Comp on Bham routes since dereg. Which corridors have benefitted the most?

[Steveminor]

Tony I'm not just talking about the West Midlands but the country as a whole & I do know at least one operator in the Mids that was put straight off the road by the TC for maintenance besides Tony TWM wouldnt have been called before the TC & told to re MOT their fleet unless as you say their was a maintenance issue that wasn't subsequently resolved. The difference is the TC can't pull such a large operator off the road like he can with smaller guys. Would there be any major disruption to the public if say Travel Express suddenly were pulled off the road. It's unfair really everyone knows it, but hey that's the name of the game so anyone running buses just has to accept that fact, like other unfair situations.
If the encumbent runs their own bus stations any competitor loses out when they either can't get in or are allocated a stand well away from where any intending passenger is likely to be or as was the case in Worcester competitor can't get to the stand because thd encumbent who runs the bus station has blocked the stands with their buses.
Another unfairness is when the local authority or government organisation gives preference to the encumbent I.E job centres giving day tickets (which have been purchased) for the encumbent to people who need to travel to a job interview & as was the case in Somerset tried to uphold a complaint from the encumbent that their competitor was using a Routemaster in stage carriage service. The council was soon told where to go by the way.
But like I say that is the way things are & have been since deregulation so we all just get on with it. In some ways the larger operators don't know how lucky they are.
Another example of how incumbents are protected by the local authority, in Tamworth AMPM were questioned regarding the concessionary passes as Arrivas figures had not dropped since AMPM started meaning that AMPM must be claiming for concessionary passes they weren't carrying. When we looked at the figures & the letter from the council it was basically suggesting that AMPM weren't carrying any concessionary passes as Arrivas pass figures had increased. This was cleared up with deffinative hard evidence that AMPM were carrying more concessionary passengers than Arriva.

[Steveminor]

It will all depend on the figures Winston as to what route is chosen. No point putting on a new service only to have to take it off again within a couple of months.
Of course these figures are on paper in the real world it could still fail look @ Heartlands bus 67X on paper that route should have been epic but in reality it just didn't quite pan out. Maybe because Mr James insisted on putting on a minibus & then taking one of the 2 buses off to do a school route but never the less in the real world I don't think it would ever make anywhere near the projected figures.

[winston]

Steve, I see where you are coming from, obviously having the figures of an established service you are considering going head to head on should give you a better idea of potential revenue, but there is still no guarantee that those passengers would defect to the competing service either.

At some point the only way to grow bus patronage in the West Midlands bus market will be by introducing new routes & offering new links aimed at current non bus users. There are only so many people living within an accessible radius of the main core corridors, eventually frequency increases may have a negative increase as operating costs have spiralled while the number of additional passengers is lower than anticipated. Obviously some new routes will be a flop, while other will be a success. May be a safer options for smaller operators would be have a combination of both types of routes to reduce risk

[Steveminor]

The difficulty with new routes is your figures could be further out as you can never know how many people need that link or would choose the direct bus over catching 2 "proper buses" (as people still call NX). You can theorise on passenger numbers if you are combining 2 existing services lets say for arguement sake you were going to operate from city to Scott arms along the 51 route then into West Brom along the 451. You have the figures for the 51 section & the figures for the 451 section (yes I know it isn't the 451 anymore), now you can theorise that a perry bar to West a rom route would provide a much needed link & yes it would be used & be a much welcomed direct service, but by how many? Now if you can turn a profit on the 51 & 451 sections then you have a viable service & anyone that uses this new link is just a bonus. However if you can't turn a profit out of putting those 2 routes together, well it's not worth the risk as you would probably lose money & if you're a new start operator it could potentially end your business.

[winston]

Steve fair points.....

Just out of interest, how does a smaller operator manage to obtain figures for NX routes? do the full passenger numbers carried have to be made available to Centro which include passenger using NX travelcards as well?

[Steveminor]

If only it were that simple lol. No I'm afraid it's a case of travelling on the bus with a cople of clicker counters manually counting how many cash concessions & pass holders get on the bus. It takes weeks to get a large enough sample journeys to make any assessment & that's just if you're going into head to head competition, so if you're going to combine routes well that's when you certainly earn your money. The only time you can get figures off centro is for tendered services under FOI request but even then as was the case when AMPM commercialised the Sunday 71, it's still advisable to check the figures for yourself.

[winston]

Steve I did wonder, so you go in undercover....... it was just when you kept mentioning 'the figures' all the time......  ;D

Thanks for all your replies, very interesting! even though I've made myself like a right plonker with the last reply......  ::)

[Steveminor]

Not made yourself look like a plonker at all Winston I mean if you don't know how you supposed to find out without asking.

[Tony]

Tony I'm not just talking about the West Midlands but the country as a whole & I do know at least one operator in the Mids that was put straight off the road by the TC for maintenance besides Tony TWM wouldnt have been called before the TC & told to re MOT their fleet unless as you say their was a maintenance issue that wasn't subsequently resolved. The difference is the TC can't pull such a large operator off the road like he can with smaller guys.

I didn't say there wasn't a maintenance issue at TWM. I remember the incident very well, it was the result of a VOSA visit to Birmingham Central garage. That was what started TWM using VCRs because one of the complaints the TC made was that the driver reporting system was inadequate. What is interesting is sine TWM introduced the VCR any other operator with similar problems has been advised by the TC to use VCRs almost identical to TWMs. What TWM did was heed the TCs advice and get their fleet back in order.

Why not name the operator who was banned after one VOSA bad report then, because I cannot remember one, no harm in naming them if they have now ceased.

[winston]

Not made yourself look like a plonker at all Winston I mean if you don't know how you supposed to find out without asking.

Cheers Steve  ;)

[Steveminor]

Because said operator has set up again in a different area under a new name, so it would be unfair to name drop as he now has a good reputation & would have had before if he had been given the chance to put things right. If I see you out & about I will tell you face to face but not on open forum mate.

[Justin Tyme]

This is a very interesting thread, with many sensible comments.

I've never worked in the bus business so my opinions won't count for much compared to the others.  However, may I put forward two points.

• I agree that large operators are extremely unlikely to be put out of business, but they are much more likely to suffer reputational damage.  Some punishments major operators have been given (e.g. Arriva at Derby having to provide free evening rides on one route) are very unlikely to be meted out to small operators.  There have also been times where the Traffic Commissioner has given time for a new business to take over from a sinking small operator.
  
• As far as competing bus services are concerned, frequency is very important.  In the theoretical example that Steveminor gave of a 51/451 combination, such a service would have to be frequent enough to be perceived to be useful.  A half-hourly service wouldn't work, as joe public would almost certainly decide to stick with two turn-up-and-go services and change than wait for a through bus.

[Steveminor]

Justin, repputational damage is not really a factor for large encumbentd as most of the time there is very little option for passengers than to catch their service even if they think they aren't reputable. Plus any large encumbent is mainly seen as the bad guy by the passengers who will always want a better company. Look at Redditch, people complained about First saying they weren't public friendly buses off time yadda yadda yadda. Diamond as the competitor were seen as a much better company better service more reliable etc. now as soon as First are out & Diamond are the large encumbent they are suffering the same fate as First did. So a large encumbent is seldom seen as reputable so how can you ruin their reputation. Sure you can within the industry but that means little in the real world.

I will agree that any new service would have to have a viable frequency to attract passengers but that will then increase costs therefore requiring even more passengers to make it viable. It's a very tricky balancing act. Obviously an hourly service isn't going to attract passengers but a 10 minute service is probably going to lose so much money initially that if tried by a smaller operator they would probably end up going bust. It also depends on the frequency of the routes you are going up against I.e if the 51 was every 30 mins & the 451 was every 20 mins then an hourly service would stand a better chance.
On balance you need to use a maximum of 4 buses I believe to keep the costs low enough to sustain the route in its early stages. If it proves successful then you can slowly ramp it up by adding 2 buses at a time until you reach the routes saturation point.
A routes saturation point is a very interesting point as every route has one in essence it's where a certain frequency will help increase passenger numbers who will see the bus as a viable alternative to their car. But if you increase the frequency too much then you are just spreading the passengers over more buses making it less efficient. Examples are the 37 with NX & diamond both ramping up the service against each other then they both over saturated the route & that meant only one thing Diamond had to withdraw as they were losing too much money. Ok they tried reducing the amount of buses they were using but NX were very clever to replace every Diamond that left the route with one of theirs keeping the route over saturated. When Diamond left then all NX had to do was sit back & reap the benefits of the extra patronage for themselves. The 50 is another route that is now over saturated with TGB running every 10 mins it is really hurting operators pockets & I believe Diamond will be the losers there too. Now the 71 is different as NX & Claribels had a sort of stalemate with neither adding any buses to the route for some time. Then BAM Sunny place 6 buses onto the route, however this increased the amount of passengers using the service to the point where in the peaks you can see all 3 operators nose to tail all with a good load but if eithe Claribels NX or Sunny miss a bus then you'll find the next bus struggle to carry the load. Having said that I think another 3 buses added to the route would probably over saturate it.

[j789]

If the encumbent runs their own bus stations any competitor loses out when they either can't get in or are allocated a stand well away from where any intending passenger is likely to be or as was the case in Worcester competitor can't get to the stand because thd encumbent who runs the bus station has blocked the stands with their buses.

So you are saying that the 'encumbent' who spends money maintaining the bus station/drivers rest room etc should roll over and let any cowboy in who decides he wants to compete against them???? As a driver for this 'encumbent' who witnessed this particular situation FIRST hand, no blocking of the stand took place as we run to timetables unless you want to be sacked. If the competitor runs a bus 1 minute in front of an another company on a route that is often delayed that is the reason why the stand got so congested eg it wasn't unusual to see 3 or 4 buses running around Dines Green together if they got delayed.
Also, if this competitor was so beneficial for passengers why did the council replace them so quickly on the subsidised routes 31a/c, 37, 39, 362,363,382, 423 and all the late city routes? Further, companies such as Astons, LMS and WCC use the bus station without problems so this was not the issue here.

[fleetline6477]

In some threads above there has been a hypothetical example quoted of a route travelling along 51 route B'ham to Scott Arms and then as 5 (451) Scott Arms to West Brom. Didn't Little Red Bus operate that exact route as B551?