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Is it not the case that their own consultation paper set out that they wouldn't arrest the decline in bus usage in the short or medium term?
I'm with @TheGrandWazoo in that it's just plain economics. There's no hidden safe with the name Brian Souter on it sat in an office on Hyde Road with millions of pounds in it.
Put more money in (London) get a more frequent service out. Put less money in, get less out. Either way someone not only has to run the service, but they have to fund the service. The private sector makes a profit, but that profit is merely the return on its capital investment in funding the service in the first place - buses and depots don't buy themselves and suddenly appear; organisational infrastructure to operate a Stagecoach Manchester vs a UK North (or even a Go Ahead vs a First Bus) can't be just magicked out of thin air. So you abolish (some) of the profit, but now have to fund significant investment up front. Probably by borrowing money that needs interest paying on it, or by increasing taxes (which is not that dissimilar).
The government are actively encouraging local authorities to apply for Franchising powers, so there's no question that behind the scenes GM has been given the go ahead. We'll just have to see whether the TfGM Powers-That-Be realise that GM is not London, and nothing like it in reality, and remember that the outer towns, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport, Rochdale, etc., have their own transport needs independent of Manchester / Salford / Trafford. Let alone that these towns have their own suburban / rural hinterlands that have a local demand pattern.
The government are actively encouraging local authorities to apply for Franchising powers, so there's no question that behind the scenes GM has been given the go ahead. We'll just have to see whether the TfGM Powers-That-Be realise that GM is not London, and nothing like it in reality, and remember that the outer towns, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport, Rochdale, etc., have their own transport needs independent of Manchester / Salford / Trafford. Let alone that these towns have their own suburban / rural hinterlands that have a local demand pattern.
Have you ever been to London? London has local demand patterns as well. If anything, even more so than Greater Manchester does - due to its size, London very much acts as a collection of villages in many contexts. But if you want comparisons, you could compare Croydon with Stockport, say, or whatever.
Being a large city too, Manchester (the urban area) does require a London style approach to transport. That it doesn't have that is one key reason why public transport is both underused and underprovided.
But one thing I'm really pleased about is that this is happening - we are giving it a try. If it's an abject failure, it can always be undone - just "re-deregulate" and the big boys will be back in a flash. Refusal to even consider that the deregulation approach might be wrong (one used by not a single non-UK city in the West, and not even used in much of Asia these days, either) is gross, English-exceptionalist arrogance and one causing massive harm.
Have you ever been to London? London has local demand patterns as well. If anything, even more so than Greater Manchester does - due to its size, London very much acts as a collection of villages in many contexts. But if you want comparisons, you could compare Croydon with Stockport, say, or whatever.
Being a large city too, Manchester (the urban area) does require a London style approach to transport. That it doesn't have that is one key reason why public transport is both underused and underprovided.
But one thing I'm really pleased about is that this is happening - we are giving it a try. If it's an abject failure, it can always be undone - just "re-deregulate" and the big boys will be back in a flash. Refusal to even consider that the deregulation approach might be wrong (one used by not a single non-UK city in the West, and not even used in much of Asia these days, either) is gross, English-exceptionalist arrogance and one causing massive harm.
Thankfully I don't live in Manchester so I wont have to suffer the consequences of it being used as an experiment. The current proposal, however, appears to offer nothing better at the end of all the expense of setting it up.
It's also important to define what people mean by a 'London style' approach to transport. Because of the vast amounts of money available London has been buffered from the consequences of the continual political meddling that has happened and only recently has been finding out what happens when the money tree gets taken away. Somewhere like Manchester with the wrong kind of leader (for the present government) is going to find it just as hard as London has to get more money.
Todays more general government announcement is a classic example of getting some PR, quote some amounts of money without any detail behind it and make sure that somebody else will take the blame if anything goes wrong, and especially when the money runs out (Local authorities in this case).
A true public transport plan wouldn't concentrate on how the deckchairs are arranged, or even whoever is in charge of arranging them. It needs somebody brave enough to say that cities have to have less space allocated to cars both for moving them and for leaving them. And the ability to command HS2 style money across the country instead of in one vanity project.
But the arrangement of the deckchairs is important. Let's say you have two hourly services A-B and A-C, and they are operated by two companies, and they misconnect by 1 minute, and each company offers their own day ticket (and the any-operator one is overpriced, as that's the only way they'll agree to it). Simply changing them to connect, and the ticketing such that you don't need to buy two different day tickets, and all of a sudden you provide for not just A-B and A-C journeys, but A-B-C too.
It's high time our cities had a single, co-ordinated public transport network. On-road competition is a failure. Competition should be at the point of tender, not at the point of use.
We are literally the only developed country in the world that allows our city transport to run in this way. Even the super-capitalist USA doesn't, and even a good many developing countries don't either. Doesn't that tell you something?
I suppose now is a good time to introduce bus franchising with commercial bus revenues on the floor and likely to remain that way for some time. Some routes may never recover and the entire UK bus network is currently propped up by emergency Government funding, but for how long?
The management at TfGM will be rubbing their hands, a chance to control the bus network and employ numerous office based transport planners with promotion opportunities, on big salaries without any commercial or business acumen!
It will only be good news for public transport users in Greater Manchester if it is properly funded, but will the local tax/rate payers be prepared to pay for it, especially those that don’t use buses?
Presumably if routes are franchised this precludes any operators providing purely commercial bus services wholly within Greater Manchester, what happens to commercial cross border services like Skyline 199 from Buxton to Manchester Airport or the Witchway services from Blackburn to Manchester, will local journeys wholly within Greater Manchester prohibited?
The big positive is that it does provide the opportunity at long last for a fully integrated multi mode ticketing system for single journeys, day and season tickets to replace the dogs breakfast of ticketing options currently available.
It will only be good news for public transport users in Greater Manchester if it is properly funded, but will the local tax/rate payers be prepared to pay for it, especially those that don’t use buses?
Presumably if routes are franchised this precludes any operators providing purely commercial bus services wholly within Greater Manchester, what happens to commercial cross border services like Skyline 199 from Buxton to Manchester Airport or the Witchway services from Blackburn to Manchester, will local journeys wholly within Greater Manchester prohibited?
The way I'd do it is to allow them to operate but to mandate them to both issue and accept all Greater Manchester ticketing for "internal" journeys. However in London there is what is called a "London Service Permit" which allows services wholly outside the TfL fares system to operate, the third option is not to allow "internal" journeys. So there are ways to handle it.
The big positive is that it does provide the opportunity at long last for a fully integrated multi mode ticketing system for single journeys, day and season tickets to replace the dogs breakfast of ticketing options currently available.
That is the biggest positive imaginable, and something that every single city transport system (system - it's stronger as a whole) should have, everywhere in the world.
I'm not sure I'd get hung up on economies per-se. If it's done well, the public transport system of Greater Manchester (I've used that phrase deliberately; GM should be aiming to no longer have a collection of bus routes, but a fully integrated, multi-modal system of bus, train and tram*) should be attractive to far more people than it presently is, and as such fare incomes should increase.
If you want to see how it should work, just go to any German or Swiss city you like. Yes, they pour in more subsidy, but the concepts still work even with less of that - it's just a shift in thinking to the system as a whole, not a collection of individual routes and fiefdoms.
* No, that doesn't mean booting everyone off short to cram onto a 2-car DMU onto Castlefield, or the utterly ludicrous Gateshead example invariably misused to discredit the concept. But it does mean systemic thinking and the removal of artificial barriers to interchange made up of non-integrated fares and poor timing of connections. Why on earth would you choose to take a long, slow bus ride from the edge of Altrincham to Manchester, say, when you could take a bus to the station and a tram into town, all for the same fare?
Why on earth would you choose to take a long, slow bus ride from the edge of Altrincham to Manchester, say, when you could take a bus to the station and a tram into town, all for the same fare?
What I would give for that. As much as I would love to see more stopping rail services through south Manchester, it ain’t happening soon (I’d give up one of Wilmslow’s fast services for an all stopping service in an instant if it was down to me - get more cars off the road by people who live near the smaller stations). Yet, a high frequency bus route that connects to our rail stations is a good second choice. Imagine if there was a high frequency bus service from various towns to Manchester Airport rail station, it would increase the options for getting in/out of Manchester significantly as well as better public transport to the airport itself. Currently I have to drive the 10 mins to the airport, or get a taxi. The 1 tph is not frequent enough and it is not useful for getting in to Manchester anyhow.
I believe the system they used was Social Value aka MEAT (Most Econonomically Advantageous Tender). They budget to provide a certain social value on a route e.g. £450,000 then they evaluate the bids for their social value, 80% on price and 20% on societal benefits e.g. infrastructure investment, environmental improvement, improvement in information then they select the best scoring ones that collectively fit within their subsidy budget (£1.2m in 2017) as they cant afford to award all the services tendered.
Its moot now anyway as MK has stopped tendering subsidised bus services and will now exclusively tender demand responsive bus contracts (i.e. dial a bus minibus services).
Is any detail on the proposed tender scheme in the public domain? Tendering as it currently exists for subsidised services is hardly renowned for procuring the highest quality of service.
Presumably if routes are franchised this precludes any operators providing purely commercial bus services wholly within Greater Manchester, what happens to commercial cross border services like Skyline 199 from Buxton to Manchester Airport or the Witchway services from Blackburn to Manchester, will local journeys wholly within Greater Manchester prohibited?
Under the Bus Services Act 2017, section 4 amended the Transport Act 2000 which now has provisions at section 123A(3)(c), 123H(5) and 123U, which say it will be a permit scheme under regulations to be issued by the Secretary of State (i.e. the DoT).
In practice, what I expect will happen is:-
Contractors for GM Buses will be allowed to run services from GM to out of the area, that bring in non-GM revenue back to TfGM, so long as TfGM get the cash and no the operator;
Joint PTE services will be allowed between GM / Merseyside & GM / West Yorkshire.
They'll tolerate services from Lancashire and Cheshire encroaching onto their area, so long as it's just a little village on the outskirts (e.g. a Preston - Skelmersdale service stopping in the Greater Manchester part of Appley Bridge, which is only 100 metres or so).
Everything else will stop at the border.
The plan (I haven't seen the regulations, but I saw a draft guidance a couple of years ago) was that out of area buses given a permit must accept the Franchised ticketing scheme and must comply with reasonable requirements as to timetabling but if they do they can pick up and set down locally.
We'll see. Although I guess it won't be seen that way, in that TfGM will not consider it their responsibility to provide services for surrounding areas. They'll no doubt say that it's up to Lancashire / Cheshire East to pay for services in their areas if they want them!
TfGM have been paying subsidised rail fares for stations just outside their area but the bus borders have always been absolute in the past.
TfGM have done deals to cross subsidise longer bus routes with neighbouring authorities when the neighbour asks if they will help subsidise a service to the city that the neighbouring authority wants, i.e. you subsidise the section of the route through your area and we will subsidise the part through ours.
I'm not sure I'd get hung up on economies per-se. If it's done well, the public transport system of Greater Manchester (I've used that phrase deliberately; GM should be aiming to no longer have a collection of bus routes, but a fully integrated, multi-modal system of bus, train and tram*) should be attractive to far more people than it presently is, and as such fare incomes should increase.
If you want to see how it should work, just go to any German or Swiss city you like. Yes, they pour in more subsidy, but the concepts still work even with less of that - it's just a shift in thinking to the system as a whole, not a collection of individual routes and fiefdoms.
I picked out these two quotes and highlighted the main issues in red (keeping Neil's boldening).
It's incredibly easy to suggest that cost is not a factor. It clearly is. Good public transport costs money; that is demonstrated by London and it's demonstrated by Germany in that farebox revenue only covers about 80% of costs. Like you, I've traveled in Germany and Netherlands where public transport is good (although not perfect) and better than the UK. In the UK, we have not invested in public transport as much as we should have and much of the spend has been directed at rail. So we look at a system, largely left to the commercial realities and a reluctance to do anything that may upset voters car owners. Public transport is treated societally differently and that goes further such as in planning and development practices.
The "Gateshead example" is used to discredit the concept of bus/rail integration in much the same way that Oxford Road in Manchester is trotted out as an exemplar of the ills of deregulated buses and how it is hopelessly overbussed and so represents low hanging fruit; a veritable raft of competing services begging for rationalisation when, in reality, they aren't. It was in 1990 when all and sundry were competing, or in 2000 when UK North were jangling their spurs but not now. The competition is the private car not some cowboy with a load of ex GM Atlanteans.
The plans for franchising in Greater Manchester don't do any flipping thing to curbing private car use or to improve bus priority; stuff that could be done now. Today. Instead, TfGM have busied themselves with building self-aggrandising monuments like Wigan bus station.
Should these proposals go through (as I suspect they will - seems a fait accompli) then the argument that it can always be reversed is pointless. The property assets are being purchased at rock bottom prices and the business removed from the operator. If Go NW were not to win Queens Road depot (e.g. it was awarded to Abellio) and in 5 years time, it was decided that franchising hadn't worked, then said depot and fleet would simply revert back to Go Ahead....? Of course not.
Not that franchising will be a failure - it will be promoted by politicians as succeeding on whatever selective metric they choose. Apologies for the cynicism but it's oft been quoted by Burnham about how much bus patronage has fallen in GM. Treated in isolation and never linking that to the expansion of the Metrolink! We've seen in Brighton what an enlightened local authority and a similar bus company can do - a true partnership where both parties contribute and benefit rather than some centralised model where the answer will invariably be central decided and involve Metrolink. That's not to give operators a free pass - Stagecoach are a decent operator with consistent investment into the area whereas First and Arriva have been sporadic; their marketing is also poor (but so is TfGMs).
Mixing politics and public transport rarely ends well - see Cornwall!
TfGM have been paying subsidised rail fares for stations just outside their area but the bus borders have always been absolute in the past.
TfGM have done deals to cross subsidise longer bus routes with neighbouring authorities when the neighbour asks if they will help subsidise a service to the city that the neighbouring authority wants, i.e. you subsidise the section of the route through your area and we will subsidise the part through ours.
Yes, but the question here is what happens to e.g. the Arriva Bolton / Wigan Chorley service? It's not subsidised at the moment, so co-ordination between local authorities is irrelevant.
The route has competition on rail, and also potential for other bus routes. If National Express Bus wins the tender for "GM Buses North", will TfGM pay them to run a service benefiting passengers outside their area? Only if there's money to be made. But given the possible enforced modal shift to rail, there's not going to be as much money to be made. And given there's nothing stopping Arriva (or whoever) from operating Preston - Chorley - Adlington / Preston - Chorley - Standish - Wrightington Hospital (Let's say - as potential viable routes outside the GM boundary) as commercial services outside of TfGM remit, there's not going to be much money to be made on the existing routes. So chances are they'll get cut back and turned around at GM's boundary.
I can only see them allowing cross border services realistically with another PTE where the politics are conducive - i.e. Merseyside for the St Helens / Wigan services, perhaps Huddersfield too.
Burnley? Knutsford? Macclesfield? Their days are probably numbered, depending on who wins the tenders, despite the investment by operators into the routes.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The "Gateshead example" is used to discredit the concept of bus/rail integration in much the same way that Oxford Road in Manchester is trotted out as an exemplar of the ills of deregulated buses and how it is hopelessly overbussed and so represents low hanging fruit; a veritable raft of competing services begging for rationalisation when, in reality, they aren't. It was in 1990 when all and sundry were competing, or in 2000 when UK North were jangling their spurs but not now. The competition is the private car not some cowboy with a load of ex GM Atlanteans.
It's not just Gateshead. Think the bus ban on the Mersey Tunnels to shore up the ferry and no doubt others I can't think of just at the moment.
The old saying, "if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail". If you're a bureaucratic transport organisation, everything looks like a problem that can be solved by enforcing timetable, mode and route changes!
In fact, I'd say if anything it's likely to be worse now. At least under PTE Mark I, the PTE was run as pretty much a transport company, albeit one run and controlled by the local authority(ies), with input being from the politicians but operational control with the PTE management.
Under this scheme, the politicians are going to be in control of pretty much the lot. The operators' role is simply to pay the wages (from what I've read at rates to be agreed by TfGM and the unions) and rent, and operate the bank account.
No, I think bus franchising is the way to go, however, to get anywhere near the London model it needs to be properly funded by central government. This also means the same levels of concessionary travel, if kids and all over 60s travel free in London then this should apply on local buses and trams throughout the country.
Also once you are committed to this approach, you have to stick with it, you simply can’t turn the tap off on a whim if the political winds change...
I picked out these two quotes and highlighted the main issues in red (keeping Neil's boldening).
It's incredibly easy to suggest that cost is not a factor. It clearly is. Good public transport costs money; that is demonstrated by London and it's demonstrated by Germany in that farebox revenue only covers about 80% of costs. Like you, I've traveled in Germany and Netherlands where public transport is good (although not perfect) and better than the UK. In the UK, we have not invested in public transport as much as we should have and much of the spend has been directed at rail. So we look at a system, largely left to the commercial realities and a reluctance to do anything that may upset voters car owners. Public transport is treated societally differently and that goes further such as in planning and development practices.
The "Gateshead example" is used to discredit the concept of bus/rail integration in much the same way that Oxford Road in Manchester is trotted out as an exemplar of the ills of deregulated buses and how it is hopelessly overbussed and so represents low hanging fruit; a veritable raft of competing services begging for rationalisation when, in reality, they aren't. It was in 1990 when all and sundry were competing, or in 2000 when UK North were jangling their spurs but not now. The competition is the private car not some cowboy with a load of ex GM Atlanteans.
The plans for franchising in Greater Manchester don't do any flipping thing to curbing private car use or to improve bus priority; stuff that could be done now. Today. Instead, TfGM have busied themselves with building self-aggrandising monuments like Wigan bus station.
Should these proposals go through (as I suspect they will - seems a fait accompli) then the argument that it can always be reversed is pointless. The property assets are being purchased at rock bottom prices and the business removed from the operator. If Go NW were not to win Queens Road depot (e.g. it was awarded to Abellio) and in 5 years time, it was decided that franchising hadn't worked, then said depot and fleet would simply revert back to Go Ahead....? Of course not.
Not that franchising will be a failure - it will be promoted by politicians as succeeding on whatever selective metric they choose. Apologies for the cynicism but it's oft been quoted by Burnham about how much bus patronage has fallen in GM. Treated in isolation and never linking that to the expansion of the Metrolink! We've seen in Brighton what an enlightened local authority and a similar bus company can do - a true partnership where both parties contribute and benefit rather than some centralised model where the answer will invariably be central decided and involve Metrolink. That's not to give operators a free pass - Stagecoach are a decent operator with consistent investment into the area whereas First and Arriva have been sporadic; their marketing is also poor (but so is TfGMs).
Mixing politics and public transport rarely ends well - see Cornwall!
Franchising is not sufficient to do any of this, but I've argued before that it's necessary. Trying to make London-style improvements in a deregulated environment is essentially reliant on the goodwill of the operator (who may change their attitude in future) and on no competing operators messing up the picture. So we need to see if TfGM and central government will follow up with the funding and other measure that are needed. Boris is making some of the right noises on buses, but we all know he's better at making the right noises than taking the right actions.
Ah....the ghost of Radamfi still walks the battlements....
No one is saying London should be deregulated. Just because the current situation needs addressing, it doesn't therefore mean that these GM proposals are correct. Even discounting partnerships, franchising comes in different forms and in this, the operators can gain little competitive advantage as the main fixed cost opportunity (premises) is removed so it becomes a race to the bottom and we know what that does to driver terms and conditions (and whilst, TUPE applies, it only applies to a point).
As for the statement that improvements can only come in a regulated environment, that is clearly wrong. Formal partnerships can enshrine commitments and underpin funding and operational commitments on both sides.
London style improvements without London style funding is akin to alchemy!
No one is saying London should be deregulated. Just because the current situation needs addressing, it doesn't therefore mean that these GM proposals are correct. Even discounting partnerships, franchising comes in different forms and in this, the operators can gain little competitive advantage as the main fixed cost opportunity (premises) is removed so it becomes a race to the bottom and we know what that does to driver terms and conditions (and whilst, TUPE applies, it only applies to a point).
But then the logical extension of that is not only to regulate but also to nationalise (well, not literally, but rather for TfGM to become an operator again). It's a bit like "competition" in the energy sector which is really just about economies in how you are billed. They are the same electrons from the same power stations whoever sends your bill.
Of course it's only a race to the bottom if TfGM chooses it to be. MK Council's typical tenders were that - all they specified was that a low-floor bus would operate the specified timetable - so you got dross. There is nothing saying TfGM can't choose to specify Lothian or Alex Hornby (Transdev/Trent) quality levels and hefty penalties for not achieving them, it just means they'll get a bit less of it as it costs more.
As for the statement that improvements can only come in a regulated environment, that is clearly wrong. Formal partnerships can enshrine commitments and underpin funding and operational commitments on both sides.
There are some things you can't get in a partnership context. One is that you are never going to get operators to agree to bin off their own ticketing, nor to force them to join a joint ticketing scheme that is not more expensive than their own. Thus, the network benefits cannot be properly achieved in that context, because people will always be priced off changing operator/mode. And the core of a city transport network is that you deliver more effective travel precisely by offering a quality of interchange between modes.
That doesn't mean you need Gateshead-esque stupidity. But as I said, the best way to serve the outer parts of Altrincham, say, are not with a direct bus into Manchester taking well over an hour. Rather, it's a shuttle bus to the station to pick up a tram - at the same price, on the same ticket.
Will there be some routes better served by a through bus to Manchester? Obviously there will, and those routes should remain served in that way. But it's silly to take the present situation and say "people would rather have a direct bus so let's keep doing that", because people are pushed hard in that direction by financial and operational penalties. It costs much more to do a bus-tram or bus-train journey, so people won't do it. In a city transport network, it should cost the same. Social inclusion is better handled by offering discounts to those who are unable to afford the full fare. But not only that - if your bus pulls up right outside the railway station, it's far more likely people will interchange than if it stops at the road junction 200 yards up from it.
Your points elsewhere about "stick" type anti-car measures and bus priority isn't really relevant, as you can have those whether you have regulated buses or not.
It's not at all. All the amount of funding dictates, in the context of an otherwise identical system, is how many vehicles you've got out there. If there's less funding, you can't have as frequent a service and/or as many routes because you can employ fewer drivers and own/lease fewer buses.
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Yes, but the question here is what happens to e.g. the Arriva Bolton / Wigan Chorley service? It's not subsidised at the moment, so co-ordination between local authorities is irrelevant.
If Arriva can make money off operating a bus service from a town on the fringe of GM (i.e. Wigan or in this context Bolton given which way the bus runs) to somewhere outside GM, it should be allowed to continue doing that off its own back. Personally I'd offer it a choice of accepting and selling the GM tickets with GM paying for that based on numbers making internal GM journeys (easy enough to track) or of being pick up/set down only until across the border, i.e. no GM "internal" journeys allowed.
I wouldn't say GM should subsidise that route because it duplicates a rail service. Subsidising bus services to duplicate rail services* is "competition for competition's sake" and an utter waste of money.
* Unless it's done to complement them, e.g. if you have a two hourly train service also funding a two hourly bus service running in the gaps to give an hourly service overall.
Burnley? Knutsford? Macclesfield? Their days are probably numbered, depending on who wins the tenders, despite the investment by operators into the routes.
I would like to make a brief mention of the Burnley to Manchester service, as this was a far different proposition to the Knutsford and the Macclesfield services. The X43 came with fleets of brand new double decker buses with a very good service frequency level and newer such buses came on line when it was felt useful to keep up the service quality.
Its use of the motorways certainly helped time-wise for the travel distances with a non-stop run from Rawtenstall into the northern Manchester boundary. The company have always used high-quality timetable leaflets for passengers to use.
There are some things you can't get in a partnership context. One is that you are never going to get operators to agree to bin off their own ticketing, nor to force them to join a joint ticketing scheme that is not more expensive than their own. Thus, the network benefits cannot be properly achieved in that context, because people will always be priced off changing operator/mode. And the core of a city transport network is that you deliver more effective travel precisely by offering a quality of interchange between modes.
That doesn't mean you need Gateshead-esque stupidity. But as I said, the best way to serve the outer parts of Altrincham, say, are not with a direct bus into Manchester taking well over an hour. Rather, it's a shuttle bus to the station to pick up a tram - at the same price, on the same ticket.
Will there be some routes better served by a through bus to Manchester? Obviously there will, and those routes should remain served in that way. But it's silly to take the present situation and say "people would rather have a direct bus so let's keep doing that", because people are pushed hard in that direction by financial and operational penalties. It costs much more to do a bus-tram or bus-train journey, so people won't do it. In a city transport network, it should cost the same. Social inclusion is better handled by offering discounts to those who are unable to afford the full fare. But not only that - if your bus pulls up right outside the railway station, it's far more likely people will interchange than if it stops at the road junction 200 yards up from it.
As far as I can tell Manchester already has an all operator ticket. It's got different pricing for different modes however, as it's controlled by the authority, they could deal with this if they wanted to. Even the utopia of London has different cap rates depending on what modes you use which suggests it's unlikely that Manchester is going to suddenly decide to make them all the same.
I would like to make a brief mention of the Burnley to Manchester service, as this was a far different proposition to the Knutsford and the Macclesfield services. The X43 came with fleets of brand new double decker buses with a very good service frequency level and newer such buses came on line when it was felt useful to keep up the service quality.
Its use of the motorways certainly helped time-wise for the travel distances with a non-stop run from Rawtenstall into the northern Manchester boundary. The company have always used high-quality timetable leaflets for passengers to use.
And as that service exists to carry people from outside GM to inside GM and makes its money off doing that, I don't see why it wouldn't continue as-is.
As far as I can tell Manchester already has an all operator ticket. It's got different pricing for different modes however, as it's controlled by the authority, they could deal with this if they wanted to. Even the utopia of London has different cap rates depending on what modes you use which suggests it's unlikely that Manchester is going to suddenly decide to make them all the same.
They are constrained because they can't force operators to be part of it. If they reduced the price of it to the same as or below operator specific tickets, then the operators would probably pull out. Therefore without legally mandating acceptance (a change in itself) it is not possible to remove the interchange penalty.
Of course it's only a race to the bottom if TfGM chooses it to be. MK Council's typical tenders were that - all they specified was that a low-floor bus would operate the specified timetable - so you got dross. There is nothing saying TfGM can't choose to specify Lothian or Alex Hornby (Transdev/Trent) quality levels and hefty penalties for not achieving them, it just means they'll get a bit less of it as it costs more.
I don't think you read what I wrote. I said in the context of a highly controlled, centrally mandated system where operators are not free to add value AND there is no competitive advantage from existing premises, how does an operator achieve competitive advantage. Fuel is relatively fixed (even with a bit of hedging) and so the next port of call are staff T&Cs which is why the unions were dead against the Nexus proposals
There are some things you can't get in a partnership context. One is that you are never going to get operators to agree to bin off their own ticketing, nor to force them to join a joint ticketing scheme that is not more expensive than their own.
Not true. That's the point on partnership - the LA can make certain rules that tie in operators so that they only get the investment if they play ball.
Your points elsewhere about "stick" type anti-car measures and bus priority isn't really relevant, as you can have those whether you have regulated buses or not.
Exactly the point. You don't need to change much to get those sorts of things done but TfGM and local authorities haven't done it. It doesn't matter if it's a regulated bus or a deregulated bus if the traffic is still the same, on street parking is not controlled, etc etc
There's a wealth of things that could be done.... today. That could have been done 10 years ago. That haven't been done at all but rather than look at that, it's much easier than that is to paint the commercial operators as profiteering fly by nights and promising that the world will be better if a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians are put in charge.
It's not at all. All the amount of funding dictates, in the context of an otherwise identical system, is how many vehicles you've got out there. If there's less funding, you can't have as frequent a service and/or as many routes because you can employ fewer drivers and own/lease fewer buses.
London hasn't been able to have a London style network without the funding. It really is as simple as that.
The idea that there are massive savings to be had is fanciful. Already, it is apparent that many of the routes that ran parallel to Metrolink have been reduced following the abstraction of patronage from them after the Metrolink expansion. Same with the wasteful competition - it barely exists now that operators have sold out or moved into their own areas.
Once you place all of the financial eggs in the political basket, that's exactly what you can do. Ask a Labour London Mayor how much grant he gets from a Conservative central government for TfL, compared to 5 years ago. Conversely, a change from Labour to Tory control has seen Lancashire County Council put more money into subsidising bus routes, even before central government threw them some more cash.
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