A very well placed account of the issues that are now industry wide. Of course, this is where the deregulated bus industry married to a climate of austerity and funding cuts has and will continue to fail marginal communities. We can be certain that rural services will be the first casualties and that more will be to come, regardless of the operator.
Quote from: andy41 on August 07, 2016, 08:59:21 PM
A word or two on what is happening to Arriva in this area.
What we have is a terrible collision between the original Deregulation act of 1986 and the austerity policies of 6 years of this awful government. It is no coincidence that deregulation worked pretty much without distress (although I opposed it at the time, but being 12 there wasn't much I could do about it...) until we got this government in 2010.
The balancing act between bus companies and local authorities has been a fine and tight one since day one, but the saving grace has always been the local authority grant that government has always had to fund, whatever has been going on with the economy or politics in general. Until Osborne.
Local Authorities have had their allowances recalculated in wholly disproportionate equations. The result being that some of those with the highest costs when it comes to public transport (due to their rural nature and lack of existing infrastructure) have lost more per head of population than others who whilst having more population to provide for, are already better set up to take the hit due to having alternatives and good existing infrastructure. A sort of poll tax for transport.
In the days of operators that were focussed solely on one area, the company would simply have to make the most of what was there and be innovative in growing their commercial appeal to make up for the shortfall that the LA was withdrawing. It wouldn't be perfect by any means, but it would be in the operators' interest to make an effort in order to have a sustainable and robust future and therefore still be there to reap the benefits of a change of policy in the future. (these are never far away in this political climate)
The problem is that we don't have these operators. We have multinationals with vast fleets in all areas of the country. Their policy is to invest when and where the LA does, and to retrench when the LA has to cut. And that is what we have with companies like Arriva. They will shift focus from one year to the next and if their figures tell them that a bus can achieve a better return in Luton or Watford because the LA is still funding evening services and pays a better rate per head on ENCTS than Staffs or Shrops now can, they simply move the buses.
That is just one example of how they do it. You can apply the principle anywhere in the country, because there are now vast differences between our LA's and what they can and can't pay anymore. And now we have the Buses Bill to inject further discrepancies. Companies like Arriva will continue to play Chess with their assets, paying no concern whatsoever to the needs of those left behind, as long as the margin per vehicle and depot is looking favourable.
The skeletal service they keep in place, as they have for instance in Stafford, is an insurance policy to a) keep redundancy expenses to a minimum, b) keep a foot in the door should LA policy suddenly change and the gravy train starts running again and c) retain an asset which can eventually be sold rather than full scale retrenchment which raises no revenue.
They actually drive down demand for their own product by making it unattractive, and then blame the reduced demand that they have created themselves when cutting further. They do this as a complete gamble, based on the odds that there are few left in the industry that can afford to comprehensively move into the gaps they create and that they therefore, despite their half hearted operation, will remain as the dominant operator. 9 times out of 10 the gamble pays off and they either sell up and raise capital (see Burton) or are still around to cash in when the money kicks in again. One can only assume that they think that may happen round here when the LA's digest the Buses Bill in full, and consequently they are leaving a toe dipped in.
Maybe they will pay for this approach, maybe they won't.