Uno Bus - TfL contract, new bus seen out on test

[jon0844]

Seen out and about in Hatfield this morning, presumably on test.

Just imagining what it could be like if TfL was running buses here, instead of the anti-public transport county council we have - slashing funding from September and leaving many of us without late evening and Sunday services...

 

[Bletchleyite]

To be honest, evening bus services outside London are so badly used I don't blame Councils for cutting them - other services are more important by far. But what is needed is an end to London micromanaging Councils and allowing them to charge a proper level of Council Tax for the services required.

Design the services, then set the tax to pay for them, not the other way round.

 

[Deerfold]

To be honest, evening bus services outside London are so badly used I don't blame Councils for cutting them - other services are more important by far. But what is needed is an end to London micromanaging Councils and allowing them to charge a proper level of Council Tax for the services required.

Design the services, then set the tax to pay for them, not the other way round.

But many of them are poorly used because they're so sparse. Even if you have a local evening service if your connecting service has no evening service it may not be useful to you.

How does London micromanage the borough councils? (Genuine question - I don't live in London).

 

[MCR247]

To be honest, evening bus services outside London are so badly used I don't blame Councils for cutting them - other services are more important by far. But what is needed is an end to London micromanaging Councils and allowing them to charge a proper level of Council Tax for the services required.

Design the services, then set the tax to pay for them, not the other way round.

But are they poorly used because there is no actual demand? I find this quite hard to believe for a lot of places

 

[Hophead]

By now, there must be very few evening and Sunday routes that are still subsidised in the shire counties. If Hertfordshire are only removing the funding this year, I think you could fairly reasonably describe them as pro public transport.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How does London micromanage the borough councils? (Genuine question - I don't live in London).

No, I mean the micromanagement of County and Unitary Authority Councils by the Westminster Government, e.g. penalties for increasing Council Tax when in most cases it needs increasing to maintain services.
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But are they poorly used because there is no actual demand? I find this quite hard to believe for a lot of places

In many places yes. In Milton Keynes private hire "taxis" are very cheap and plentiful, and if two people are travelling are the same price as the bus, and with three cheaper, as well as being more convenient.

There are exceptions, and those exceptions are generally served by commercially run bus services.

 

[Deerfold]

By now, there must be very few evening and Sunday routes that are still subsidised in the shire counties. If Hertfordshire are only removing the funding this year, I think you could fairly reasonably describe them as pro public transport.

I think they're removing the last of them now. There were many routes with no evening or Sunday service when I lived in Hertfordshire 8 years ago (many of which lost them in the 3 years I lived there).

 

[jon0844]

But are they poorly used because there is no actual demand? I find this quite hard to believe for a lot of places

One bus that's being cut on Sunday is actually busier on the last few services (between 0930-1100) than a lot of the day, because students use it to get back to campus. It would have perhaps have been better to switch to hourly all day Sunday, especially as trains from London are only every hour (bar the slows) so if you timed to coincide with that service, it might just make commercial sense.

But the University has been promoting a specific local cab firm for some months, so maybe they're all expected to use taxis from now on. I wonder if said taxi firm made any donation to the university in return for their cards being handed out?

Funny thing is, the university owns Uno...!

 

[Hadders]

I live in Stevenage. We currently have a very good bus service from where I live into the town centre. It runs every 10 minutes during the day, dropping to every 20 minutes in the evening and on Sundays. The buses run until 2330.

I've frequently been on late night buses with 20+ passengers. The bus provides a real alternative to using a car, particularly as many passengers then continue their journeys into London on by train for work or leisure.

The proposed cuts see services withdrawn after 2000 on weekdays and totally on Sundays. This will cause significant hardship for many people, increase car usage and will cause issues as there will be insufficient parking spaces for the additional cars using the town centre car parks.

Transport for London would never do this in London but our ridiculous County Council believes it is acceptable. Try not to laugh but they even want to convert the St Albans Abbey line to a guided busway - thing is there won't be any services at all after 200 if they do so!

 

[Tetchytyke]

It's easy to throw brick bats at the council, but in our austerity times there's a finite pot of money. Are late night buses that nobody uses really the best way to spend that money? If there's genuinely the demand then companies can run them commercially, and if there isn't the demand for a commercial service then the effects will be very limited.

People in Hertfordshire have voted for austerity, they can't complain when it comes to their town.

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

In many places yes. In Milton Keynes private hire "taxis" are very cheap and plentiful, and if two people are travelling are the same price as the bus, and with three cheaper, as well as being more convenient.

There are exceptions, and those exceptions are generally served by commercially run bus services.

Odd that you should quote Milton Keynes to support you argument. When I worked there there was a comprehensive evening services with virtually all areas served hourly or half hourly, much of it commercial... of course things may have changed now that Arrriva are in charge there...

 

[Hophead]

I live in Stevenage. We currently have a very good bus service from where I live into the town centre. It runs every 10 minutes during the day, dropping to every 20 minutes in the evening and on Sundays. The buses run until 2330.

I've frequently been on late night buses with 20+ passengers. The bus provides a real alternative to using a car, particularly as many passengers then continue their journeys into London on by train for work or leisure.

The proposed cuts see services withdrawn after 2000 on weekdays and totally on Sundays. This will cause significant hardship for many people, increase car usage and will cause issues as there will be insufficient parking spaces for the additional cars using the town centre car parks.

Hard to believe that such a service can't be provided commercially, or at least at minimal impact on profits, if there's such a good level of evening demand. Maybe some brinkmanship going on? Metrobus in Crawley continued to provide evening services (albeit hourly), including Sundays, after the withdrawal of county council subsidy - there's a network benefit in doing so. Some operators do seem to try just a little bit harder, though.

 

[A0]

The proposed cuts see services withdrawn after 2000 on weekdays and totally on Sundays. This will cause significant hardship for many people, increase car usage and will cause issues as there will be insufficient parking spaces for the additional cars using the town centre car parks.

1 - It won't be "many" people, because frequently these services are running empty or nearly empty. Yes, you may have been on some with 20 people on - there are many which run with far fewer.

2 - Again, it won't cause "significant" hardship for many people.

3 - The increase in car usage will be minimal - again if these services were full then you might have a point.

4 - The car parking argument is a red herring - have you ever struggled to find a parking space after 8pm in Stevenage? or any other town in Herts?

The reality is most of the towns in Herts are reasonably small and have a good rail connection. Hemel, Stevenage and Watford are the three largest.

Taking Stevenage, even the far-flung estates like Chells or St Nicholas are no more than 3 miles from the station. Easily walkable for someone fit and healthy and a short cab ride for someone who isn't.
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Seen out and about in Hatfield this morning, presumably on test.

Just imagining what it could be like if TfL was running buses here, instead of the anti-public transport county council we have - slashing funding from September and leaving many of us without late evening and Sunday services...

View attachment 23138

Perhaps if those late evening and Sunday services were better patronised....?

I recall 15 years ago when I lived in Herts, evening journeys on the 340, 301 and the locals in Welwyn / Hatfield used to run around with no more than two or three people on - and they were putting minibuses on them even then.

My understanding of HCC's position is if they serve a hospital they'll be retained - so a number of routes - particularly those which run through several towns will be unaffected by this change.

And to be honest with Hatfield, most places are no more than a 30 min walk from the railway station in any case.

 

[Abpj17]

Try not to laugh but they even want to convert the St Albans Abbey line to a guided busway - thing is there won't be any services at all after 200 if they do so!

They've seen the 'success' that is the Luton busway

 

[radamfi]

Hard to believe that such a service can't be provided commercially, or at least at minimal impact on profits, if there's such a good level of evening demand. Maybe some brinkmanship going on? Metrobus in Crawley continued to provide evening services (albeit hourly), including Sundays, after the withdrawal of county council subsidy - there's a network benefit in doing so. Some operators do seem to try just a little bit harder, though.

In Crawley, Metrobus have even improved the evening service back so it is now similar to what it was before the council cuts. I do think a lot of the problems outside London are simply down to a generally poor quality bus service in the daytime meaning that people in the area simply don't use buses that much, hence too little demand in the evening. Maybe if Metrobus was operating in Stevenage, maybe there would be commercial evening services.

If you want to live outside London, I would definitely not live far from the station to ensure you aren't dependent on local buses. That was my policy when I decided to move outside Greater London to take advantage of lower house prices 18 years ago. Doing anything else is not worth the risk, IMO, unless you are prepared to be 100% car dependent.

As an aside, is the bike a significant player in Stevenage? I say this because as a child in the 80s, I remember reading in a children's book about cycling that Stevenage had good cycle facilities. I presume they aren't much good by Dutch standards but maybe they are good enough to depress bus use a little in Stevenage?

Also, I wonder whether demand responsive services would be cost effective in replacing evening bus services? Greater Manchester has systematically replaced tendered services with "Local Link", where you book trips by phone or online. Some of these run in the evenings and Sunday only.

http://www.tfgm.com/buses/local_link/Pages/index.html

 

[Bletchleyite]

Odd that you should quote Milton Keynes to support you argument. When I worked there there was a comprehensive evening services with virtually all areas served hourly or half hourly, much of it commercial... of course things may have changed now that Arrriva are in charge there...

The services were not mostly commercial, they were mostly subsidised, though Metro was a relatively low-cost operation so subsidies were quite low. (MK Council's publicity always clearly identifies subsidised routes, and almost all of them were, except the 5s and some of the 4s).

 

[bussnapperwm]

Seems to be that there has been an increase in operators in TfL land over the last couple of years with Tower Transit, TGM and now Uno getting involved in their contracts.

I wonder who will be next to start getting contracts

 

[Tetchytyke]

When First pulled out of London they sold some of their depots/routes to Metroline and the rest to Transit Group. Tower Transit are just a re-badged First.

The issue is that if you want TfL style services you require TfL style subsidies. Inside London that is justifiable given the sheer volume of people- even late night Sunday buses are usually well loaded- but in the satellite towns there isn't the people there to justify the buses. Hemel is one of the biggest towns in the county with a population of 85,000 people, yet it can really only support services on three routes in the evening- the 2, 3 and 4, and even then at very low frequencies.

Where I live in Hemel is about one mile from the station. There used to be a direct bus. Arriva changed the routes a couple of years ago, meaning the bus from my house to the station goes through three other estates first. It's a 15-minute walk or a 30-minute bus ride, and the bus fare is £2.40. Nobody takes the bus apart from the pensioners using their free pass, which makes the bus fares go up, which makes it less attractive.

Unless and until someone has the bravery to abolish the ENCTS, this is only going to happen more and more. Council money is going to commercial operators on their commercial routes- the buses they'd operate anyway- and there isn't anything left for tendered routes.

But when I've mentioned this before I've been accused of being "anti old people", as though the costs of ENCTS come from the magic money tree.

 

[jon0844]

Stevenage and even Hatfield have pretty good cycle routes, but I wouldn't leave my bike at the station. I have a 100% fail rate (first day I left the bike there it was nicked) so have never tried since.

A shame as cycling would be ideal.

 

[matt_world2004]

Lack of turn up and go frequency means many people don't use buses outside of London people are not going to get a bus if they have to plan their day around when they are at the bus stop.

A lot of councils fund school only services. I cannot see the economic sense in that. IMO it would be better to run those school only services as a revenue service picking up children and fare paying adults. It would also male retention of drivers easier as they would be working full time hours instead of 2 hours in the morning and evening.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A good many school services are public services, this allows BSOG to be claimed. But they are often not very convenient for others to use.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Lack of turn up and go frequency means many people don't use buses outside of London people are not going to get a bus if they have to plan their day around when they are at the bus stop.

A lot of councils fund school only services. I cannot see the economic sense in that. IMO it would be better to run those school only services as a revenue service picking up children and fare paying adults. It would also male retention of drivers easier as they would be working full time hours instead of 2 hours in the morning and evening.

As has been said, many are registered to attract BSOG. Some of those obviously do work all day but some don't. However, a number of those drivers actually prefer to work those hours so I don't think it will aid retention.

Many are done by drivers who are retired and don't want to work all day but just want to earn some pin money. It would be a disincentive. These flexible workings also see some rural schools services actually being done by a farmer/farm hand who has done the early milking and then done a school run before going back to the farm. In the depot where my late father worked, a morning schools (last vehicle to leave the depot in the morning) was done by the driver allocating vehicles etc and the corresponding evening schools (first back to depot in evening) was done by one of the cleaners/fuellers

In addition, many a schools service is done with older fleet (i.e. more than 15 years old). Not only are they not up to running all day, they are fully depreciated so the cost of them being stood during the day is minimal. Having a newer vehicle is more expensive (depreciation) so the sums may not stack up.

Lastly, having the odd schools only job can really help with planned maintenance. You can send a vehicle out in the morning and perform an inspection before then sending it out in the afternoon.

 

[Deerfold]

When First pulled out of London they sold some of their depots/routes to Metroline and the rest to Transit Group. Tower Transit are just a re-badged First.

Quite. And TGM are just one of Arriva's low-cost units these days.

 

[W-on-Sea]

Quite. And TGM are just one of Arriva's low-cost units these days.

And in fact TGM have been involved in running TfL contracts for donkeys' years - well before they were acquired by Arriva (or, indeed, before Arriva existed). They were running routes in the Hounslow/Staines area as early as 1991!

A vintage photo (not one of mine, and not from 2008, but from 1991/92 or thereabouts)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/51738247@N03/7053837689/in/pool-2203524@N23/