Future of bus services after Covid support withdrawn

[carlberry]

If bus companies want to keep being subsidised, then surely they shouldn't still be behaving as if they are still deregulated? They are getting taxpayers' money, yet there is no competitive tendering. The council gets no say regarding routes or fares, unlike normal pre-Covid subsidised services, and there is no obligation to coordinate routes and fares with other operators. Yes, the privatised railways have been given money as well, but the government effectively nationalised them.

As the original post stated bus companies are not expecting to keep being subsidised, they're cutting back to what is viable and the councils have absolute say on what else runs and who else runs it (they dont have any money to cover it, however that's not the bus companies fault). The railways carry on being given a blank cheque however that's hardly relevant to the original post.

 

[johncrossley]

local authorities do get a say in services, and fare rises are restricted to CPI, and mileage must not drop below 90%. These are all conditions of Bus Recovery Grant.

So what changes have been made as a result of local authority input? I don't see any coordination of routes or ticketing (except Cornwall).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2022 ==

As the original post stated bus companies are not expecting to keep being subsidised

They've already had nearly 2 years of subsidies.

 

[carlberry]

They've already had nearly 2 years of subsidies.

The government decided to subsidise them, as it did to every other business in the country at the time. It's now stopped doing that and business has had to respond to it. It's hardly the case that government has treated bus companies in any special way (other than wanting them to carry on working when most of the subsidised businesses could close down) and companies that had coaching sides were basically shafted.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2022 ==

So what changes have been made as a result of local authority input? I don't see any coordination of routes or ticketing (except Cornwall).

I suspect local authorities have been involved in discussions about which services should be kept during the times when they were reduced and which were the most important to restore. I realise you'll just assume I'm defending the evils of deregulation but do you really think that, over the last two years, anybody in any local authority in the UK has had the time to be that worried about the coordination of bus routes and ticketing?

 

[markymark2000]

I think the problem is the expectation that the bus industry is capable of returning to the previous largely unfunded model far too quickly. Imagine the riots there would be in other sections of these forums if railway operations were being expected to return to pre-Covid levels of subsidy from April, and planners told to cut services accordingly to match the income. British public transport had become heavily reliant upon customers using expensive peak hour travel to pay the bills and right now none of us have that revenue.

Meanwhile the DfT is dithering around (presumably still drunk from a particularly good Downing Street garden party) and won't give any firm answers on whether any support for the bus industry will continue beyond April. This isn't helped by how painfully complicated they have made the system for claiming support, ably assisted by some experts from KPMG. Some operators still don't know what the calculations have dictated they will be entitled to for the services they've been running for the past four months. (As an aside, i gave up last August when CBSSG finished because the administrative burden of the paperwork was simply not worth it.)

The one thing i won't defend is the number of journeys being cancelled by major operators who should have implemented temporary timetables by now, although it probably wouldn't help because First and Stagecoach locally also remain truly abysmal at communicating service changes with passengers. Smaller operators have been considerably better in revising their services in order to make best use of the resources they have available.

Oh I am not expecting firms to return to pre Covid levels overnight but there are steps which can be taken to bring back some people. Then instead of having 60% passengers, you may get 70% passengers. For FAR TOO LONG operators have taken passengers for granted and now they have lost a good chunk of them in a short space of time, they have spent so long away from marketing and trying to encourage passengers onto buses, they have 'forgotten' how to do it and eventually it becomes a dismal corporate advertisement which completely misses the point.

100% agree on the DFT thing. They are awful but that is a general statement, not just related to this. DFT have rarely supported buses properly, bunch of lazy layabouts.

Smaller ops have been better at reducing timetables but at the same time, I don't think some of the smaller ops have been affected as badly and many could get staff at the click of a finger. Seems to be a bit of a thing, moving to smaller firms where drivers are more appreciated.

The problem is that, even if operators want to, as soon as somebody starts shouting 'We're safe please use us' etc they'll be the target of thousands of abusive remarks on twitface about how they're encouraging people to spreed covid, kill their grand parents etc which will very quickly be picked up by the papers because, basically, they most journalists couldn't give a fig about buses (or public transport in general outside London). Even then public transport still has to operate under the masks rule which, whatever anybodies views on it are, isn't something you can base a major marketing campaign on; I'm not expecting Mr Sugar to suggest 'Try to promote public transport as a safe place, whilst also reinforcing the message that you should wear a mask because the person next to you may cough over you and kill you' as his next task! Sarcasm aside, that's the position everybody is in at the moment.

I don't know you know. I didn't see many bad remarks to the Transdev 'Clean, safe and ready to go' stuff. It was a little bit odd but it did seem to work.


The mask wearing rule is in place in shops but people are still going to stops in fair numbers so while yes it is an issue for many, doesn't mean that you can't promote what you are offering and promote how safe you are and good value for money etc etc. The mask wearing thing does need reviewing though since as far as I can see, no evidence has been presented that public transport is unsafe.

 

[Cesarcollie]

So what changes have been made as a result of local authority input? I don't see any coordination of routes or ticketing (except Cornwall).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2022 ==



They've already had nearly 2 years of subsidies.

1. Who knows. Discussions take place between operators and Local Transport Authorities before service changesa re implemented.

2. Not subsidy. Left to run commercialy, operators would have cut services dramatically or withdrawn them during Covid as a result of reduced demand, and furloughed staff. Government wanted 100% of the service to continue and CBSSG (Covid-19 Bus Services Support Grant) was paid to keep services at this level. And only allowed break even for operators, not a profit. An equivalent was paid to LTAs for tendered services. Since September CBSSG has bern replaced by BRG (Bus Recovery Grant), which is a fixed amount, with commercial risk lying with operator, but various ‘rules’ as outlined in my earlier reply.

 

[johncrossley]

1. Who knows. Discussions take place between operators and LTA’s before service changes
are implemented.

2. Not subsidy. Left to run commercialy, operators would have cut services dramatically or withdrawn them during Covid as a result of reduced demand, and furloughed staff. Government wanted 100% of the service to continue and CBSSG was paid to keep services at this level. And only allowed break even for operators, not a profit. An equivalent was paid to LTA.s for tendered services. Since September CBSSG has bern replaced by BRG, which is a fixed amount, with commercial risk lying with operator, but various ‘rules’ as outlined in my earlier reply.

The point I am making is that it should be (or should have been) possible to take advantage of the situation and make changes that were difficult before March 2020 because of the constraints of deregulation. So for example if you have a town with multiple operators, there's no longer a need to split routes and ticketing by operator and by what used to be commercial/tendered before Covid. Those artificial barriers only existed before March 2020 because of the rules that were in play at the time.

 

[Cesarcollie]

The point I am making is that it should be (or should have been) possible to take advantage of the situation and make changes that were difficult before March 2020 because of the constraints of deregulation. So for example if you have a town with multiple operators, there's no longer a need to split routes and ticketing by operator and by what used to be commercial/tendered before Covid. Those artificial barriers only existed before March 2020 because of the rules that were in play at the time.

I agree that’s theoretically true. I guess the problem is that everyone was in urgent covid-dealing firefighting mode so little time or resource to change the rules of the game more widely. Plus when it all initially happened, we all thought it would be a 3-4 month lockdown then back to normal. So each tranche of funding has been a ’temporary extension’ of what went before. Even Bus Recovery Grant is only temporary until the end of March, though it may well also get extended. Very difficult to do any long term planning in this environment. That’s what the much lauded National Bus Strategy and Enhanced Partnerships/Bus Service Improvement Plans should bring about. In theory…….

 

[820KDV]

The point I am making is that it should be (or should have been) possible to take advantage of the situation and make changes that were difficult before March 2020 because of the constraints of deregulation. So for example if you have a town with multiple operators, there's no longer a need to split routes and ticketing by operator and by what used to be commercial/tendered before Covid. Those artificial barriers only existed before March 2020 because of the rules that were in play at the time.

The problem is that there is still, theoretically, the distinction between routes which are commercial and routes which are tendered. Plus of course multiple flavours in between where certain trips, or even sections of route, are supported. Yes, I agree that the definition is blurred by the fact that all routes are being supported by Government through CBSSG and now BRG, but that money is more like the ENCTS re-imbursement (albeit paid in the place of passengers) than an end to de-regulation, and even the DfT still recognises the split in the way both funds have been administered.

How is it proposed to define what routes and timetables should be run, now and in the future? We don't know what the "new normal" will look like. Yes, lots more working from home, but does that have much affect on buses? Yes and no, depending on where those buses operate, I'd say. It is noticeable that concessionary pass usage lags behind faire-paying passengers, but one wouldn't think that older people are making big use of on-line shopping. Or are they? Are the "missing" ENCTS journeys those which used to be made for leisure/non-essential purposes? If they are, is it the bus that's unattractive now, or the destination/activity? Should the industry advertise heavily while it is struggling for staff, and when Government is suggesting that buses are dangerous so passengers need to wear a mask. And if advertising was successful and passenger numbers rose, would that lead to other passengers making fewer journeys as they are nervous about travelling on busy buses?

And even if all the answers were known to the above questions, who would be implementing change? The Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) don't have the capacity, as DfT recognises through Capacity Funding for extra staff in connection with Bus Back Better, and the setting up of a Centre of Excellence to train staff (not that anything has been heard about that for a while). At my LTA we have been working flat-out to achieve our Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP), and are still doing so to form our Enhanced Partnership (EP). Work that could all be in vane as DfT keep talking about "those authorities who get funding" with the clear indication that some won't get anything. Don't forget that these staff have still had to do the "day job" as well. In our case that means two intakes of pupils onto school transport, it means the on-going monitoring of those routes and the cyclical re-tendering of them when schools were in an it meant setting up special networks for Key Worker children when schools were "closed" (often with schools working together, so pupils went to different schools in the cluster each week). It has meant writing and re-write Covid Risk Assessments, and Safe Systems of Working and communicating them to operators, parents and school. It has meant all the usual work involved with work roads and road closures, and it saw us setting up and running a food parcel and pharmacy transport service, and adding Easter Egg distribution to Key Working children still at school with just 2-day's notice. It meant, and still means, doing what we could to advise passengers of changing levels of service, and providing data for the payment of CBSSG / BRG. Some of these tasks fall jointly to our our bus operators, while they have their own set of issues to manage.

But despite all that, yes "de-regulation", as such, is over. The DfT have certainly indicated that. Their take is that if they are spending money via our BSIP / EP then we/they can define what the operators do. Whether that is timetables, routes, vehicles features (be that something small, or something as big as an alternative fuel fleet) or indeed fares and ticketing (but we've been told to wait for anything complex which involves a "back-office" system to split revenue as DfT are working on something as they, rightly, recognise 70+ systems, one for each LTA, makes no sense). We'll have to see what the operators think about that style of funding with control, but it is very much the DfT's way of thinking. They also keep emphasising that everything has to go via "Number 10" and that they have never known a Prime Minister take as much interest as Boris is, so what happens if he is on the "next bus out" of there?

If any of us had had the merest thought that Covid would last so long, would we have done things differently? Perhaps, but LTAs can only work within the rules and funding handed down by DfT.

 

[johncrossley]

The problem is that there is still, theoretically, the distinction between routes which are commercial and routes which are tendered. Plus of course multiple flavours in between where certain trips, or even sections of route, are supported. Yes, I agree that the definition is blurred by the fact that all routes are being supported by Government through CBSSG and now BRG, but that money is more like the ENCTS re-imbursement (albeit paid in the place of passengers) than an end to de-regulation, and even the DfT still recognises the split in the way both funds have been administered.

How is it proposed to define what routes and timetables should be run, now and in the future? We don't know what the "new normal" will look like. Yes, lots more working from home, but does that have much affect on buses? Yes and no, depending on where those buses operate, I'd say. It is noticeable that concessionary pass usage lags behind faire-paying passengers, but one wouldn't think that older people are making big use of on-line shopping. Or are they? Are the "missing" ENCTS journeys those which used to be made for leisure/non-essential purposes? If they are, is it the bus that's unattractive now, or the destination/activity? Should the industry advertise heavily while it is struggling for staff, and when Government is suggesting that buses are dangerous so passengers need to wear a mask. And if advertising was successful and passenger numbers rose, would that lead to other passengers making fewer journeys as they are nervous about travelling on busy buses?

And even if all the answers were known to the above questions, who would be implementing change? The Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) don't have the capacity, as DfT recognises through Capacity Funding for extra staff in connection with Bus Back Better, and the setting up of a Centre of Excellence to train staff (not that anything has been heard about that for a while). At my LTA we have been working flat-out to achieve our Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP), and are still doing so to form our Enhanced Partnership (EP). Work that could all be in vane as DfT keep talking about "those authorities who get funding" with the clear indication that some won't get anything. Don't forget that these staff have still had to do the "day job" as well. In our case that means two intakes of pupils onto school transport, it means the on-going monitoring of those routes and the cyclical re-tendering of them when schools were in an it meant setting up special networks for Key Worker children when schools were "closed" (often with schools working together, so pupils went to different schools in the cluster each week). It has meant writing and re-write Covid Risk Assessments, and Safe Systems of Working and communicating them to operators, parents and school. It has meant all the usual work involved with work roads and road closures, and it saw us setting up and running a food parcel and pharmacy transport service, and adding Easter Egg distribution to Key Working children still at school with just 2-day's notice. It meant, and still means, doing what we could to advise passengers of changing levels of service, and providing data for the payment of CBSSG / BRG. Some of these tasks fall jointly to our our bus operators, while they have their own set of issues to manage.

But despite all that, yes "de-regulation", as such, is over. The DfT have certainly indicated that. Their take is that if they are spending money via our BSIP / EP then we/they can define what the operators do. Whether that is timetables, routes, vehicles features (be that something small, or something as big as an alternative fuel fleet) or indeed fares and ticketing (but we've been told to wait for anything complex which involves a "back-office" system to split revenue as DfT are working on something as they, rightly, recognise 70+ systems, one for each LTA, makes no sense). We'll have to see what the operators think about that style of funding with control, but it is very much the DfT's way of thinking. They also keep emphasising that everything has to go via "Number 10" and that they have never known a Prime Minister take as much interest as Boris is, so what happens if he is on the "next bus out" of there?

If any of us had had the merest thought that Covid would last so long, would we have done things differently? Perhaps, but LTAs can only work within the rules and funding handed down by DfT.

This is all very interesting to hear from the "coalface", thanks for taking the trouble to write that.

Regarding concessionary pass holders, I suspect they are more cautious about catching Covid compared to other age groups and so are doing fewer discretionary journeys.

 

[PG]

@820KDV Thank you for your informative explanation of the situation from a LTA viewpoint, most interesting.

 

[Teapot42]

In some ways I hope that local authorities aren't tasked with deciding on bus provision, as not all seem to be very clued up on what works. Derbyshire, for example, has set out a road map which basically seems to consider only two types of service, commercial ones and demand-responsive. I can see the latter being very difficult to manage on such a wide scale as it would seem to cover roughly 75% of the existing route provision, which already has some pretty big gaps. To my mind, DRT is not likely to work well with the elderly, tourists (especially foreign visitors) and occasional users.

The companies who run the service often know better what works and where the demand is than the local authority, provided it is possible to guard against this being taken advantage of.

 

[WM Bus]

doesn't mean that you can't promote what you are offering and promote how safe you are and good value for money etc etc.

National Express have been advertising to try and get more people to use the service. I think they have had adverts on the billboards and on big signs, radio adverts. They've been seen on signs, telephone boxes and billboards all around Birmingham in City Centre, in Ward End/at Fox & Goose, at Jennens Rd ring road over the last few months or so.
One advert said bus travel that works when you do, they have several adverts about value for money, do your shopping the old fashioned way/tis the season to shop (in the run up to christmas)/get the bus to the shop, hop on our brill buses etc.

 

[Simon75]

One thing some operators are doing is windows opens, which in winter time is non pleasant. I shut one once and the driver had a go saying due to covid.
Is isn't pleasant feeling cold on a bus !

 

[johncrossley]

One thing some operators are doing is windows opens, which in winter time is non pleasant. I shut one once and the driver had a go saying due to covid.
Is isn't pleasant feeling cold on a bus !

They don't care if they lose passengers due to unpleasant conditions on the bus, as they are being bankrolled by the government anyway.

Most trains don't have that problem because they have air conditioning.

 

[ChrisC]

One thing some operators are doing is windows opens, which in winter time is non pleasant. I shut one once and the driver had a go saying due to covid.
Is isn't pleasant feeling cold on a bus !

That was something I was caught out with just before Christmas. I decided to go to Derby on a lovely sunny but very cold frosty morning. It’s a long journey which takes 1hr 25 minutes. By the time I got there with the windows open for the whole journey I was absolutely frozen. That was about 4 weeks ago now and I haven’t been on a bus since.

 

[Cesarcollie]

They don't care if they lose passengers due to unpleasant conditions on the bus, as they are being bankrolled by the government anyway.

Most trains don't have that problem because they have air conditioning.

Bus Recovery Grant is a fixed amount which certainly post Omicron is not enough. So operators still need all the passengers they can get to try and achieve break-even, or if they’re really lucky, make a small profit. ‘Bankrolled by the government’ sounds like the sort of headline a tabloid newspaper would print, and is simply untrue.

 

[johncrossley]

Bus Recovery Grant is a fixed amount which certainly post Omicron is not enough. So operators still need all the passengers they can get to try and achieve break-even, or if they’re really lucky, make a small profit. ‘Bankrolled by the government’ sounds like the sort of headline a tabloid newspaper would print, and is simply untrue.

If they are serious about wanting passengers then don't wedge the windows open in the middle of winter! Keeping the windows open simply sends out the signal that buses are a place to catch Covid. Who is going to use a cold bus when they can use their own car, have the heating on and not wear a mask?

The one side benefit of keeping windows open is that windows don't steam up as much. But if buses had double glazing like they do in some other countries that wouldn't be a problem either. Travelling on buses in winter was generally unpleasant even before Covid.

 

[The exile]

It suggests to me that they are not concerned about dwell times. Unless they have a daily tap and cap option.

Other than the fact that dwell times caused by people getting on, realising they need to activate their m- ticket, then having to move it around for ages under the reader to get it to register seem as long, if not longer than paying by cash, and certainly longer than showing a paper ticket.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If they are serious about wanting passengers then don't wedge the windows open in the middle of winter! Keeping the windows open simply sends out the signal that buses are a place to catch Covid. Who is going to use a cold bus when they can use their own car, have the heating on and not wear a mask?

The one side benefit of keeping windows open is that windows don't steam up as much. But if buses had double glazing like they do in some other countries that wouldn't be a problem either. Travelling on buses in winter was generally unpleasant even before Covid.

While a bit noisy, the extractor fan system fitted to London spec deckers also solves the condensation and COVID problem without it being freezing cold.

 

[ainsworth74]

Some posts about wider dwell time issues have been moved to this thread.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

... Derbyshire, for example, has set out a road map which basically seems to consider only two types of service, commercial ones and demand-responsive.

And Derbyshire don't seem terribly curious about how Demand-Responsive is going to work economically.

Their Bus Plan envisages some new trials of DRT, which sounded encouraging - they haven't collected enough data from their existing DRT experiments to be sure that they are doing any useful aggregation of demand, rather than having the minibuses darting around taking one person (or couple) at a time like an over-sized (and vastly too expensive) taxi.

So I exercised my right as a Derbyshire resident to ask the Cabinet Member for Transport (at the Full Council meeting in December) whether, for the new trials, they would promise to:

" ... [be clear about what it is you aim to find out, and how you will decide what the answer is. And doing that before you start, in consultation with interested parties. It means collecting, keeping and sharing comprehensive data. And it means committing to publish a review of the outcome of the trials, with a chance for sceptics or critics to check what they think the data shows, before any decisions are made about the future use of DRT by the council."

I didn't get a straight (let alone a positive) answer.

My fears for rural DRT are that a lucky few will be ferried point-to-point in largely-empty minibuses, while the majority of would-be users find that by the time that they can request a booking, the schedule is already full with journeys that are useless to them. And I reckon that the "few" will be a very small proportion: the saving from cutting scheduled services will be relatively small, as local authorities will still have to fund most of the costs of the existing fleet to meet their statutory duty to provide home-school transport. Having vehicles and drivers sit around outside schools for hours rather than providing timetabled services won't save much, and those savings will have to fund the separate minibus fleet, the driver, the software and possibly a call centre.

I am coming to fear that local authorities are predominantly concerned to find a system that gives them at least the fig-leaf of the possibility of travel as they slash their spending. The professed hope that the flexibility might see big enough improvements in efficiency to overcome the extra costs seems to have been left untested - I can't find any published data on this.

And it seems that in Derbyshire at least, nobody is terribly keen to do any research that might provide solid evidence either way.

 

[LucyP]

I don't agree with markymark2000's comments above : "I didn't see many bad remarks to the Transdev 'Clean, safe and ready to go' stuff. It was a little bit odd but it did seem to work."

It was just irritating hearing it repeatedly blare out of the speakers, and it was totally meaningless.

One driver at change-over at the bus station used to clean the cab area so thoroughly that the bus always left late. He would spend over 5 minutes wiping everything down. I doubt that operating theatres were as clean. So he didn't believe that it was clean or safe. You knew the ritual every time that it was him.

Another driver used to wear the full "nuclear fall out" style "gas" mask. They didn't even wear those in hospitals, except in the "red zones" with definite Covid patients. And there was him, in the cab of a double-decker, behind his screen wearing that. So he didn't believe it was safe either, and it hardly inspired confidence as a passenger when you saw that mask! You wondered whether it said Leeds on the display or Chernobyl!

They have replaced the strapline now with a different announcement that is just as naff, but they like naff - sunroofs, dog-eared "library" books, blue fairy lights under the seats of an old bus.

And it hasn't worked. Their buses are just as empty as anyone else's. They are offering £1 single journey to anywhere after 7pm, and the display shouts in capital letters "Back to Bus".

As others have said - the buses are freezing cold. On the inter-urban routes there is a gale blowing through with the higher speeds. Old people who are paranoid about Covid will open any that are closed.

Many people bought a car during Covid for safety, which is why prices of used cars rocketed, even for a "banger". Having bought them, people are going to use them, leaving the bus to old people, who through no fault of their own, take a long time to board and get off the bus, especially when they have a chat with the driver on the way out. Please, we'd like to get to our destination. Then the driver drives slowly, nearly misses a stop and slams on the brakes - blaming lights at the other side of the road, for not seeing the passenger. Then misses another stop - blaming the rattling old bus for not being able to hear the bell, and arrives late.

And, as others have said, the trains are just as empty, so they have special offers too. £3.70 single from Harrogate to Leeds, which is much cheaper than the bus. It's much quicker, warmer as it has a/c and no opening windows.

Back To Bus? I'm not sure that I would have found many converts on those journeys!

 

[markymark2000]

I don't agree with markymark2000's comments above : "I didn't see many bad remarks to the Transdev 'Clean, safe and ready to go' stuff. It was a little bit odd but it did seem to work."

It was just irritating hearing it repeatedly blare out of the speakers, and it was totally meaningless.

Perhaps it went a little over the top with that side of things but the general campaign, taking out announcements, was quite good.

And it hasn't worked. Their buses are just as empty as anyone else's. They are offering £1 single journey to anywhere after 7pm, and the display shouts in capital letters "Back to Bus".

It worked in it's original phase, since the campaign was set up, more variants came out, more restrictions happened and bus travel was once again discouraged by central government. We aren't comparing apples with apples there.

 

[markymark2000]

Roger French, former MD of Brighton and Hove was recently on the Lunch with Leon Podcast and he says on there that speaking to colleagues, they have pressed the pause button on panic cancellations with the DFT pushing the treasury for a Bus Recovery Grant 2. The funds due to come from the National Bus Strategy money.

Lunch with Leon Podcast | website-1

www.leondaniels.co.uk

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Announcement from DfT of the "final tranche of pandemic-related support" - £150m of funding for bus and light rail, for period April to October 2022

Not sure how far £150m will go, but better than nothing, I guess.

"More details on the allocation of this funding will be provided in due course." Five weeks to go, and they can't say who will get how much, or even how they are going to work out who will get how much. Or when they think that they are going to have worked it out.

But we do know that "This funding is dependent on local areas and operators co-designing a financially sustainable and passenger-focused public transport network, that works for changing travel patterns post-pandemic." So, it seems that while waiting for the DfT to work out and publish the allocation basis, authorities and operators will need to jump through the hoop of developing a "financially stable" service (definition to follow "in due course", I presume). Then they will have to apply, and wait before discovering whether their application has been successful.

And at that point they will learn to what extent they will have the funding to run buses beyond 5th April.

Very depressing, but perhaps not terribly surprising.

 

[geoffk]

Our bus user group in Exeter has just met and I expect they will all have seen this announcement now. Better than nothing as the man on the 172 says but I expect we are still looking at service cuts once operators and local authorities have worked out essentially what the country can afford without putting up taxes. And don't forget there is upward pressure on drivers' pay because of labour shortages and traffic congestion isn't going away any time soon.

 

[markymark2000]

Our bus user group in Exeter has just met and I expect they will all have seen this announcement now. Better than nothing as the man on the 172 says but I expect we are still looking at service cuts once operators and local authorities have worked out essentially what the country can afford without putting up taxes. And don't forget there is upward pressure on drivers' pay because of labour shortages and traffic congestion isn't going away any time soon.

This funding is in place but the official advice from the Govt (albeit issued in Oct 2021) is for concessionary funding to reduce from April. Down 5% each month until it matches the actual usage so there is still a funding reduction overall.


Source: https://www.route-one.net/news/concessionary-reimbursement-in-england-no-2022-23-clarity/

Issued in October 2021, the latter document suggested that LTAs reimburse operators at 90% of pre-COVID-19 levels from April, but decrease that by 5% every other month until it matches actual usage. DfT’s Concessionary Travel Team wrote to LTAs on 24 February and underlined how that approach remains its “default expectation.”

 

[geoffk]

Concessionary travel reimbursement already varies widely by local authority and remember the Treasury's default position is to underfund. I think we can expect any remaining discretionary travel schemes such as buses before 09.30 or trains/trams in metropolitan areas to disappear, or an extra charge to be made.

 

[Simon75]

Concessionary travel reimbursement already varies widely by local authority and remember the Treasury's default position is to underfund. I think we can expect any remaining discretionary travel schemes such as buses before 09.30 or trains/trams in metropolitan areas to disappear, or an extra charge to be made.

Wouldn't it be better if like Scotland, funding direct from the English Department of Transport, then local authorities/PTE'S ?

 

[Man of Kent]

Wouldn't it be better if like Scotland, funding direct from the English Department of Transport, then local authorities/PTE'S ?

Government policy for England is largely pushing devolution, and such a change would not be consistent with this.