West midlands bus franchising

[Wumpty]

And you can bet that Mr Burnham isn't mentioning this in any of his many press conferences either! Even more ironic is how First particularly were painted as the bad guys in Manchester before franchising and yet now they are getting the 'Bees' out of a hole. Irony these politicians certainly can't comprehend that is for sure!

A prime example is happening in Manchester at the moment. Stagecoach is the prominent operator in South Manchester commercially, TfGM award two garages to Metroline. Lots of Stagecoach staff are happy working for them so choose to fill all the remaining vacancies at Stagecoach's remaining garages instead of TUPE transferring to Metroline.
Metroline haven't had chance to recruit enough new recruits to fill the gaps, so lots of buses missing that weren't before franchising, so much so that TfGM have now had to call First Group in from Rochdale to run some of the services they have only just awarded to Metroline, and I bet First are charging them nicely for the privilege.

Mr Burnham hasn't but callers to BBC Radio Manchester in the last few weeks most certainly have! His only, and continued parrot-fashioned response is that most new businesses need a little help, and the majority of services are running with little disruption!

I'm sure the same will happen when bus franchising hits the West Midlands, with whoever wins the tenders needing help from intergroup, or from another operator like NXWM.

[Stu]

Been having another look at consultation responses.

(S1) There are several challenges facing the West Midlands Bus Network which means that it is not performing as well as it could. Do you have any comments on this?

The lack of integration is frustrating- when I travel in London I know Oyster will work on all the transport, automatically cap my spend etc. I'm Birmingham I am really not sure how best to go from tram to bus or bus to train. And then you can't use tickets with different operators so it costs more to get a 50 bus one way with NXBus and the other with Diamond. It doesn't feel like anyone has passengers' best interests at heart. It's also hard to find information, google is great but if you need info from the bus operator eg routes it is inconsistent. The recent price increase following the removal of the £2 cap has also been quite a shock - it's now not much more expensive to get an uber from my house to the city centre when there are two of us travelling, which feels like we just end up with more cars on the road. I understand the need to subsidise longer less profitable journeys, but it's expensive for people living in deprived urban areas relatively close to the city centre.

I do agree that Oyster is great in London, but then we do have Swift Go here in the West Midlands that does the same thing. But I agree that paying by contactless card is not as well integrated here.

More untruth though with the claim that "you can't use tickets with different operators so it costs more to get a 50 bus one way with NXBus and the other with Diamond". nBus Day tickets are valid and accepted on all operators, and there is no cost difference between travelling on an NX or a Diamond bus if making a single journey.

" it's now not much more expensive to get an uber from my house to the city centre when there are two of us travelling" - It seems to me there is a lack of awareness of the Family/Group nBus ticket, and an assumption made by many people that if they have to travel by bus then they can only buy single tickets.

[wembley86]

I think as part of this franchising scheme we need to look at our failures in public transport in the west midlands.

Look how long it took to get line two of the metro of the ground and it is still not up and running. Imagine instead that been a guided bus route from Bescot at Wallows Lane traveling along the disused railway to Dudley/Stourbridge how much easier at quicker bus journeys would have been. 

[BlackCountryBusSpotter]

I think as part of this franchising scheme we need to look at our failures in public transport in the west midlands.

Look how long it took to get line two of the metro of the ground and it is still not up and running. Imagine instead that been a guided bus route from Bescot at Wallows Lane traveling along the disused railway to Dudley/Stourbridge how much easier at quicker bus journeys would have been.

Isn't Wallows Lane still an active Train Line for Frieght from Bescot to Portobello and so on and will be part of the Walsall to Wolverhampton line when that reopens

[Rachvince53]

Isn't Wallows Lane still an active Train Line for Frieght from Bescot to Portobello and so on and will be part of the Walsall to Wolverhampton line when that reopens

No, thats the line that joins/leaves the Chase Line at Wednesbury Road. The line at Wallows Lane was part of the South Staffordshire Line which begins at the point where the Chase Line turns north to pass under Wallows Lane. It has been mothballed since the through line to Stourbridge via Wednesbury, Dudley Port (Low Level) and Dudley closed. I believe it was intended to be repurposed as part of the "5Ws" Metro plan. 

[BlackCountryBusSpotter]

No, thats the line that joins/leaves the Chase Line at Wednesbury Road. The line at Wallows Lane was part of the South Staffordshire Line which begins at the point where the Chase Line turns north to pass under Wallows Lane. It has been mothballed since the through line to Stourbridge via Wednesbury, Dudley Port (Low Level) and Dudley closed. I believe it was intended to be repurposed as part of the "5Ws" Metro plan.

The 5W Line was never going to work anyway, so glad the mayor hasn't proposed that like his predecessor did it would have presumably gone up from the Metro Alignmnt from Wednesbury Parkway across what is now the Black Country New Road or under it and apparently was going to serve Darlaston before following the old alignment of a former rail line from Darlaston to Where the new station is, there were many issues half of that land has houses and factories on it, some of it carries busy Main roads over it and some of it is a park. I believe they later rectified it to use the South Staffs line and not serve Darlaston, But There was many proposals for it most of which didn't work. 

[Tony]

The 5Ws would have worked perfectly,  The plans were in place before the last Mayor

[satters]

I do agree that Oyster is great in London, but then we do have Swift Go here in the West Midlands that does the same thing. But I agree that paying by contactless card is not as well integrated here.

it would be a boon if tap & cap worked across the different bus companies, for whilst my travel to & from work is wholly NXWM, the buses I use for getting around on days off are a mixture of Diamond, NXWM and Kevs

[ayoungbusman]

Personally, as someone who has worked on both sides of the coin (for operators and TfWM), I think several issues around franchising haven't been answered and some of the reasons for franchising being pursued are being presented behind smoke and mirrors.

The franchising assessment indicates that even with franchising, passenger numbers are envisaged to fall. If that is the case, the taxpayer is being asked to 'buy' a system that even with all the money being invested, won't improve and in turn, would probably cost more money to prop up. No one in business rightly buys a business in insolvency so why should the taxpayer be asked to do this with regards to the bus network?

Franchising is meant to improve journey times however TfWM and Local Authorities already control highways and various aspects of the road system, such as parking enforcement so how franchising improves that is something I can't see. If franchising isn't coupled with serious improvements to both parking enforcement and introduction bus priority in areas where it's technically feasible but politically distasteful (such as Soho Road, where it's dual carriageway for the majority of the way but is parked on, in sometimes a haphazard way, impacting the 74's punctuality to name one area) then I can't see how franchising magically speeds up journey times. All I can see is an influx of additional buses into timetables to keep frequencies up, which brings me onto my next point...

Driver shortage. Whilst this may be turning around, under franchising that doesn't magically go away. Coupled with the fact that the West Midlands Combined Authority has some levers it can pull to improve this (employment programs, education etc), it's easy to say 'we control the network so more buses should run' but if you don't address this problem, I can envisage a scenario where the operators are short of drivers and can point to the franchising authority in this case as not creating a system where adequate drivers are available across the network for employment.

The documents to me seem long winded and designed to assure a 'yes' to franchising, regardless of whether this is the best option, solely based on it being a Labour policy and nothing more substantial than that.