How would you run a bus company??

[backontrack]

The first thing a new bus company needs is a gap in the market.

 

[AaronR]

Good question. Council wont sell thats for sure. In my opinion one man who was approached when Malcolm announced his retirement should be approached again. Chris Speed. Dont know if it appeals to him now or not. All i know is we need someone in Malcolm mode to swing things around and bloody quick.

You don't think the council will sell? I would have thought being a cash strapped council would mean they would love to sell!

Chris Speed would be a great shout, the way he changed First Ipswich and steadied the ship was admirable!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Apparently lots of the drivers and some supervisors have left Ipswich Buses to go to First Ipswich now anyway!

 

[Busaholic]

I never looked into the details at the time but, to a layman, it seemed a bit odd that NatEx was privatised as a unit. Every service that I saw in NBC days was operated by one of the constituent companies who had previously run them under their own brands and could have done so again.

It's been a while since my father-in-law died. but he'd worked for Ribble (and before that Scout Motor Services of Preston) since before WW2, through BET and NBC days almost to privatisation. I can't recollect all the details, but he did once tell me why Nat Ex was privatised as a unit, and I believe he said it was at the insistence of Freddie Wood, the guy brought in as chairman of NBC, against the opposition of the Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley. Wood won.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It's been a while since my father-in-law died. but he'd worked for Ribble (and before that Scout Motor Services of Preston) since before WW2, through BET and NBC days almost to privatisation. I can't recollect all the details, but he did once tell me why Nat Ex was privatised as a unit, and I believe he said it was at the insistence of Freddie Wood, the guy brought in as chairman of NBC, against the opposition of the Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley. Wood won.

Think he may be getting confused. Freddie Wood was the man who created National Express in the 1970s. He left the NBC in 1978 and retired in 1986 so well before privatisation

 

[F Great Eastern]

I just think that there needs to be more forward and creative thinking to bus operations, more needs to be done to attract new users and the next generation of users. This may be through branding of routes, the way social media is used as well as the buses themselves. Many operators still don't seem to grasp that most people these days, especially the younger gen, are glued to Facebook/Twitter/snapchat etc so why not use them to their advantage? Ipswich buses for instance has not updated their Facebook page since October!!!

Over the Christmas/New Year I was on some Ipswich Buses vehicles and they all left a lot to be desired. One was a DAF East Lancs Double Decker that had alarms going off everywhere on it, another was a Scania Double Decker which appeared to have problems changing gears judging by the noise it made and the slow speed it went, whilst another two were darts that sounded like every single thing on the bus wasn't screwed down or bolted down they rattled so much.

I also road on a new citaro, which whilst being much better built and sturdy and mechanically fine, looked like Ipswich Buses chose the lowest and cheapest spec item for every part of the variant that they ordered from Mercedes. Compared to other Citaros I have been on, it just looked very cheap. Then you have the E200 standards they have got in recently, again at a low spec presumably at a knockdown price or ex dealer stock because everyone else is going for the new MMC version which is much better.

That's before you start on what now appears to be a completely random allocation policy where any bus can turn up on any route at any time for any reason without it making a lot of sense as to why, whereas before it used to be some sense in allocations, double can turn up where midis used to, and the opposite way around.

About 5 years ago they used to be by far better than First in Ipswich with their fleet standard and maintenance and condition of their fleet, but now the tables have very much turned. The new vehicles which have come in have been to a very cheap spec and many of the rest of the vehicles are second hand DART rattleboxes or vehicles that just need some TLC. Meanwhile First is probably at it's highest level in Ipswich in the last 10 years or so, a fairly modern, fairly well upkept fleet.

 

[AaronR]

Over the Christmas/New Year I was on some Ipswich Buses vehicles and they all left a lot to be desired. One was a DAF East Lancs Double Decker that had alarms going off everywhere on it, another was a Scania Double Decker which appeared to have problems changing gears judging by the noise it made and the slow speed it went, whilst another two were darts that sounded like every single thing on the bus wasn't screwed down or bolted down they rattled so much.

I also road on a new citaro, which whilst being much better built and sturdy and mechanically fine, looked like Ipswich Buses chose the lowest and cheapest spec item for every part of the variant that they ordered from Mercedes. Compared to other Citaros I have been on, it just looked very cheap. Then you have the E200 standards they have got in recently, again at a low spec presumably at a knockdown price or ex dealer stock because everyone else is going for the new MMC version which is much better.

That's before you start on what now appears to be a completely random allocation policy where any bus can turn up on any route at any time for any reason without it making a lot of sense as to why, whereas before it used to be some sense in allocations, double can turn up where midis used to, and the opposite way around.

About 5 years ago they used to be by far better than First in Ipswich with their fleet standard and maintenance and condition of their fleet, but now the tables have very much turned. The new vehicles which have come in have been to a very cheap spec and many of the rest of the vehicles are second hand DART rattleboxes or vehicles that just need some TLC. Meanwhile First is probably at it's highest level in Ipswich in the last 10 years or so, a fairly modern, fairly well upkept fleet.

Couldn't agree more to everything you have said. It really is a sorry state of affairs at the moment! The Y reg Darts are all rough as guts, very scruffy inside and out and like you say, the decker fleet is looking very worn now, no care seem to be given at the moment. I haven't been on one of the Citaros yet but I've heard the seats are the cheapest they could buy, compared to the Truro Park and Ride ones I went on last year which were lovely to ride on. The E200's are definitely to a cheap spec too, with varying interiors based on whether they were stock vehicles or not and you are so right about allocations, deckers used on routes not needed and E200's on main routes like the 15/a. They are not big enough for the chantry routes either really, why did they not make the most of the amount of passengers that use the routes and go for something bigger? You are right about First, they seem to be doing a great job in Ipswich at the moment, and lots of drivers have left IB to go there recently, shame they stopped the 53 route into chantry as I always used that when I had the chance, it deserved to succeed! What will become of IB I wonder?

 

[F Great Eastern]

I notice this every time I travel NatEx, near enough. The coaches are pretty high quality these days (give or take that the seats are too narrow - I do wish they would offer the opportunity to book and guarantee two adjacent seats[1] for comfort at a higher price)

The original version of the Fainsa Gala seat they use on the Levante used to be regarded as the best seat out there and was used by many operators both in the UK and Europe and was regarded as pretty much the top of the tree when it came to coach seats in touring coaches and intercity coaches, apart from the VIP seats you get in VIP coaches. However they stopped offering this in late 2010 and replaced it with a lighter but more inferior model that looks the same almost but isn't.

Just after National Express decided to switch to Gala seating and signed the contract, Fainsa created a new version of the Gala, which was lighter, added headrests, moved seatbelts to the outer side of the seat rather than come out of the side of the front of the seats, and also changed the construction so the side of the bottom of the part of the seat your backside sits on, had two metal components just under the top of the now thinner padding.

The issue is that because of that, due to the less padding, now when you sit in the new Gala, you can feel this metal in the centre of the left and right sides which can dig into you which gives you the impression that the seat width is not wide enough, when actually the problem is that you are feeling the metal through the outer sides of the cushion digging into you which gives off the feeling that the seat is too narrow, when in fact it's just the same as the old Gala.

An operator I know well has two identical coaches, one with the old Gala and one with the new and told me this, and I told him that there is no way the dimensions of the seat are the same since the new one feels narrower, but he got a tape measure out in front of me and actually he was right. It's just the construction of the seat that has changed and the outer part of the cushion now has hard items digging into it giving the feeling of narrowness.

How to tell which version of Gala you have in any particular coach? Easiest way is to look at the back of the seat and the shape of the material at the top is different depending on the version. Almost all National Express Levantes have V2, but some early ones have V1.

V1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/63434198@N07/15037515362/in/datetaken/

V2:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGev0sGrakR/

Many operators, such as Aircoach in Ireland and others in the UK have been accused of "Specifying a thinner seat to save money." since V1 was very popular but V2 was deeply unpopular and most people put that down to cost cutting by the operator. The problem was the operators had no say in this because V1 was no longer in production and most of them stuck with the new version of the Gala because the first version was well liked so it was natural to spec the new version in it's place.

 

[higthomas]

I think the two things I would insist on would be a useful local website, even if I'm a national operator and clean buses. These are two easy and fairly cheap things which I'm sure would make a massive difference to attracting new customers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The issue is that because of that, due to the less padding, now when you sit in the new Gala, you can feel this metal in the centre of the left and right sides which can dig into you which gives you the impression that the seat width is not wide enough

No, the seat is definitely not wide enough, because there is no coach seat that is wide enough except for the ones liked by European coach operators that can be pulled out into the aisle. I'm pretty broad, and end up pushed up against whoever I sit next to in a coach.

This is an absolute showstopper for me on coach travel. It encourages me to use 1st on a train if it's an option and the price is right, but there is no coach equivalent (and 2+2 train seats are wider anyway) - the ability to purchase and guarantee a second seat would be a way to do that without needing to change anything about the actual coaches. And in any case I'm more likely to be willing to put up with it on a 2 hour train journey than the equivalent 4 hour coach journey.

 

[Busaholic]

Think he may be getting confused. Freddie Wood was the man who created National Express in the 1970s. He left the NBC in 1978 and retired in 1986 so well before privatisation

Probable the confusion is mine: after I posted I tried to put my mind back to when and where we had the conversation. I'm pretty sure we were on Preston bus station waiting for a bus in the mid 1970s and were outside the National Holidays shop there and I queried why that company was nationalised, and it was that aspect that Freddie Wood had insisted upon when Nat Ex was created, so nothing to do with privatisation. My apologies.