Arriva Buses (including Greenline)

[cnjb8]

Its an interesting thought about Arriva London being attractive to First as they have been buying lots of ex-London buses for their operations. While their purchase of Ensign has provided First a key entry point in buying and refurbishing ex-London buses, a London operation would circumnavigate the buying process. I doubt it would happen though at this time

 

[Parebunks]

Depends - I was thinking of Wycombe.

Looking at their network, there's some town services, which I can't imagine are that profitable, the route to Henley / Reading which is probably profitable and routes to Aylesbury and Hemel.

The Hemel and Aylesbury routes could be operated by those depots and I would expect either Carousel or Reading Buses would be interested in the Wycombe - Reading route. Not sure about the town services.

Wycombe to Reading briefly had competition from Carousel - the X80 - so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them take that back at the first opportunity. Wycombe to Ayelsbury is currently facing pretty intense competition from Redline, so it might make sense for Arriva to pull out of that even without depot closures?

 

[Cesarcollie]

Its an interesting thought about Arriva London being attractive to First as they have been buying lots of ex-London buses for their operations. While their purchase of Ensign has provided First a key entry point in buying and refurbishing ex-London buses, a London operation would circumnavigate the buying process. I doubt it would happen though at this time

Maybe, except very shortly there won’t be much coming out of London that will be saleable. The early hybrids were - how shall we put this politely - not great! They’ve staggered on in London but will probably go for scrap once their life in the capital is over. LT’s will have no value or use once London have finished with them. Then we’re on to electrics - and who knows what their eventual cost-effective lifespan will be. The days of taking a diesel bus out of London, removing the centre door, then using it for 5-10 years elsewhere, are pretty much over. Ensign - as ever - had perfect timing!

 

[Statto]

Stagecoach's takeover of Chester was a decade ago and Arriva's takeover of MTL was in 2000.

The market has changed significantly in the last 5 years and the competition authorities will consider this when making a decision.

Maybe so, but Stagecoach still have too much of a monopoly on Merseyside if they bought Arriva. I still expect Stagecoach to be forced to divest one Wirral depot & one Liverpool depot if they did buy Arriva Merseyside.

Stagecoach could be sneaky try & merge Rock Ferry with Laird Street into one depot, but not sure they'd get away with it.

 

[Simon75]

I'm not at all familiar with Arriva's operations, nor how they tie-in with the operations of other big group companies, but there must be some reluctance on the part of other groups to purchase if it would result in the Competition and Markets Authority getting involved. If DB can't sell the group as a whole and individual subsidiaries are unattractive, I suppose their only option is to retreat and let smaller operators pick up the pieces.

It's not ideal from the point of view of the staff who will be unable to benefit from having their terms transferred to a new company.

You have Arriva basically from London, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derby, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Merseyside and North Wales, with a 'gap ' ie Stagecoach/National Express around Northamptonshire , Warwickshire and West Midlands

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Doubt it'll be Stagecoach - they've been consolidating in the areas they already operate in and I think if they'd had an interest in either Macclesfield or Winsford they'd have done something on that already.

Stagecoach are quite commercially savvy - they've now withdrawn from the Biggleswade / Sandy area (apart from the 905 which runs through to Cambridge from Bedford). A few years back they were approached by the Competition Commission when Blazefield were selling Sovereign in Stevenage to Arriva and Stagecoach basically said "not interested".

If you look at the Macclesfield routes, you've got a a bunch of what are basically town services (3,4,5,6,9,10) and one medium distance 38 Crewe - Sandbach - Congleton - Macclesfield.

I suspect somebody will take the Crewe - Sandbach - Congleton section of the 38 as a commercial service. Beyond Congleton it really doesn't serve anywhere until it gets to Macclesfield (Gawsworth's not very big and that's the only place showing on the timetable - even a look on Google Maps shows that bus is basically running through countryside).

D&G already do a 38, except for an evening service (which is part subsidised by Cheshire East)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Mar 2023 ==

First could buy Liverpool, Derby and Milton Keynes with out any need for CMA to come along. Same for Go-Ahead buy Colchester, Southend, Kent and Surry, National Express could buy All of Yorkshire again no need for CMA.

Go Ahead own Headingham buses in Essex

 

[markymark2000]

D&G already do a 38, except for an evening service (which is part subsidised by Cheshire East)

38 evening is only subsidised Monday-Thursday. Friday and Saturday evenings it's commercial. In an ideal world, this subsidy would transfer to D&G and hopefully that kickstarts D&G to do Friday and Saturdays commercially however I think that this may depend on how much of the rest of the work is taken on commercially since this is probably easy to cut the service to save other services instead.

 

[Russel]

My closest Arriva depot is Tamworth. I often look at how the local network has been pruned back over the last few years and wonder how much longer it will be an Arriva operation.

National Express West Midlands would be a welcome take over. Sadly, if Arriva do pull out I can imagine Rotala/Diamond stepping in, and that fills me with dread.

 

[WAB]

First could buy Liverpool, Derby and Milton Keynes with out any need for CMA to come along. Same for Go-Ahead buy Colchester, Southend, Kent and Surry, National Express could buy All of Yorkshire again no need for CMA.

I'm not sure how much scope there is for First to take on more work, money-wise. Places like Derby, say, have Diamond sniffing around and it'd be difficult for them to compete against TrentBarton on quality.

 

[Robertj21a]

You have Arriva basically from London, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derby, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Merseyside and North Wales, with a 'gap ' ie Stagecoach/National Express around Northamptonshire , Warwickshire and West Midlands

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Mar 2023 ==


D&G already do a 38, except for an evening service (which is part subsidised by Cheshire East)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Mar 2023 ==


Go Ahead own Headingham buses in Essex

Shouldn't Arriva have other areas included - across much of Yorkshire and all the North East, right up to the Scottish border ?

 

[Soundwave]

Can anybody shed some light on what "extensive actions" Arriva North West actually took to turn around the fortune of the depots? Or is is that just PR guff?

From what I can tell they cut services, only publicised them on the (poor) website, put up fared and are then are shocked when people don't return to using the bus.

 

[daodao]

Can anybody shed some light on what "extensive actions" Arriva North West actually took to turn around the fortune of the depots? Or is is that just PR guff? From what I can tell they cut services, only publicised them on the (poor) website, put up fares and are then are shocked when people don't return to using the bus.

In Macclesfield, Arriva had previously divested interurban routes 391/2, 130 and the Sunday operation of route 38, plus urban routes 1, 11 and 14. More recently post Covid, they reduced the town routes from 6 to 4 (routes 3/4/9/10) by re-routeing route 10 to cover most of withdrawn route 21, and scrapping route 2, leaving just route 3 to serve Weston Estate. They also reduced the size of the local buses by introducing Mellor Stratas to run the town services.

There is some local publicity for changes, and printed timetables are in theory now available once again, e.g. at Macclesfield Library. There is no longer an information office at Macclesfield Bus Station.

However, the bottom line is that running bus services in rural areas and within smaller towns is no longer viable, especially for major operators with higher overheads. This is not specific to Arriva, and also applies in the outer suburban areas of larger conurbations. However, some local authorities such as TfGM are significantly more profligate with their bus subsidies, particularly for evening and Sunday services.

Arriva currently runs the local town services in Altrincham. I presume it won the tender for these highly subsidised services by submitting the lowest bid; they use Mellor Stratas on these services too. Winning this bid in competition with other potential providers illustrates that they are capable of running services economically.

The other adverse factor is the long strike last summer that may have driven passengers away, particularly on route 38 (Macclesfield-Crewe) where there is an alternative provider (D&G).

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Does DB want to keep Arriva or is it back up for Sale? DB might be better off selling off company in areas instead of one lot.

Let's not go down the rabbit hole of who could theoretically buy what bits of Arriva. It was tiresome in 2012 when it was First and the raft of ridiculous speculation; seem to remember First Scotland East being a likely target of two major groups whereas it wasn't sold for ten years and when it was, it wasn't to them! IIRC, no one predicted First flogging off London either.

Of course now, on the strength of an Ensignbus bolt on purchase, First are being considered as a buying firm.

These days perhaps not, but that’s largely because Arriva have retrenched from so much.

You don’t see many Arriva buses in the Durham coalfield these days, the local network in Durham city is largely gone, and Bishop Auckland isn’t far behind. Arriva have pulled back to south-east Northumberland in the north and Darlington, Redcar, and bits of Stockton in the south.

A far cry from even what it was ten years ago.

That's fair must admit I did miss off Durham intentionally, it's a bit of a grey area and one that's not doing well and it's not unique to Arriva either. Go North East have pretty much decimated their network to the stage they don't serve Hartlepool at all and they might aswell not serve Peterlee for what's left with the Derwentside side extremely poor aswell now.

@Tetchytyke has it on the money. They don't have many more places to retrench in SE Northumberland (though watch this space when they do exit Walkergate) as they have already retreated so much, and no one had mentioned the 685. In the last 20 years, they have closed nine depots in the North East. Some were small, like Stokesley, Richmond and Alnwick but in many cases, they have led to a paring back of a network so it is skeletal, and central Durham is exactly the area I was thinking of. So many areas that they have now a peripheral presence... Berwick, Bishop Auckland, Peterlee. Good news for Go North East and Weardale.

Even in places like Teesside, there has been a paring back - Stokesley to Middlesbrough was 3 buses per hour, now 1. Stokesley to Guisborough went altogether. Loftus to Middlesbrough from 4 to 2 bph. Lingdale to Guisborough from 2 to 1... I could go on.



Back onto the wider Arriva, I fear that there's more to come with more depot closures and a retrenchment to their strongest urban ops

 

[A0]

Arriva haven't operated the service between Hemel and Wycombe (routes 52/1) for a long time and last year withdrew completely from the jointly operated route between Wycombe and Chesham, in return gaining the 35 and 36 bus routes ( which run between Wycombe and Bourne End) from Carousel buses.

Fair point - I glanced at the network map on Arriva's website but that doesn't make clear which are other operators services. If that's the case then it weakens Wycombe's position even more.

From what I can tell they cut services, only publicised them on the (poor) website, put up fared and are then are shocked when people don't return to using the bus.

Much the same action as all the major groups to be fair. Apart from at bus stops, there's little point in producing printed timetables now - they cost money and if anything changes they are immediately obsolete. I know some posters around here have a fixation on such things, but they really are an irrelevance nowadays.

D&G already do a 38, except for an evening service (which is part subsidised by Cheshire East)

To be fair, I hadn't checked to see what others ran - I was just critiquing the Macclesfield services. That somebody else is covering the route will just weaken Arriva's position.

 

[Tetchytyke]

However, the bottom line is that running bus services in rural areas and within smaller towns is no longer viable, especially for major operators with higher overheads. This is not specific to Arriva, and also applies in the outer suburban areas of larger conurbations.

I’m not convinced that it’s “not viable”, more they don’t consider it worth their while. Senior managers taking the view that low-margin work isn’t worth their effort doesn’t mean that an operation is unviable.

Centrebus, through High Peak and D&G, have carved themselves out a nice enough business in tougher bus country than Macclesfield and Nantwich.

I also remain unconvinced that large operators necessarily have larger overheads. Larger operators can use fully depreciated buses, they can hedge their fuel costs, they can combine payroll/HR/management across operations, all in a way the smaller independents simply can’t.

 

[RELL6L]

It seems to me that Arriva just keep snipping back at places until a depot becomes too small to be sustainable. Every year each depot seems to cut back a few PVR and no doubt drivers as if head office have instructed a certain level of cut rather than a proper approach. Obviously that size varies, Oswestry and Sheerness survived despite being quite small for some time but Winsford has just been cut back and back - a post above compared the frequency of services not long back. But inevitably that loses passengers.

I'm not going to speculate who might buy various bits of Arriva or even take on the Winsford routes. Note that D&G already run the whole of the 38 but might take the opportunity to marginally enhance at the ends of the day if they had it on their own, they also run between Crewe and Nantwich on the 85. I appreciate running the 84 from the Chester end is sub-optimal but plenty of routes are run that way, Arriva could interwork it with the 4 at Chester Station -half of the buses interwork with the X4 but the other half spend 15 minutes here - this would provide a degree of resilience to delays. More widely I am not sure anyone is in the market for much by way of growth at the moment. Perhaps it will take towns like Crewe and Winsford losing most of their bus services to wake the government up to the issues.

My local routes are Arriva and I pass a number of vehicles on my way to work. I hope for them to be turn up on time to encourage passengers to stick with the service but sometimes despair. Congestion is pretty bad in places and roadworks are unpredictable but this morning I saw the 7.30 - 18 minutes late, the 7.45 was 39 minutes late, the 8.00 was on time - all departures from point A to point B. At the same time there is another journey which is allowed far too much time and regularly waits in a layby for up to 10 minutes because it is so early and yet it already has on board probably everyone it is going to take on the journey. Again the depot has a small cut in rationalisations a few times each year and is much smaller than it was, the overheads must be fairly high - how long can it survive?

 

[Man of Kent]

Stagecoach will have issues, particularly in Merseyside if they tried to buy Arriva. Arriva was forced to sell Gillmoss depot after they bought MTL, as Arriva had too much of a monopoly in Liverpool at the time. Gillmoss is now owned by Stagecoach.

Stagecoach bought Rock Ferry along with Chester depot from First Group, so it will have too much of a monopoly on Wirral too. If they bought Arriva, with Arriva Laird Street depot.

Stagecoach would certainly be forced to sell one of the Wirral depots, & one of the depots in Liverpool, if they bought Arriva.

Given that franchising is expected in Merseyside - there's a key vote by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority on Friday - I doubt Stagecoach, nor most other groups, are looking to increase their exposure in such places.

 

[markymark2000]

I’m not convinced that it’s “not viable”, more they don’t consider it worth their while. Senior managers taking the view that low-margin work isn’t worth their effort doesn’t mean that an operation is unviable.

Centrebus, through High Peak and D&G, have carved themselves out a nice enough business in tougher bus country than Macclesfield and Nantwich.

To be fair, D&Gs business model is hardly one to admire. Providing poor quality vehicles, regularly not providing vehicles in line with council tender specs. A lack of innovation for commercial routes and instead letting them die. Putting in 30% more running time to routes for padding just because they don't want 1 late mark from the traffic commissioner (even though it means many more people don't travel because of the longer journey times). No social media to inform customers of any delays or service changes. High Peak is meh, they are alright but they are now thriving off being the only choice in the area. Again, huge lack of innovation and not caring about their core routes. They both thrive purely because no one else wants the work. If there was a choice or tenders started working off quality, both firms would be shut down tomorrow.

I also remain unconvinced that large operators necessarily have larger overheads. Larger operators can use fully depreciated buses, they can hedge their fuel costs, they can combine payroll/HR/management across operations, all in a way the smaller independents simply can’t.

Arriva especially with how their management and core staff for Merseyside, North West and Wales divisions are all shared. Given the next few years though, this will drop down to 2 divisions I think. Winsford will be gone in April, Bolton will be gone in September with franchising, Wythenshawe will end up going with franchising. That only leaves Runcorn and let's be honest, Runcorn Depot may as well be in Merseyside division given the network.

I'm not going to speculate who might buy various bits of Arriva or even take on the Winsford routes. Note that D&G already run the whole of the 38 but might take the opportunity to marginally enhance at the ends of the day if they had it on their own, they also run between Crewe and Nantwich on the 85. I appreciate running the 84 from the Chester end is sub-optimal but plenty of routes are run that way, Arriva could interwork it with the 4 at Chester Station -half of the buses interwork with the X4 but the other half spend 15 minutes here - this would provide a degree of resilience to delays. More widely I am not sure anyone is in the market for much by way of growth at the moment. Perhaps it will take towns like Crewe and Winsford losing most of their bus services to wake the government up to the issues.

The 84 will NEVER interwork with the Mold 4. It would be a recipe for disaster. Not going to happen. Chester taking on the 84 I am surprised hasn't happened but it would be them running buses dead to Chester and doing driver changes there. Completely plausible considering that is how Arriva ran the Blacons for a long time (the changeover only moved from Chester Town Hall (As it was then) to Blacon was because there was no parking and the council kept fining the cars for parking on the end of the bus stand while they changed over.

 

[Russel]

The other adverse factor is the long strike last summer that may have driven passengers away, particularly on route 38 (Macclesfield-Crewe) where there is an alternative provider (D&G).

That was obvious to everyone except the Unions...

 

[Mwanesh]

High Wycombe is not looking healthy. It is supposed to have an allocation of about 65 or 70 buses. The peak vehicle is now 35.

 

[Simon75]

High Wycombe is not looking healthy. It is supposed to have an allocation of about 65 or 70 buses. The peak vehicle is now 35.

You could find Go Ahead may be interested ( though competition wise, whether it would be approved)
What's the peak vehicle allocation for Luton, Hemel Hempstead and Aylesbury? Is it lower these days?

 

[A0]

You could find Go Ahead may be interested ( though competition wise, whether it would be approved)

That will only be a problem if one of the other large groups was interested in the area.

If you look back to 2005, when Blazefield wanted to sell Sovereign to Arriva, the competition authorities went to the other large groups (Stagecoach, First, Go Ahead) all of whom said they weren't interested in Sovereign's operation. IIRC the independents in the area - Centrebus and Uno also didn't raise any objections, so the authority let it through - without forcing Arriva to sell or relinquish any contracts, on the grounds the alternative was Blazefield would just close it and Arriva step in to replace Sovereign's services.

 

[Mwanesh]

Luton and Hemel are full to capacity. Aylesbury not too sure. Will ask when I pop into Luton next time

 

[A0]

Luton and Hemel are full to capacity. Aylesbury not too sure. Will ask when I pop into Luton next time

Well Hemel absorbed the Watford operations quite recently, so that probably "filled the gap" there.

Luton ought to be at or near capacity - the combination of Luton & Dunstable is a large conurbation, plus they sustain 2 independents in Centrebus and Grant Palmer.

 

[Simon75]

Well Hemel absorbed the Watford operations quite recently, so that probably "filled the gap" there.

Luton ought to be at or near capacity - the combination of Luton & Dunstable is a large conurbation, plus they sustain 2 independents in Centrebus and Grant Palmer.

Doesn't Luton have an outstation in Dunstable?

 

[Andy Pacer]

Doesn't Luton have an outstation in Dunstable?

No

 

[Goldfish62]

Maybe, except very shortly there won’t be much coming out of London that will be saleable. The early hybrids were - how shall we put this politely - not great! They’ve staggered on in London but will probably go for scrap once their life in the capital is over. LT’s will have no value or use once London have finished with them. Then we’re on to electrics - and who knows what their eventual cost-effective lifespan will be. The days of taking a diesel bus out of London, removing the centre door, then using it for 5-10 years elsewhere, are pretty much over. Ensign - as ever - had perfect timing!

The latest TfL fleet audit dated 31 March 2022 counted 4134 diesel buses still in the fleet, of which just under half were double decks. Plenty to be sold on yet!

 

[Surreyman]

Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64892832

"A multinational transport firm has pulled out of a £6.1m deal to provide electric buses for a county town.

Arriva said passenger numbers in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, had not kept pace with national trends and it had decided not to roll out the buses.

The Stevenage scheme was part of a £198m government investment into zero-emission buses in 12 English areas.

Hertfordshire County Council had partnered with Arriva to run 27 battery-electric buses.

The firm will continue to run buses in Stevenage using its existing fleet, although last month it decided to reduce services".

 

[duncombec]

"A multinational transport firm has pulled out of a £6.1m deal to provide electric buses for a county town.
Arriva said passenger numbers in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, had not kept pace with national trends and it had decided not to roll out the buses.
The Stevenage scheme was part of a £198m government investment into zero-emission buses in 12 English areas.
Hertfordshire County Council had partnered with Arriva to run 27 battery-electric buses.
The firm will continue to run buses in Stevenage using its existing fleet, although last month it decided to reduce services".

Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64892832

The second occasion Arriva have pulled out of an electric bus funding deal, after Milton Keynes Zebra funding at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, in Kent, the following service change notice has appeared on the website (https://www.arrivabus.co.uk/latest-news/tunbridge-wells-service-changes):

Tunbridge Wells Service Changes​

From Sunday 2nd April 2023

From Sunday 2nd April 2023 the following services will be changing:

Sunday Service 202 and 211
These tendered services will no longer be operated by Arriva and instead will be operated by Nu Venture.

Service 772
This service will be withdrawn.

Two "minor" problems...

Whilst these services are operated by Tunbridge Wells depot, neither of them get any closer to that town that Tonbridge - the former are local services, the latter a morning-only school service from Hadlow (to the north).

Secondly, the 202 only operates on Saturdays, and the 211 operates Monday to Saturday. Neither service has a "Sunday service" to be transferred. Kent are not in the habit of tendering services by weekday, so presumably the entire service will transfer.

 

[Porte Molitor]

High Wycombe is not looking healthy. It is supposed to have an allocation of about 65 or 70 buses. The peak vehicle is now 35.

Wycombe has looked dodgy for a number of years but hangs on mainly on money made off the back of the Reading routes. It has a lot of students going to Henley College from both Reading and Wycombe, plus a reasonable amount of commuter stuff to Reading, mainly retail workers which is not the classic 9-5 Mon-Fri. Carousel had a dabble with the X80, but didn't have the frequency the college students want or the early, late and Sunday buses for retail workers. Reading Buses have shown no interest in it, except for running a night bus service over the Henley Regatta weekends at premium prices. They had in fact run the service jointly with City of Oxford (Wycombe Bus) for a few years in the 1990s following the sell-off of Beeline garages at Reading and Wycombe.
The changes to the Amersham and Bourne End routes was led by Buckinghamshire Council as part of the Covid recovery funding and was to reduce over-busing on the two corridors. I would suggest Carousel negotiated the better deal...

 

[Surreyman]

The latest TfL fleet audit dated 31 March 2022 counted 4134 diesel buses still in the fleet, of which just under half were double decks. Plenty to be sold on yet!

Agreed and don't forget that all current London buses have been upgraded to Euro 6, perhaps thats why McGills are buying 20 E400 for their ex First operations & First Essex also acquiring some E400.
I note that Oxford Bus and East Yorkshire have converted 2010/2011 Enviro 400 Hybrids to pure diesel with new euro 6 diesel engines, which suggest that there is an economic case. This might not apply to all makes/models of course.