West Midlands Bus Partnership to End

[IMarkeh]

I believe the current reimbursement rates for encts is not high enough, although the statement says an operator should be no better or worse off for accepting encts the reality is that if you had a service that was only carrying encts pass holders you would not be able to make it commercially viable that in itself coupled with the evidence through lack of rural community services that primarily carry encts passengers shows the current arrangements dont work.
I believe the national bus strategy will try to tackle that issue.

The national bus strategy also calls for cross operator ticketing at little to no premium. I believe that if nbus was priced the same as the nx equivalent product then this would remove one of the barriers to innovative new routes. The strength of the nx products is such that a large percentage of passengers will take a more indirect route to their destination simply due to the fact that the direct service would require them to buy a "slightly" more expensive product. I believe that also where a passenger has bought another operators pass then that operator should reimburse the other one for acceptance of their product at a fair amount.

This would ensure passengers got a seamless system of payment whichever route or operator they chose to travel with & could take a more direct service whilst giving operators confidence to trial new direct connections with the knowledge that there access to 100% of the passenger base.

With passenger levels expected to be suppressed for quite a long time (if the ever recover to pre covid levels) this is essential to ensure the network as it is survives let alone increasing it.


For me & Mr Dunn to be singing from the same hymn sheet basically says the others have got to change their tune & listen to 2 long term bus men.

Thank you for your reply and sorry for being slow getting back to you. I have been keeping up with the discussion though through my phone (I struggle to post on forums with my phone).
I 100% agree with you on ENCTS. It's always surprised me that no one gets the logic that if ENCTS reimbursement goes up, more routes become viable so less tenders needed and more new innovative routes come about. People just reply blankly and blame dereg for the issues. I am interested that you say the NBS will look to tackle this as I saw no mention of the ENCTS pass there.


For cross operator ticketing. The idea is great and I really hope that it takes off with more schemes coming about. The issue that I forsee is county borders but that is another discussion.
I don't think it would be fair to reduce nBus to the same as the NXWM ticket purely because I can see how that has been done in Merseyside and it negatively affects businesses quite a lot since instead of getting the whole ticket amount, you instead get a percentage of the fare. Given the flexibility such a ticket brings, I think the small premium for a multi operator ticket is ok. This will affect some routes yes but it does encourage you to build up a network and give passengers the best value for money.
We will have to disagree on the last point. For small operators, this could do more bad than good. Yes it's good if everyone using your bus is extracted from another bus operator but say you were the primary operator of a route and another firm duplicated your route and revenue extracted, how happy would you be to then reimburse them for competing with you? That is asking for key corridors to be flooded. I understand your side of the arguement for such a scheme but I think it could really backfire and you would be livid if you were an operator with a lot of commercial routes and others jumping on them to steal revenue.


Change is needed in the industry but no one will address some of the key issues because it's political suicide. Either you annoy a lot of your voters reducing ENCTS eligability and/or valididty or your spend a lot of money in extra subsidy paying for it. Yes it should pay off with less tenders/funded routes but it's a short term risk and a lot of operators would run with the money, not make more commercial routes so you kind of need to only give an uplift to those who agree to take on tenders commercially.

[Steve3229vp]

This is from the Diamond Facebook page:


🔻New Announcement Regarding West Midland Partnership Services.
Early this year Diamond announced that we had given notice on our participation in the West Midlands Partnership service agreement, as the current arrangement was not viable for us to consider further.
Since early August we have been in negotiations with TfWM and National Express West Midlands to try and agree a process, whereby the partnership services can continue to be operated sustainably.
Whilst a final arrangement is yet to be reached, Diamond Bus has agreed that we will continue to accept and sell NX tickets on partnership routes for a further 4-week period, National Express will also continue to accept and sell Diamond Value products - as per the current agreement.
It is hoped that within this 4-week period a final agreement can be reached in the interest of both the partnership service passengers and our business needs.
The published timetable changes from 29th August 2021, will continue to go ahead as planned however the ticketing arrangements will not be changed at this time.

[Westy]

This is from the Diamond Facebook page:


🔻New Announcement Regarding West Midland Partnership Services.
Early this year Diamond announced that we had given notice on our participation in the West Midlands Partnership service agreement, as the current arrangement was not viable for us to consider further.
Since early August we have been in negotiations with TfWM and National Express West Midlands to try and agree a process, whereby the partnership services can continue to be operated sustainably.
Whilst a final arrangement is yet to be reached, Diamond Bus has agreed that we will continue to accept and sell NX tickets on partnership routes for a further 4-week period, National Express will also continue to accept and sell Diamond Value products - as per the current agreement.
It is hoped that within this 4-week period a final agreement can be reached in the interest of both the partnership service passengers and our business needs.
The published timetable changes from 29th August 2021, will continue to go ahead as planned however the ticketing arrangements will not be changed at this time.

It might be a bit early, but do we have an update on this yet?

[Steveminor]

The partnership.will fully end on Sunday

[Westy]

The partnership.will fully end on Sunday

If you mean this Sunday coming, hope the word is getting out quick, especially over the ticket non-acceptance?

[Steveminor]

Statement on Diamond Facebook site

[Stu]

Statement on Diamond Facebook site

Nope, nothing there. There's a tweet 'embedded' on the website, but when you click through to view it on Twitter, "this tweet has been deleted"

[Tony]

Nope, nothing there. There's a tweet 'embedded' on the website, but when you click through to view it on Twitter, "this tweet has been deleted"

I did see it on Facebook as well, but appears to have gone.

[Westy]

Glad it's not just me then!

[DJ]

I've heard a deal may have been agreed at the last minute, hence why it's gone.

[Steveminor]

Diamond are giving nx a bit more time to reach agreement.
No-one can say Diamond aren't being as reasonable as possible

[Westy]

What are they aiming for?

Presumbly just the ticket arrangements, as I'd be very surprised if they went back to the joint timetable.

[Steveminor]

Simon has already stated his reasons on here