Having been to York for the first time in about 14 years last week, I was really struck by just how empty almost all of the Coastliner journeys I saw were. I had a good view of both directions too from my Premier Inn window in Blossom Street. Even in peak hours, they had low load factors. So, when I got back and delved through this thread, I wasn't surprised to see news of the axing of the 840 and possible closure of Malton. This looks to be the biggest fall from grace for a UK bus operator that I can think of.
I drove for Coastliner around 20 years ago, and in those days it was the most profitable bus operator in the UK, with margins of 37-39% almost every year allowing it to also have the youngest profile at 2-3 years. To have gone from that level of performance to losing at least £1 million in the last year is shocking.
There is obviously plenty of factors at work here, with the obvious being the elephant in the room carrying a huge ENCTS pass. However, I do think, from what I remember of passenger flows and profiles, that Coastliner is probably in terminal decline now. The big earner year round was York to Leeds with large commuter flows from Copmanthorpe and Tadcaster into both. As Cityzap proved, if you miss them, you carry next to nobody. If you serve them, the journey for intercity passengers becomes too long and unbearable when there is a train (with a lot more seats now) that takes only 20 mins to Leeds. Going east, the route suffers much the same fate with the stop start routing through Stockton on the Forest. The 70 mile, 3 hour + end to end trip for those travelling to the coast is probably too much now, and if they close Malton, and remove the toilet break available for such passengers then there will be even less of them.
From a quality point of view, the brand now looks a complete mess. My partner had pointed out that she hadn't even seen any Yorkshire Coastliners because she remembers the classy and prominent blue and cream livery and hadn't even noticed the new buses. I'm a fan of Stenning's work and it has worked wonders in many areas but the Coastliner B5TLs are awful looking in the metal. This was the first time I had seen them as such and they are so far detached from the brand, image and passenger profile target of Fearnley and Wilde's Coastliner it's hard to believe it's the same route. In those days, the brand was targeted at year round commuters and deployed an upmarket, GNER-esque approach. (side note: Little known in the bus industry is that the original 36 upgrade in 2004 was patterned after, and inspired by GNER when Stuart Wilde travelled on one of the first refurbished 225 Mallard sets). The word 'bus' wasn't to be used. You caught a Coastliner, not a bus. The tacky, seaside marketing with childish branding inside is not going to appeal to that market. The east coast destinations were secondary business, the primary target was York and Leeds commuters, something that Hornby's team seem to have seriously misunderstood with their branding and targeting.
It's hard to see where Coastliner can go from here. Maybe CityZap was the wrong way around. Perhaps CityZap (without ENCTS) should have been fast to Tadcaster and York then continued to the coast with the 843 running all stops Leeds to Stockton with connection opportunities into the longer CityZap. Clearly Transdev can't continue to ply buses on 70 mile routes for £1.01 a tap and nobody will choose bus over train for Leeds to York when the saving is 2 hours on a return trip. It does look like a lose, lose.
