared for some time that with today’s tightly constrained contracts, several train companies, particularly the bigger ones, are retreating from community work and multimodal activity as the railway moves to a more centralised set-up. From experience, though, Avanti is better than most and I’m aware from my Great Scenic Journeys business of links that have been forged with Stagecoach to improve connectivity with bus services into

the Lake District at Penrith.

Mellors explains: “When I joined, I was really heartened that despite the fact that, we’re a long-distance operator with only 16 stations of our own, those relations with the community rail partnerships, with local operators actively happen. We do it because it is the right thing to do and a good advert for our business.”

Innovation isn’t something I’d associate with the recent history of franchised rail services in this era of micro-management, but Mellors says that the introduction of Avanti’s ‘Superfare’ is a good example. It enables customers with flexibility in terms of travel times to save money. Other innovations include the lifting of some off-peak restrictions to stimulate new journeys and the launch of the Standard Premium package, which offers First Class seating comfort but without the refreshment add-ons.

Mellors reports that the Department for Transport has been really supportive towards efforts to grow the business. “We have added some incremental services in the December timetable and put back some of the services that had never returned since Covid,” he says. “We have plans to provide more services on the Liverpool route when the new trains come on line. It’s about incremental infills on the service that are operational and financially sustainable, recognising the industry as a whole is more reliant on taxpayer support than before the pandemic, though we’re progressively moving from net subsidy to returning a premium to government.

“Absolutely we have to work in a framework. If there’s a good idea, there’s a good chance it will be taken forward. The contract we have we agree an annual business plan with DfT that has a revenue and cost line, and we are incentivised to deliver both, and we have sensible conversations with them about trade-offs. The conversations a year ago tended to be more through the lens of how to reduce cost, now it is how we can improve the bottom line. If we have to spend £1 to make £2 then DfT have been supportive.”

I’m not saying that all in the garden is rosy, but within the context of the pandemic making it difficult for Avanti to articulate their plans as effectively and speedily as they might have hoped, I had imagined that there would be a real challenge in terms of employee engagement moving from Virgin. The longevity at which Virgin held the franchise and the

loyalty at which employees felt towards the brand and leadership will have made it difficult for any new operator, particularly in the context of the nationwide challenges around ‘workplace reform’, cost reduction and industrial action.

If there are morale issues it’s not been evident, in my view, as a customer. As a regular on Avanti services, I am always very impressed by the attitude and helpfulness of Mellors’ team, as well as their energy and genuine attentiveness to customers. If anything, it feels very grounded, authentic, and down to earth, like Mellors.

He explains: “The challenges of 2022 and the emergency timetable affected not just customers and stakeholders, but colleagues too as they bore the brunt of customers’ angst when we were not delivering the timetable promise. Re-building the timetable and confidence - well, this inevitably has a halo effect and we’re starting to see tangible things coming through such as fleet refurbishment and pain points for our people, such as the onboard shop’s credit card issue being dealt with.

“Being visible to our people is really key and if anything the industry went backwards on this during the pandemic - losing this management visibility - and seeing problems through the eyes of customers and colleagues, humanising it and having empathy and realising decisions we take in our offices are having an impact on customers and colleagues.”

This isn’t management speak, I regularly see him out and about on the network. During the November floods, I stumbled across him and his operations director controlling Avanti’s network-wide response whilst sitting alongside customers on a service to Birmingham.

There doesn’t appear though to be a distinct Avanti culture, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It feels authentic and culture change programmes do often feel like contrived brainwashing, mumbo-jumbo. “It’s been iterative and there’s still a long way to go and it’s an area we’re doing more work on,” says Mellors. “From the staff Pulse Survey we conducted at the end of last year, the need for a belief in action was the single biggest thing to come out. If you’re going to ask for views, you have to act on the feedback and that’s the process we’re in at the moment ... When staff vent their spleen, it’s because they care passionately, people should never be apologetic for that.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

As we draw towards a conclusion, I ask Mellors what the future holds for him, but he’s focused on the job in hand: “It’s about having a relentless laser focus on delivery of a reliable, punctual operation, all year round, and that’s a team game - Network Rail, Alstom, as our fleet provider, and other stakeholders. We’ve got to make sure some of the transformation stuff, like new trains, is delivered in a seamless manner, as any new train introduction is challenging. We’re buying an established product we’re encouraged with in terms of reliability, but we’ve got a lot of people to train whilst delivering the operation. That’s the key focus for me. Getting day-to-day operational railway on a reliable, consistent footing.”

Amidst the battle to run trains on time, there are special days that make it all worthwhile. Yesterday the team took 30 schoolchildren from Crewe to Liverpool for a day out, visiting the Liver building, going on a ferry across the Mersey and having the opportunity to talk about rail safety.

“Many of the pupils had never been on a train before,” he says. “We’ve hosted trips like this for 2,500 students now and have set ourselves a target of 5,000 - it’s so energising and reminds us of what the job is all about.”

In these moribund times across the industry and where large owning groups often seem to lack character and come across as corporate monoliths bereft of charm and local identity, it’s heartening that under Mellors’ focused, undersold, stewardship, Avanti is a train company that is motivated to ‘do the right thing’ for customers and communities, even if as a company it’s still on a journey with challenges to overcome. I take things as I find, and I’m happy with the customer service I receive on many trips on Avanti, even if that doesn’t make an eye-catching headline or exciting narrative!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.

JONATHAN BRAY

Poetry in motion - the Paris Metro

Andrew Martin’s new book on the Paris Metro led me to reflect on the fascinating confluences and divergences with London

I used to take the view that Paris was an ugly city (quasi motorways alongside the Seine, the dreary Haussmann boulevards, the Eiffel Tower) but with a lot of beautiful details. As well as a city that, beyond the ‘grands projets’, didn’t have so much to offer on progressive thinking on transport. But the motorways by the Seine are vanishing, Paris has a mayor who has taken on the menace of SUVs… and won. And of course Paris remains a city of countless beautiful details.

Reading Andrew Martin’s new book on the Paris Metro (Metropolitain - An ode to the Paris Metro) got me thinking more about Paris… and how it stands in comparison to London on transport. I say book, but it’s more of a love letter really. Take this section as an example: “...the play of light on the station vaults (like so many overhead rivers)... the satisfaction of being on the elevated sections (those stately underground rides), or the hallucinatory charm of the Guimard entrances illuminated at night (when they seem to be encouraging decadent behaviour)...”

Martin skilfully weaves together his own Paris story with the social, cultural and engineering history of the Metro. His slightly lugubrious Yorkshire style is punctuated by the razor sharp observation, the vivid evocation of time and place - as well as a relaxed attitude to digression and the guilty pleasures of detail. The reader is taken from one end of every line to the other. There is a section on the unique smell of the Metro (‘Eau de Madeleine’ is added to the wax

Martin skilfully weaves together his own Paris story with the social, cultural and engineering history of the Metro”

Andrew Martin’s new book on the Paris Metro

that’s applied to the platforms nightly). He takes semi-clandestine rides on terminal loops and ponders the history of the colour palettes used on tickets and there are digressions on the cultural significance of the silver handles (‘loqueteau’) that passengers use to open the doors on some trains.

But back to those London comparisons. London got its Underground first and as Martin says: “Paris having had a long cool look at it decided to do the opposite”. The original concept of the Paris Metro was that every Parisian should be no more than 500 metres from a Metro station and the Paris Metro has more stations than the London Underground despite Paris proper being 15 times smaller than London. Where the Underground built deep the Metro built shallow and where the Underground has surface buildings the Metro doesn’t. The telling dissimilarities continue. Whereas the Underground started by linking main line stations, the Metro shunned them.

While the expansion of the Underground was intimately linked to green field private housing development, the Metro focussed on the betterment of the city of Paris itself. This perhaps also reflects British antipathy towards urban life, in that the Underground was about getting people out of the city whereas the Paris Metro was about enhancing the life of the city itself. However, in Paris this also created a greater awareness of the tension between city and suburb - something which has become a wider faultline in politics in many countries around the world and in which the car is a major signifier (hence the ‘war on motorist’ rhetoric). Martin quotes research which found that:

“The further away people live from a railway station, the likelier they are to vote for Le Pen”, while the deputy mayor of Paris for urbanism, Jean-Louis Missika, argues that the Gilet-jaune (yellow vest) fuel protest movement in France represents “a crisis of failed urbanism”.

The Grand Paris Express project (now coming to fruition) seeks to address this in a decisive way through more than doubling the territory encircling France’s capital city with over 120 miles of new tracks, four new underground lines and 68 new metro stations. The idea is to better connect distant Paris suburbs to the city and to each other and better unite the suburbs with the city in a way which also meets the desire to eliminate car dependency through the provision of good

“The dominance of the car on the banks of the Seine has been broken”

public transport - everywhere. Or as thenpresident Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We want to rebuild the city on top of the city, remove the divide between Paris and its suburbs, reduce the divides which separate the neighborhoods, which separate the inhabitants, we want to restore unity, continuity and solidarity.”

I’m not sure on this side of the channel we have grasped the ambition and scale of this project. Meanwhile the Underground’s expansion is rather more piecemeal and often reflects its historic link with private property development. Paris has also been quicker off the mark on rapid, high capacity cross-city links. The Elizabeth Line is an equivalent to the RER in Paris (which serves four main corridors). These higher-minded Parisian goals are also reflected in the tendency of the Metro to the dramatic, for example, in the way its overhead sections rise from the depths to float above boulevards. Martin attributes this to the fact that engineering isn’t looked down upon as a ‘trade’ occupation by the French elites as it is by their British counterparts whose ancestors were not subject to the guillotine.

Incidentally, whilst London may have been well ahead of Paris on underground railways, Paris was where the bus was invented (and where the term ‘omnibus’ was coined). And whilst Paris regulated its bus services (including integrated ticketing across routes) London did not. In 1869, Charles Dickens wrote a review of the two systems which, whilst readily admitting that the Paris system had more advantages, argued that: “Who can say that, properly developed, the London system of free competition may not ultimately attain… the same degree of perfection that in Paris is enforced by monopoly.” More than 150 years later we are still waiting for bus deregulation to achieve such perfection.

In the post-war years it could be argued that Paris succumbed to the global trend of remaking cities to serve the car even more than London did. The Metro was described as ‘deserted’ in 1950. And despite owning a particularly beautiful house on the Île Saint-Louis, President Pompidou agreed to an expressway along the right bank of the Seine and presided over the opening of the Périphérique (inner motorway ringroad) in 1973. The Francophile writer and author of a piece called The Assassination of Paris, Richard Cobb, wrote that the Périphérique “circles Paris with

the constant roar of tyres, the screams of sirens and the presence of sudden death”.

Paris may have gone harder, and changed course later, in its relationship with the car - but it’s making up for it now. This year the speed limit on the Périphérique will be reduced from 70kmh to 50kmh by Mayor of Paris, Anne Hildago. Mayor Hildago is the Paris equivalent of Ken Livingstone - a pivotal figure in decisively shifting the balance between the car and public transport. The dominance of the car on the banks of the Seine and on those Haussmann boulevards has been broken. Now when you visit you will see cyclists everywhere. In the future more of central Paris will be for people not vehicles and elsewhere the 15-minute city is the goal. Hildago is as savvy and populist as Livingstone was too - with recent referendums taking on both SUVs and the e-scooter hire companies.

Is there now more convergence in the approach to transport between Paris and London than there has been in the past? Perhaps. But, as ever, differences remain too. London has road user charging but public transport in Paris is cheaper. London may have a more integrated transport authority but its Paris equivalents are not under the cosh from a hostile national administration. The Grand Paris Express has no equivalent in Londonbut then the London Underground has more suburban coverage to start with.

The fascinating confluences and divergences between the two cities look set to continue. And Andrew Martin’s book is a good place to start exploring them. ‘Metro, Boulot, Dodo’ (metro, work, sleep) goes the Parisian expression. This is a book that also might make you want to skip work, or the traditional Parisian sights altogether, in favour of exploring the Metro with a map in one pocket and this book in the other.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For decades Jonathan Bray has been at the forefront of making progressive change happen on transport - from stopping the national roads programme in its tracks in the 1990s to getting buses back under public control in the 2020s. He is an advisor to the Welsh Government on bus franchising and an independent advisor. www.jonathan-bray.com

NICK RICHARDSON

Transport policy is stuck in a trend

A new report by the Urban Transport Group probes recent transport trends. It suggests there is too much focus on the car

The Urban Transport Group (UTG) represents the major urban areas and has been commenting on the current state of transport in the UK and its prospects. A new reportInside Track: The State of Transport 2024 - covers trends in how people travel and identifies that although bus services have huge potential, cracking out of the cycle of long term decline has proved challenging. It also notes the need to re-launch train and tram services to recover demand lost post-pandemic. Fundamentally, car use remains dominant and those who are car dependent are difficult to influence.

Contextual changes

The report starts by providing the context of population change and economic activity. Highest population growth is in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, London and West Yorkshire but less lower in other conurbations. There needs to be some caution around this when considering how this affects the demand for transport: a spatial element is also pertinent i.e. is the growth concentrated in rejuvenated parts of cities or is it more dispersed? From a spatial dimension, every agglomeration implies a disagglomeration somewhere else so for every boom there is a localised bust. Many cities have certainly achieved some impressive city centre housing and commercial activity which favours public transport over car ownership; new skylines have emerged representing new activities. With a stronger emphasis on housing

rather than office space, many city centres have changed substantially. An unusual example is London’s Docklands which for obscure reasons is to receive levelling up funding. However, suburban expansion is more likely to fuel car growth unless there is a positive emphasis on designing for people rather than cars. The other consideration is that urban growth can be a consequence or combination of several factors including changing family structures and birth rates, in-migration and movements from rural areas or smaller towns to cities.

Economic activity is also variable by type of job and location. UTG mentions the disparity between thriving business areas and deprived areas. This is typical but may appear to be more evident in areas where major industry has declined to leave vast swathes of derelict land. Here it should be noted that developers prefer greenfield sites to previously used land because it is cheaper to redevelop, despite government intentions. Also, failure to develop some sites is not a result of the planning process, as often casually stated, but is a consequence of the way the development market works. A further

“Car use remains dominant and those who are car dependent are difficult to influence”

consideration is access to employment with workers tending to live further from their place of work and with strong influence from the housing market in which price is the overriding concern to buy or rent.

Rightly, the report notes the importance of devolution in terms of the funding that can be associated with it. The authorities involved have varying powers and some still requiring ratification but nineteen areas are benefitting. Alongside this is the political control that goes with devolution and this is also important for passenger transport when there is clear leadership and a push to coordinate and fund services.

Regarding travel to work, some 40% of workers have an option to work from home but for the 60% who cannot, how and when they travel is likely to have changed. Greater flexibility in commuting helps relieves peak travel pressures - a typical problem of providing passenger servicesand justified extended operating hours and all day frequencies. In theory this should relieve overcrowding, particularly on trains, although this persists because the number of services provided has declined. In Scotland, the removal of peak time premium train fares is an interesting experiment but changed commuting has certainly hit revenue in many places. While people are making fewer journeys to work, they may have opportunities for other journeys such as leisure activities. Ideally these should be local and can be walked or cycled but are also likely to be made by car. This is manifest by the people who drive to the gym to get fit or drive children to school because they regard the roads to be too dangerous to walk along because of traffic. Discretionary spend on travel is also influenced by the level of disposable income which has evidently reduced in recent years. Once people have got to work and found somewhere affordable to live, they may not have much left over.

Trends over time

The report considers travel trends over the past decade but much is the same as it was well before that. This is because transport policy really hasn’t changed that much over time with a continuing failure to address car dominance and because shifts in travel behaviour, economic activity and land use are much longer

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@ciltuk

Manchester’s skyline has changed dramatically in recent years, demonstrating its rapid growth

term. Recently we have seen huge amounts of funding go towards the railway and some decent amounts for bus services but the level of spend on roads continues unabated. This has followed decades of under-investment in passenger transport. Recent announcements about funding more light rail schemes employs the right rhetoric but doesn’t come up with the cash for anything like the required need. You may recall former deputy prime minister John Prescott’s attempts to make a difference with the promise of 25 light rail networks and boosts for other initiatives that failed to materialise before his ten year plan had got very far. Hence the decline in bus use over the past decade has been the continuation of a trend that started in the 1950s.

Perhaps the main message is that cities continue to evolve in response to societal changes and that significant changes that promote sustainable travel need to be pushed further than ever before. Local control in the form of devolution certainly helps but has been a long time coming. The former

Passenger Transport Executives pointed to a more coherent way forward but part of the problem was that they were not in place in as many areas as they should have been. The other key point is that while addressing unrestrained car use has not been to the fore, recent attempts to re-think urban activity shows that differences can be planned and achieved. A prime example is Birmingham which was designed for cars but no longer. Instead, people movement is seen as the means of boosting the economy rather than suffering community severance, noise, intrusion and illegal air quality. Cities really don’t need ten lane highways cutting through them to function.

In addition, thinking bigger helps. Most conurbations include a number of smaller towns or districts which were once freestanding but now act as secondary centres to one major centre. It would be a mistake to assume that the economic functions of the past can be recreated and instead, a wider urban organism emerges. This is then reliant

on good public transport if traffic chaos is to be avoided. While land uses change relatively slowly over time, they provide an opportunity to put public transport infrastructure in place before it all becomes too difficult. This then enables positive planning to influence travel behaviour rather than hoping that it will become sustainable by itself - because it won’t. The UTG report draws attention to the parlous state of local passenger transport services and with a broad-minded approach, it is these services that could play a major role in rejuvenating cities. Describing this ‘precarious state’, UTG neatly draws attention to the need to design cities around people and mass transit rather than cars.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Richardson is chair of CILT’s Bus and Coach Policy Group and is a former chair of the Transport Planning Society. In addition, he has held a PCV licence for over 36 years.

GREAT MINSTER GRUMBLES

This is nothing short of a delaying tactic

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

The more I reflect on the draft Rail Reform Bill the more perplexed I become over the need for any kind of pre-legislative scrutiny. I still don’t understand why the Bill doesn’t name Great British Railways (GBR) on the face of the Bill, instead creating an Integrated Rail Body (IRB). After all, the legislation that established the Strategic Rail Authority happily used that terminology on the face of the Act, so why can’t GBR be named on the face of the draft Bill?

When our secretary of state published the draft Bill he said in his accompanying written statement that “the scale and complexity of the changes being made to the sector” made it “absolutely right” that the draft Bill was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. What nonsense. The changes being made aren’t complex from a legislative perspective. They’re really rather straightforward. Pretty much all the Bill does is set up the IRB and almost all of the Bill is simply making changes to existing legislation to reflect its creation. It may be that many of the reforms being made are complex, but the legislation itself is not. Meanwhile, the National Audit Office has published its report on its investigation into this department’s delivery of our rail

reform programme which does not make for especially comfortable reading even if it is less critical than arguably it could have been.

But what I find most puzzling about the pre-legislative scrutiny process being conducted by the Transport Select Committee, is the Committee’s terms of reference for its inquiry. The committee asks, for example, whether the Bill will “provide the necessary legislative foundations for an integrated rail body with franchising powers... as envisioned in the Plan for Rail”. Well, if it doesn’t then the Bill has been extraordinarily badly drafted! And anyway, how does the industry, or the train operating community, really know the answer to this. How can we tell until the IRB has actually started a fresh round of franchise procurements?

The committee goes on to ask whether the IRB will achieve the government’s aim of a “guiding mind” providing better accountability, more reliable services and greater efficiency. How on earth can we possibly answer this question until the IRB has actually been in operation for a year or more and we have some form of benchmark against which to judge its performance? We are asked what arrangements should be put in place for

“It’s all pretty shameless - and obvious - despite ministers trying to cover this up and pretend that the pre-legislative scrutiny is critical”

scrutiny of the IRB’s business plan. Why should these scrutiny arrangements be any different to the scrutiny arrangements that exist over Network Rail’s plans today? And we are asked if the Bill makes effective provision for the role of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). Well, why would the role of the ORR in overseeing the IRB be any different to its role in overseeing Network Rail given that Network Rail will be the designated as the IRB?

I could go on but I think I’ve made my point! The reality is that this pre-legislative scrutiny process and the Transport Committee’s proposed inquiry is nothing short of a delaying tactic. When Rishi Sunak was chancellor the Treasury wanted to delay publication of the Plan for Rail. Now he’s the prime minister it seems he still wants to delay the rail reforms. It’s all pretty shameless - and obvious - despite ministers trying to cover this up and pretend that the pre-legislative scrutiny is critical.

Meanwhile, word reaches me that Peter Wilkinson, our long-serving director of passenger services is on the move - to HS2 - and I understand a wider shake-up of the Passenger Services division is being planned. This is, perhaps, a logical consequence of the rail reform proposals and by the time you read this these changes may well have been announced. Whatever your views, there is no doubt that Peter Wilkinson was dedicated to his work and committed to trying to deliver a rail service that was fit for purpose. Ministers trusted him, and not without reason. But it’s hard not also to note that he presided over the creation of a rail franchise system that ended up being described as “not fit for purpose”, an uncomfortable epitaph for somebody as dedicated as he was, and doubtless still is.

Finally, it occurs to me that, in reflecting on the draft Bill, Labour will have to decide if it wants to retain IRB’s franchise procurement and franchise management powers. If the party wants all passenger services to be under public sector control, why would you want an IRB awarding contracts to private sector operators, even if they are operating under contracts tightly designed and controlled by the government? And I wonder how comfortable Labour will be with the newfound interest in private sector open access operations. More on that another time!

Equity Index is wake -up call for transport

Women in Transport publishes first report of its kind in the world

GENDER EQUALITY

The gender disparities within the UK transport sector have been laid bare by the Women in Transport Equity Index 2023the first report of its kind in the world for the transport sector.

Published last week, the ground-breaking report reveals the realities women face and calls for urgent action to break down systemic barriers and forge a path towards a truly inclusive and equitable industry.

The survey examines workforce composition, leadership diversity, gender pay gap, and career development. When combined, those organisations that undertook the complete survey, which was conducted by WORK180, achieved an overall rating of 50%, well short of the 80% pace-setting range.

Ruth Cadbury, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women in Transport, commented: “It’s fair to say that the Transport sector has a very male-dominated workforce, and that needs to change both for those working in the sector and those who use it. The Equity Index is an important tool in that journey, as we will only know success if we can measure it.”

At the forefront of the report’s revelations is a pressing call for the UK transport sector to re-elevate its focus on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations within the transport sector. As the sector grapples with gender inequality,

Women in Transport says that it is imperative to integrate ESG principles to drive sustainable and ethical practices.

Sonya Byers, CEO of Women in Transport, said: “Our report is a wake-up call. The UK transport sector needs urgent and drastic changes to become a beacon of gender equity. It’s time for the sector to move beyond lip service and embrace transformative actions. This can only be achieved through cross-sector collaboration”.

Women in Transport says that next year’s Equity Index will delve even deeper, offering a year-over-year evaluation with the aim of propelling the industry into a new era of gender equity.

Project lead Sue Terpilowski said: “The Women in Transport Equity Index exposes the uncomfortable truths the industry is facing. It’s not just a report; it’s a call to arms. We cannot allow gender inequality to persist in a sector pivotal to our nation’s growth and economy.”

“It’s time for the sector to move beyond lip service and embrace transformative actions for a fair and inclusive future”

Sonya Byers, Women in Transport

THE EQUITY INDEX 2023

THE CHALLENGE:

A mere 23% of the workforce identifies as women and more than half of the 23% are in non-transport roles.

58% of organisations admit to a gender pay gap of 11% or more.

54% lack formal targets, commitments, or quotas for gender diversity.

59% offer no support to primary carers in the form of paid parental leave.

THE RECOMMENDATIONS:

Scrutinise and rectify the glaring gender pay gaps within their structures.

Smash glass ceiling with radical, impactful measures for promotions.

Industry-wide initiatives to empower women into leadership positions.

Overhaul policies surrounding paid parental leave.

Tear down the façade of flexibility and reshape it to meet actual needs.

THE TOP ACHIEVERS

Top organisation: Southeastern Railway

Highly commended: Govia Thameslink Railway, Nuclear Transport Solutions, LNER and Northern Trains.

Sector top achievers: Lothian Buses (bus and coach); Brompton Bicycles (consultant); Road Haulage Association (logistics) Nuclear Transport Solutions and Port of Dover (Maritime) and LNER (rail).

FIRST BUS WILL DOUBLE NUMBER OF WOMEN

40% of senior roles will be filled by women by 2028

GENDER EQUALITY

First Bus has committed to double the number of women in its business in the next five years. Furthermore, in line with the FTSE Women Leaders recommendations, it also aims to have 40% of senior leadership roles filled by women by 2028.

To reach this goal, First Bus is making three ambitious new recruitment pledges:

All senior hires (roles that are staff manager and above), in their first interview, will face a balanced panel of female and male interviewers;

All senior hires will have a 50:50 split at shortlist stage;

A guaranteed interview for every female applicant to all driver and engineer roles.

The pledges come as First Bus seeks to attract even more women into the business after successfully doubling the number of women in the business over the past five years.

Janette Bell, managing director at First Bus, said: “This latest milestone is only the next step in our journey, but I am proud we are now putting these pledges in place to help us achieve even more.

“Our ambition is that by 2028, 20% of our business will be made up of females. This would see us doubling the number of women in the business within the next five years, as we have done over the past five years. We want First Bus to be a place where our people feel welcome, can be their true selves and succeed.”

“I am proud we are now putting these pledges in place”

Janette Bell, First Bus

PROMOTING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN PASSENGER TRANSPORT

Trains teamed up to showcase the diverse range of roles and careers available to young women in the rail industry. Held on International Women’s Day (March 8) 20 pupils between the ages of 11 and 13 from Co-op Academy Stoke-on-Trent travelled with Avanti West Coast to Stockport, where they vicited Alstom’s Longsight depot.

WOMEN IN BUS AND COACH

The Women in Bus and Coach initiative (WiBC) has launched a new campaign, ‘Spotlight On’, aimed at “showcasing the incredible contributions of women in all roles across the bus, coach, and community transport sector”. From professional drivers and engineers to human resources professionals and CEOs, the campaign highlights the diverse talents and achievements of women in the industry.

STAGECOACH

To mark International Women’s Day (March 8), Stagecoach collaborated with its internal Women’s Network to produce a video which showcases women leading the way within the UK’s largest bus and coach operator and challenging stereotypes surrounding women in transport. Featured in the video are a range of women from different areas of the business, including Stagecoach’s new CEO Claire Miles.

MIDLANDS RAILWAY East Midlands Railway marked International Women’s Day (March 8) by operating a special Intercity service staffed entirely by women. The service, which ran from Derby to Sheffield and then from Sheffield to London St Pancras, was operated by driver Sara Hardstaff, train manager Sally Ashforth and customer host Maria Alton (pictured).

WOMEN

IN TRANSPORT AND FIRST BUS

Women in Transport and their partner First Bus, hosted the inaugural Inclusive Cab Summit at First Bus Leicester’s depot earlier this month. This ‘industry first’ was attended by 30 organisations from across the sector and marked the start of the journey towards creating a gold charter for inclusive bus cab design.

SCOTRAIL

ScotRail donated the children’s book My Mummy is a Train Driver to Glasgow Women’s Library to mark International Women’s Day (March 8). Aimed at tackling stereotypes in the rail industry, the book is part of a series of children’s books promoting diversity and inclusion. Each copy of the book will also now include a message from a female ScotRail colleague, to celebrate their achievements and contributions.

APPG FOR WOMEN IN TRANSPORT

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Women in Transport hosted a roundtable discussion in parliament earlier this month on the link between equality, diversity and inclusion and improved health, safety and wellbeing outcomes, particularly on transport construction sites. The day heard from rail minister Huw Merriman and shadow rail minister Stephen Morgan MP, as well as industry perspectives.

ALSTOM, AVANTI WEST COAST AND ANGEL TRAINS Alstom, Avanti West Coast and Angel

EAST

LUMO East Coast open access operator Lumo has revealed that in the past three years, 29 females have completed its apprenticeship scheme compared to 27 males. Pictured is Carrie Million, a newly qualified driver.

Scotland’s Railway boss moves to DfT role

Alex Hynes will join the Department for Transport on a two-year secondment from his current position as MD of Scotland’s Railway

The Department for Transport (DfT) has appointed Alex Hynes as director general - rail services. Hynes will commence his twoyear secondment from his current role as managing director of Scotland’s Railway on April 15, 2024. Upon joining the DfT, Anit Chandarana, the interim director general, will return to Network Rail as planned following the conclusion of his secondment.

The DfT said Hynes’ role is pivotal as the government progresses with its plans to reform the railways, aiming to improve outcomes for passengers by integrating track and train oversight while capitalising on private sector expertise under Great British Railways (GBR).

Leading Scotland’s Railway since 2017, Hynes has been instrumental in devolving more responsibility for rail in Scotland and fostering collaboration with partners Transport Scotland and ScotRail for the benefit of rail users. Previously, he served as the managing director of Northern, where the train operator achieved its highest customer satisfaction scores and record levels of employee engagement during his tenure.

With ongoing initiatives such as the draft Rail Reform Bill, the expansion of Pay As You Go, fare simplification trials, and confirmed rail freight growth targets, the DfT said it would continue to adapt its structures to enhance the delivery of rail services and advance its rail

“Alex is uniquely equipped to lead our plan to help deliver better outcomes for passengers”Bernadette Kelly

reform plan while ensuring value for taxpayers.

As part of a wider reorganisation within the DfT to address current transport challenges, the Rail Infrastructure and Services Group will consolidate most of the existing Passenger Services directorate and Rail Infrastructure Group, aligning with plans to integrate track and train oversight under GBR.

Additionally, the establishment of a Major Rail Projects Group will merge the existing HighSpeed Rail Group and Northern Powerhouse Rail initiatives. Rail strategy, policy, and reform will be integrated with wider public transport efforts, including buses and devolution, within a new Public Transport and Local

APPOINTMENTS

LIVERPOOL CITY REGION CA

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has announced the appointment of Jamie Ross to the newly created post of director of transport.

Ross (pictured), formerly the interim director of rail at the combined authority, will now lead the commissioning and execution of mayor Steve Rotheram’s vision for a fully integrated public transport network akin to London’s. His responsibilities encompass the implementation of a new bus franchising model for the city region and advancing plans for increased devolution of the region’s rail network.

With a background in the transport sector, Ross brings extensive experience from his tenure with transport operators such as GNER, Northern Rail, and The Go-Ahead Group. Prior to his role at the combined authority, he served as the global commercial director of Menzies Aviation.

Group. Furthermore, a new Road Transport Group will oversee work related to roads, motoring, road freight, road transport decarbonisation, and active travel.

“Bringing a wealth of experience to this role, Alex is uniquely equipped to lead our plan to help deliver better outcomes for passengers in the years ahead, working in close partnership with industry,” said DfT permanent secretary Bernadette Kelly.

Hynes added: “Our railways play a vital role connecting people right across the country. I look forward to working closely with DfT colleagues to help industry deliver the services that passengers rightly expect, while laying the track for a simpler, more effective rail system.

STAGECOACH SOUTH

Stagecoach has announced the appointment of Carol Sim as operations director of Stagecoach South.

Sim (pictured) joins the Chichester-based bus operator from First Bus, where she was head of operations for the south of England. Her career in the industry started in 2003, as a bus driver with First Bus in Yeovil. Sim then progressed within the business, moving into various leadership roles, including supervisor and operations manager, before becoming head of operations in 2021.

Rehana expresses her love for Marylebone

Celebrating 20 years by Marylebonifying her name

As London’s Marylebone station celebrates its 125th anniversary, Rehana Khawaja, a member of the Chiltern Railways team with 20 years of service, is seizing the moment by officially changing her name to Rehana Marylebone Khawaja.

This tribute could have been even grander, had it not been for her children’s objection to a change in her first name. Despite this, the compromise of ‘Mary’ didn’t fully

This is Cassie. We like her

STAY PAWSITIVE WHEN CROSSING

Network Rail’s safety teams recently visited Birmingham International station to highlight the importance of safely crossing railways with four-legged

What’s in a name?

satisfy Rehana’s desire for homage. Undeterred, she proceeded to honour the station that has been an integral part of her life by altering her middle name.

Rehana’s journey with Chiltern

companions, especially for attendees heading to Crufts, the world’s largest dog show at the NEC Birmingham.

With over 20,000 people attending the show, rail safety staff highlighted the frequent near-miss incidents involving dogs at level crossings. Managers responsible for level crossings, along with public and passenger safety teams, distributed dog leads, collars, water bowls, waste bag holders, and other essentials. They stressed the necessity for caution when using footpath level

Railways began in 2004, starting in the ticket office and gradually transitioning through various frontline roles across the network. Her association with Marylebone station, where she served as a dispatcher, station supervisor, and station manager, has been particularly significant throughout her extensive career with Chiltern.

While now serving as the safeguarding and security manager across the network, Rehana endeavours to return to her beloved station as frequently as possible, a testament to the lasting impact of her time spent there.

“It really does feel like a home away from home to me,” she said.

THEIR LOVE IS RIGHT ON-TRACK

crossings with pets, emphasising the need for vigilance to ensure safety for canine companions and their owners.

Natalie Stretton, head of operational risk for Network Rail’s Central route, said: “It’s easy to get lost in your own thoughts when walking your dog on a familiar route so I’d like to remind dog walkers to keep your dog on a short lead when on or near a level crossing, and follow the instructions at level crossings to keep you and your pet safe.”

A paw-sitive message!

A Railway Mission chaplain officiated the UK’s first train wedding. Leah Anderson and Vince Smith exchanged vows aboard a Great Western Railway train between London Paddington and Swansea. With 14 guests in tow, they celebrated with a drinks reception and a lavish three-course meal prepared by the onboard dining crew.

Leah and Vince’s romance sparked on a GWR train, where they shared their first date. Moved by their love story, GWR made a remarkable gesture by hosting their entire wedding.

Let’s hope they stay on the right track with married life.

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