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I would expect most, if not all, the people on this forum agree with you on this principle - that is why we are members of a forum like this. The problem is the general public are not quite as sold as industry professionals & enthusiasts influenced by the media who are actively pro car and anti bus (the mythical war on motorists that has apparently been waged for decades despite car usage being seemingly cheaper and easier than ever whilst costs and burdens are increased on public transport) meaning that politicians are unwilling to stick their neck out and actually do the things that are needed to make public transport more attractive and car use less so. London did take that step, helped by the very nature of London being somewhat anti-car (at least as you get closer to the centre), which worked but even now is still somewhat controversial (at least if you read the media) which just helps but other places off trying similar policies. Somehow we have to find a way to persuade the general public that relying less on their car is the way to go but without government assistance it is proving very difficult to get through that negative perception created by media channels run by people who have never used the bus and rarely use the train as they are rich enough to use their cars regardless of where they are going.
I do wonder how much of it is public perception, if I'm honest. I have family in rural Suffolk who have friends in Haverhill, a rapidly growing town that foolishly lost its railway in the 60s, just as the town was being built out. They always complain about the transport. Even getting to Cambridge from Haverhill takes hours as the bus serves everything along the way! And yes nearly everyone drives, but in truth they don't want to drive for every single journey, there is a lot you can't really do in life that is social if you have to drive in a legal state afterwards! I imagine there are millions of people all around the country, similarly fed up. To me it seems really contradictory, politicians think they have to constantly appease drivers but many of them want a realistic alternative too. I used to live in Bristol, whilst there is no metro or trams, stuff like LTNs just angers and divides people. A fragmented private bus 'network' will never win enough people over, when at the drop of the hat, your route can just disappear for no real reason. Luckily where I live they can't cut any further, only takes 1 bus to fail to show then the others are packed! The expansion of ULEZ right to our border whilst there is a barebones evening and weekend bus service on our side, really wound me up though. It felt London was penalising people and offer us on the fringes no reasonable alternatives to transport. You can't solve an issue like traffic without going across county boundaries. They better end the fuel duty freeze this year! The money lost to that could've literally fixed our roads or provided buses or anything more valuable!
There have been many times when trying to co-ordinate times on a shared section that I have simply had to give up after days of trying because the rest of the two routes are simply incompatible.
Out of interest, who did you used to do timetables for? And I'm not deliberately ignoring anyone on this forum about contacting authorities. With private bus companies, they ignore the public and are not accountable and that makes the county council the natural point of contact, but in most places, they don't have much if any say in anything! This disconnect makes it very difficult to engage, seems like the Thatcher Tory government privatised the buses deliberately for that purpose. Made it so private companies can do whatever they like and the public has no recourse.
Oyster, even when new, was built on outdated technology which always meant that for provincial operators they simply can't read them. Whilst London was early with smartcards this meant they didn't wait for the agreed national standards to be reached before starting development so by the time it was launched it was incompatible with those standards (called ITSO) so as other operators moved to smartcard enabled machines some were entirely unable to read the cards due to that set up and even where machines could in theory be capable it came with a large programming cost that may well have made general acceptance of other products more difficult.
That explains why bus passes don't work in London then! I have a disabled one, beyond frustrating that I can tap my pass anywhere in the country but London. They are still not compatible with the Oyster reader! I have to admit, I probably would have a savercard and buy Intalink Connect tickets if I had to pay. But what existed before, no way! Arriva especially, were very keen on selling day tickets when you asked for a return, which was very expensive. £2.50/ day for my area + a train or TFL bus is acceptable but £6 or £7 no way! It's hard to explain this ticket system to people though, but once I understood, I thought it was good value for money. When I lived in Bristol in 2017, a week ticket was £12!
Unfortunately I think the answer to this is that you live in the UK and our government structure has been for decades, if not centuries, weirdly parochial, disjointed and short-termist - this isn't a recent problem and seems engrained into the system and no one really wants to address it, they may be trying to remove some of the layers to simplify it on a very local level but it won't deal with that parochialism. I would worry about your suggestion of big strategic authorities, for most people travel is local and if you get too big you lose sight of the local needs, smaller projects that bring less publicity, and focus on the big strategic schemes that don't address the things you are complaining about. As you say London covers a similar area to any other county, it may serve more people but it covers a similar area which is probably as big as you want to go to allow local accountability and responsiveness. The big question is why is it that UK politics, both national and local regardless of party as well is seems, appear to be so incapable of basic competence when politicians get involved in decisions when compared to other places whilst at the same time having less regard for professional knowledge and competence (possibly related, if you don't listen to expert advice you will make poorer decisions generally).
Thing is Scotland managed to create a more logical local government system when it reorganised in the mid 90s, so I don't see why we couldn't but unfortunately the government is unwilling to change any of the county boundaries, even though it is desperately needed in a number of places. Funny thing about seeing unitaries everywhere now, is it was proposed in the late 60s under the Redcliffe Maud Report, very radical compared to what is happening now. Unfortunately, Labour lost the election and the Tories created the confusing two tier 1974 system we mostly still have now. I think that is a constant in our history, rather than do it properly, Britain does things piecemeal and then we wonder why nothing works as it should! Also interesting question at the end, I don't know myself.
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With private bus companies, they ignore the public and are not accountable and that makes the county council the natural point of contact, but in most places, they don't have much if any say in anything! This disconnect makes it very difficult to engage, seems like the Thatcher Tory government privatised the buses deliberately for that purpose. Made it so private companies can do whatever they like and the public has no recourse.
You aren't wrong. I have approached my local operator many times and questioned them as to why they aren't delivering the service they said they would when supported by bus priority measures and other infrastructure improvements, which is the silver bullet, apparently (not). As you can imagine, I do not receive an email back!
I think, with the greatest of respect, @aron2smith has also fallen into the trap of thinking "I want to go there, so everybody else must want to go there too, and I don't understand why there isn't a bus that fits". We've all done it - I probably still do in my own area - but there really doesn't seem to be a lot of call for those travelling northwards out of Enfield. I really can't see what Brookfield has to offer than Enfield Town or Waltham Cross already do, for example - or even Southbury Road retail park. My grandmother had friends in Cheshunt, and as she didn't drive her journey was walk-train-collect by car, whilst her friends would just drive. They only ever made the journey to visit each other, and not for any other sort of leisure purposes - there simply wasn't a need to "let's go shopping in Enfield today", for example.
There was a service from the end of my Grandmother's road that would have taken her to Waltham Cross or Upshire for a period in the 1990s, the 517. Whilst she made occasional use of it to Enfield Town (rather than the 192, slightly further away, or the train, slightly further still), I don't recall her ever saying she went to Waltham Cross (e.g. https://www.timetablegraveyard.co.uk/Scanned_Counties/500to699/517-WalthamX_19940326.pdf; later https://www.timetablegraveyard.co.uk/Scanned_Counties/500to699/517-WalthamX_19960504.pdf - replaced by 377 in 2001).
I'd also mention the 310B, Saturday shopping service to Harlow, here (presumably for a market). https://www.timetablegraveyard.co.u...310A-WalthamX_310B-WalthamX_20011020_4165.pdf, later combined TT https://www.timetablegraveyard.co.u...thamX_310A-WalthamX_311-WalthamX_20000923.pdf.
You can't tell me these former journeys wouldn't be useful today. The 310 in the timetable you shared not only went to Enfield, it reduced to half hourly after 7:00pm, today it's only hourly. A half hourly service would be immensely more useful than what exists today. That last departure of 00:30 at Enfield (00:46 at Waltham Cross), just wow, that would've been great after a night out anywhere along the route, even if it was just weekends only. Today the last departure is 10:40pm or 9:40pm at Hertford, too early! Those journey times would be very attractive too, Enfield Town to Cheshunt Old Pond in 32 or 33 minutes, 40 in peak times! Given the 317 to Waltham Cross is just short of a 30 minutes journey today! Waiting at Waltham Cross to go into London is fine, rarely more than 5 minutes wait, often the bus comes within seconds (especially 279), but waiting at Waltham Cross to go home again, can sometimes mean a 20+ minute wait, as punctuality is poor, awful when combined with a low frequency and by then over 30, sometimes 40 people all waiting to go home when it's rush hour. A long wait when I'm only on that bus for 10 to 12 minutes, it is beyond annoying! Especially awkward at the moment as many of the county routes have to use the rail station instead, due to roadworks.
And was interesting reading about your Grandmother, it's this sort of thing people would do more often, if we just sorted out the transport system and reduced the barriers as much as possible, especially cross-boundary. I find the limited late evening timetable quite isolating if I'm honest and no wonder there is no night life to speak of around it. If it wasn't for the trains, it would be very cut off in Cheshunt and there's not much to do here!
Other grandmother lived in Potters Bar - very definitely in a Haringey Council owned house, much like "overspill" housing built in Cheshunt (despite her house being in the corner, furthest away and least noticeable from the grass area, it was her house they decided to screw a bright yellow 'No Ball Games' sign to). After 40+ years, I think she had long lost any sense of being a "Londoner", and I would suspect much was true of her neighbours, and those who have lived in Cheshunt a long time. I doubt my parents would either, nearly 40 years after they moved out of the same area. The only bus route there was the local PB1, but I don't seem to recall much discussion about elsewhere. Probably to Barnet, as that was where the hospital was - certainly no discussion of Hatfield.
And maybe that's true for past generations but I think younger and even middle aged people now move around a lot more than 40 years ago. Not just abroad, but nationally and regionally too. Just because us here don't interact with Hatfield much, doesn't mean the direct bus (242 is being extended to Hatfield in September) won't be useful. Maybe that's where we as a society started going wrong, we stopped mixing so much and stuck to our own areas again.
I'd encourage @aron2smith to check some other resources, too - the excellent londonbuses.co.uk site shows not only that the "red" services did not cease at deregulation, but also that they were highly changeable over a period of years - also, neither the 259 or 279 served Enfield town, just Waltham Cross and Edmonton! I've certainly picked up a fair amount more about services in that area as a result.
One final point I'd counter: I believe there was a suggestion earlier that the Waltham Abbey area was the area that had suffered most from cross-boundary links being lost. I'd also suggest the south-east London/Kent boundary, i.e. those areas that used to be Kent but now aren't. If anything, having looked at a variety of old maps currently hanging around in the sales stock of my local enthusiast Club from the late 60's/early 70s, I'd suggest that 'red' buses extended unusually far north here compared to the country counterparts.
Also well aware of londonbuses.co.uk, that's how I became aware of the number of towns that used to get London's buses and now don't. And I guess what I failed to explain, I grew up in London, so I am more than happy to change routes to get to where I want to go, but the less frequent a service is, the harder that gets. If the 259 or 279 ran to Hammond Street/Cheshunt today, I would change in Southbury Road instead of Waltham Cross more than likely, as that's a major east-west road. I also wouldn't have to worry about the lack of evening services as Waltham Cross is not a pleasant place to wait. It may be convenient for TFL as it is but it's not for passengers. Every journey matters seems like false advertising. They should at least tell people about the connecting routes, even if they don't run them, then integration would exist.
And I do agree about SE London/ Kent, I think there needs to be more consistency with all cross-boundary areas. The private operators can't match TFL's offer and regulations anyway.
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You aren't wrong. I have approached my local operator many times and questioned them as to why they aren't delivering the service they said they would when supported by bus priority measures and other infrastructure improvements, which is the silver bullet, apparently (not). As you can imagine, I do not receive an email back!
Even when they respond, I have found that they are not very helpful! I don't understand why this country privatised so many useful and often essential utilities.
The state industries were seen as failing, and it was hoped to bring in external funding to improve them. As already pointed out in this thread, the National Bus Company was not a panacea.
The question may be better posed as not understanding why there wasn't a greater requirement to preserve the outputs of those utilities, but the theory is that private enterprise rises and falls at the behest of the market.
Out of interest, who did you used to do timetables for? And I'm not deliberately ignoring anyone on this forum about contacting authorities. With private bus companies, they ignore the public and are not accountable and that makes the county council the natural point of contact, but in most places, they don't have much if any say in anything! This disconnect makes it very difficult to engage, seems like the Thatcher Tory government privatised the buses deliberately for that purpose. Made it so private companies can do whatever they like and the public has no recourse.
Not used, current with 20 years experience in that side of the industry but since I am not an official spokesman for my employer I would prefer not to confirm who but it is a medium sized bus business. I can't speak for others, and it is probably the biggest weakness of the big groups in the remoteness of their customer services from their actual operations meaning their responses to enquiries can be poor (& route change requests may get lost as the people responsible aren't in the normal complaints system), but we do pay attention to and respond to all sensible customer requests (you do get a few individuals, who appear to be enthusiasts, who can believe they have great insights who do barrage you with lots of ideas which are invariably not commercially logical and they do get more ignored) but it can be difficult to convert a specialist technical evaluation into laymans terms so it may sometimes feel like it is dismissed when it has been carefully considered. We have made improvements in response to customer suggestions, as we have to council feedback and staff ideas (and combinations of those) but we can't always do everything even if it seems like a good idea as there are limits of resources (a lack of drivers or vehicles may prevent ideas being taken up) or risk (there is only so much risk you can take at once so investing in one thing may prevent something else being done at the same time) and sometimes simple physical issues mean you just can't do something (if you are connecting with one thing at one point you can't then do the same somewhere else for instance).
That explains why bus passes don't work in London then! I have a disabled one, beyond frustrating that I can tap my pass anywhere in the country but London. They are still not compatible with the Oyster reader! I have to admit, I probably would have a savercard and buy Intalink Connect tickets if I had to pay. But what existed before, no way! Arriva especially, were very keen on selling day tickets when you asked for a return, which was very expensive. £2.50/ day for my area + a train or TFL bus is acceptable but £6 or £7 no way! It's hard to explain this ticket system to people though, but once I understood, I thought it was good value for money. When I lived in Bristol in 2017, a week ticket was £12!
I was never entirely sure whether it was the machines were incapable of reading out of London concessionary passes or if TfL don't care about recording them properly as it doesn't really matter to them. Since TfL have the concessionary money anyway and would just be claiming for themselves from themselves it doesn't seem to be something important to them.
It is pretty common for season tickets in bigger cities to be pretty competitive when compared to more suburban settings (like Hertfordshire) without the less urban network having so many different tickets to meet all the different needs as to be uninteligible. You are dealing with bigger volumes but also often shorter average trips and with a stronger centre as a focus there is a higher proportion just using two trips so allow you to assume a lower daily fare to get under. The great complication for season tickets is getting a price low enough to be attractive to the average punter just doing a single return trip during the week whilst not offering so great a discount for the number who have more complicated flows that the network loses too much money (and that calculation will vary from place to place depending on how big a proportion may use that compared to the simple).
Not used, current with 20 years experience in that side of the industry but since I am not an official spokesman for my employer I would prefer not to confirm who but it is a medium sized bus business. I can't speak for others, and it is probably the biggest weakness of the big groups in the remoteness of their customer services from their actual operations meaning their responses to enquiries can be poor (& route change requests may get lost as the people responsible aren't in the normal complaints system), but we do pay attention to and respond to all sensible customer requests (you do get a few individuals, who appear to be enthusiasts, who can believe they have great insights who do barrage you with lots of ideas which are invariably not commercially logical and they do get more ignored) but it can be difficult to convert a specialist technical evaluation into laymans terms so it may sometimes feel like it is dismissed when it has been carefully considered. We have made improvements in response to customer suggestions, as we have to council feedback and staff ideas (and combinations of those) but we can't always do everything even if it seems like a good idea as there are limits of resources (a lack of drivers or vehicles may prevent ideas being taken up) or risk (there is only so much risk you can take at once so investing in one thing may prevent something else being done at the same time) and sometimes simple physical issues mean you just can't do something (if you are connecting with one thing at one point you can't then do the same somewhere else for instance).
No worries, that's understandable. And also a very interesting response. I've never sent random ideas to bus companies or an authority but the idea that some people out there do, is really funny.
I think in the immediate term, I just want more than 1 route running 1 bus an hour after 7:30pm (so a proper late evening service like once existed, ideally a 310 every 30 minutes and an hourly town service of sorts until around 11:30pm at least) and for a bus to actually serve Cheshunt Station every half an hour to/ from the residential areas. The basic demands to me are not much to ask for compared to demanding TFL taking over in comparison. The problem is I think of the smaller issues and then I get into the bigger issues and then a thread like this covering a ton of wildly different ideas and possibilities is out there. Also to note, some of the more basic demands I've said are rather annoyingly also mentioned by my council in various documents about local transport over the years but for some reason, they don't really act on anything they propose, which is daft. Whoever writes those things has wasted a lot of time! Possibly much more than I have walking and waiting for buses and trains that fail to time with each other.
I was never entirely sure whether it was the machines were incapable of reading out of London concessionary passes or if TfL don't care about recording them properly as it doesn't really matter to them. Since TfL have the concessionary money anyway and would just be claiming for themselves from themselves it doesn't seem to be something important to them.
Possibly but they should tell their drivers that. Maybe 1 in 10 press some button to record it, most either smile or ignore it and a tiny minority, act like I'm evading my fare, which really winds me up.
It is pretty common for season tickets in bigger cities to be pretty competitive when compared to more suburban settings (like Hertfordshire) without the less urban network having so many different tickets to meet all the different needs as to be uninteligible. You are dealing with bigger volumes but also often shorter average trips and with a stronger centre as a focus there is a higher proportion just using two trips so allow you to assume a lower daily fare to get under. The great complication for season tickets is getting a price low enough to be attractive to the average punter just doing a single return trip during the week whilst not offering so great a discount for the number who have more complicated flows that the network loses too much money (and that calculation will vary from place to place depending on how big a proportion may use that compared to the simple).
I was a student in Bristol which is why the week ticket was so cheap, I think full price was £18 or £20 and First were and still are dominant there. Also I always thought a week ticket assumed 10 single journeys were made.
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The state industries were seen as failing, and it was hoped to bring in external funding to improve them. As already pointed out in this thread, the National Bus Company was not a panacea.
The question may be better posed as not understanding why there wasn't a greater requirement to preserve the outputs of those utilities, but the theory is that private enterprise rises and falls at the behest of the market.
Maybe not the perfect solution, but there does need to be some kind of regional scale and organisation to how our buses run (same with all public services, infrastructure and planning I think). Unfortunately, many counties aren't an ideal shape for transport in many cases. Maybe splitting England into 12 or 15 plus an expanded London + commuter area would be better in the long run.
The point is that’s there is always a boundary and there is always someone on the wrong side of it.
We move the boundary out to include Harlow, so what about Sawbridgeworth? So we move it out, what about Bishops Stortford? So it moves out, what about Saffron Walden? So we lump Saffron Walden in too. But then Saffron Walden faces Cambridge as much as it does London, so there’s still a boundary and people are still on the wrong side of it.
Good local authorities (and Herts are a good one) will fund cross-boundary stuff where it benefits their taxpayers. But they won’t if it doesn’t- and rightly so. The same thing will apply wherever you stick the boundary. And sometimes you will get gaps- TfL don’t fund the 84 as they see no benefit to them, and Herts don’t fund it for largely the same reason.
We've talked about Cheshunt station as being almost impossible to serve reliably with a bus.
An evening town service? Is there actually anything in Cheshunt that passengers would like to visit regularly?
Herts CC will partially fund 84B (as 243) from September as the Hertsmere funding has run out.
Perhaps the OP should approach their local councillor to see if there is any discretionary funding available? You never know ....
The point is that’s there is always a boundary and there is always someone on the wrong side of it.
We move the boundary out to include Harlow, so what about Sawbridgeworth? So we move it out, what about Bishops Stortford? So it moves out, what about Saffron Walden? So we lump Saffron Walden in too. But then Saffron Walden faces Cambridge as much as it does London, so there’s still a boundary and people are still on the wrong side of it.
Good local authorities (and Herts are a good one) will fund cross-boundary stuff where it benefits their taxpayers. But they won’t if it doesn’t- and rightly so. The same thing will apply wherever you stick the boundary. And sometimes you will get gaps- TfL don’t fund the 84 as they see no benefit to them, and Herts don’t fund it for largely the same reason.
Say the boundary was Harlow or anywhere else, we as a country should know better than to make the mistake of having a hard border again. Places north of that would for the most part be under a different transport authority. But why would services from the former arbitrarily stop at the boundary? It should be obvious if the boundary town is 90000 and neighbouring town is even a 1/4 of that size (or less in many cases), people will want to travel between the two and beyond, that should be obvious and clearly something very wrong with how different regions interact with each other in Britain, that what your saying is somehow just accepted as fact of life. How about we fund these things properly and the government create a local government environment that sees mutual benefit in helping each other where goals overlap (like transport). Any boundary areas should see overlapping services, not nothing!
And surely reducing the number of boundaries is a good thing and essential at this point. Services would be better if the boundary here was just Herts-London, it being Herts-Essex-London with 15 years of austerity on top has crippled everywhere outside London more or less.
As for the 84, that was a sick joke. How can one town completely lose its bus connection to its nearest and most significant town pairing and with it a direct connection to the main hospital for the wider area? Especially with all the dead running TFL runs from Potters Bar into Barnet. All they had to do was adjust 1 of their routes by 2 miles, that really shouldn't be hard. London has no right to complain about traffic if it can't be flexible on the edges of the city.
Funny how none of this is an issue in Ireland, imagine if they treated public transport in Swords or Blanchardstown or Bray completely separate to Dublin's? Our country is silly by comparison.
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We've talked about Cheshunt station as being almost impossible to serve reliably with a bus.
An evening town service? Is there actually anything in Cheshunt that passengers would like to visit regularly?
Herts CC will partially fund 84B (as 243) from September as the Hertsmere funding has run out.
Perhaps the OP should approach their local councillor to see if there is any discretionary funding available? You never know ....
RE: Cheshunt Station - the bus doesn't have to stop right outside like it once did. It could turn off at Delamere Road/ Cadmore Lane or Russell's Ride and provide a stop on the corner. Both roads a couple minutes at most from the station, still can't believe the council withdrew the route rather than try something that could've kept the service going. Proves councillors don't walk around the areas they serve very much. The 242 routing through Whitefields Road is much tighter with parking than either Delamere Road or Russell's Ride.
Maybe the businesses would exist, if the transport existed. The trains are busy here until end of service, so making buses run to take those of us who live further away from the station makes sense.
And yes the development with the 243 is good, just now the anomaly that Brookmans Park and Welham Green will have a more frequent bus service than Cuffley, West Cheshunt/ Rosedale and anyone who wants to go from Potters Bar to Barnet. Also surprised the 242 will still serve Brookfield despite going to Hatfield from September, that lengthy detour means very few will go from Waltham Cross to Hatfield, it's too slow. Really why we need a separate town service.
Funny thing about it is, the last 242 from Waltham Cross will be 7:55pm, I regularly need a bus just around 9pm, the 310 is no good for that! Getting so damn close, to what I need!
And again, not clear who to contact as it's 2 tier local government still. Some councillors are district and county councillors, which is very confusing.
How about we fund these things properly and the government create a local government environment that sees mutual benefit in helping each other where goals overlap (like transport). Any boundary areas should see overlapping services, not nothing!
Here is the critical question. And other posters have already given answers to it. The political reality in this country is that the population as a whole has accepted the basic premise of Thatcherism that Private Sector=Good while Public Sector=Bad, from which follows the idea that taxation should always be minimised. Little wonder then that public financing of so much public transport is on a shoestring, a problem shared with so many public services. Tinkering with government structures won't make any meaningful difference. Me First rules in this country, unless that changes all the problems you describe will continue.
Local authorities care about their rate payers only.Those are the shareholders in the private sector. You mentioned the 310 which went all the way to Enfield years ago.The reason it was cut back to Waltham was TFL .Nothing Arriva could do about it .
The country isn't just struggling financially, it is in a deep financial mess. Public sector debt outstanding is roughly equal to one year of GDP and the international financial markets charge the UK very high interest rates to borrow more money.
And again, not clear who to contact as it's 2 tier local government still. Some councillors are district and county councillors, which is very confusing.
Planning and transport really need to happen together, otherwise you end up with frustrated people like me who can't travel as easily as it could be if a town was designed properly in the first place.
Maybe not the perfect solution, but there does need to be some kind of regional scale and organisation to how our buses run (same with all public services, infrastructure and planning I think). Unfortunately, many counties aren't an ideal shape for transport in many cases.
A unitary authority, with mayor, has been ruled out by almost all (if not all) leaders of the 11 districts / boroughs in Hertfordshire . . . that's why you've heard nothing!! I won't say that some changes won't happen
I do wonder how much of it is public perception, if I'm honest. I have family in rural Suffolk who have friends in Haverhill, a rapidly growing town that foolishly lost its railway in the 60s, just as the town was being built out. They always complain about the transport. Even getting to Cambridge from Haverhill takes hours as the bus serves everything along the way!
For someone moaning about cross border routes, Cambridge-Haverhill is a peculiar example to choose. It has 3bph peak, 2bph off peak and 1bph evening, last departure from Cambridge at 2345. It is a very busy route, especially with people working at Addenbrookes Hospital. Linton, the biggest village along the route, has a big problem with on street parking by people driving from other villages to Linton to get the bus to Cambridge.
The fastest buses do bus station to bus station in an hour, traffic permitting, 15 minutes of which is taken up getting from Drummer Street to Addenbrookes. From Addenbrookes to Haverhill Sainsburys is 30 minutes. By way of comparison, the fastest train in 1967 was 34 minutes.
I was a student in Bristol which is why the week ticket was so cheap, I think full price was £18 or £20 and First were and still are dominant there. Also I always thought a week ticket assumed 10 single journeys were made.
Weekly tickets are designed to give a significant discount to a regular commuter travelling 5 days a week so will tend to be based on the price of 3 or 4 days travel with return ticket prices if you have them, at least for urban networks. Wider regional tickets need to allow for a higher proportion doing 3 or 4 trips a day so will be calculated on a higher base daily price but still with the aim to be a significant discount for a 5 day user though probably not as big a discount as some of the urban networks work on.
Maybe not the perfect solution, but there does need to be some kind of regional scale and organisation to how our buses run (same with all public services, infrastructure and planning I think). Unfortunately, many counties aren't an ideal shape for transport in many cases. Maybe splitting England into 12 or 15 plus an expanded London + commuter area would be better in the long run.
The problem with a larger regional organisation covering multiple county sized areas is that it will likely be less responsive to the local needs of small remote towns and if they aren't directly democratically accountable (& given the difficulty currently being experienced across the country in the face of attempts to simply create unitaries within long standing geographical identities that would seem a very difficult sell to the public) there is nothing to influence them to do anything. Counties probably actually are the sensible size to manage bus services, at least the normal sized ones, as they are big enough to fund the resources to manage it but small enough to actually be in touch with the users and react to the needs of residents. Some of the historic boundaries may not really be appropriate to modern connections but people are emotionally tied to an identity and can be very protective and anti-change (& if you want to see a stupid boundary look at Stamford in Lincolnshire, it is almost entirely surrounded by other counties to the point that only one road out of the town stays in Lincolnshire a situation caused by the residents refusing to be moved out of Lincolnshire) so it would require a significant amount of political courage and determination which few if any of our politicians have ever shown (even more than they would need to properly fund bus services which they won't do and similar to that needed to tackle car use).
Here is the critical question. And other posters have already given answers to it. The political reality in this country is that the population as a whole has accepted the basic premise of Thatcherism that Private Sector=Good while Public Sector=Bad, from which follows the idea that taxation should always be minimised. Little wonder then that public financing of so much public transport is on a shoestring, a problem shared with so many public services. Tinkering with government structures won't make any meaningful difference. Me First rules in this country, unless that changes all the problems you describe will continue.
I so wished that would change. I would rather the politicians just treat the population as adults. Policy A costs this much, we need to raise Tax B for a bit to maximise the benefits. The current approach has certain things done well and other things that are drawbacks, we want to reduce the drawbacks. Left or right, politicians all need to do the policies that work the best. Bus deregulation has proven by itself like all privatisations that it hasn't worked, actually failed in all its promises.
As an example, fuel duty being frozen for so long and then cut a few years ago, that has wasted and lost so much money, £80 billion in 13 years apparently. It is nuts that we choose to keep it when apparently this country is so broke. I would seriously propose it as we are ending the fuel tax freeze and increasing it to pay for the roads and pavements to be fixed, better street lighting etc. Anything left will pay for infrastructure and public transport improvements. We are paying but also benefitting then.
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They don't actually know what they want to do in Hertfordshire, but the good thing is they are taking their time. I hope Borough of Broxbourne goes with East Herts if I'm honest. Mayors in individual home counties seems strange to me though, hoping it leads to some kind of wider south east authority or confederation.
For someone moaning about cross border routes, Cambridge-Haverhill is a peculiar example to choose. It has 3bph peak, 2bph off peak and 1bph evening, last departure from Cambridge at 2345. It is a very busy route, especially with people working at Addenbrookes Hospital. Linton, the biggest village along the route, has a big problem with on street parking by people driving from other villages to Linton to get the bus to Cambridge.
The fastest buses do bus station to bus station in an hour, traffic permitting, 15 minutes of which is taken up getting from Drummer Street to Addenbrookes. From Addenbrookes to Haverhill Sainsburys is 30 minutes. By way of comparison, the fastest train in 1967 was 34 minutes.
Yes because a growing town like Haverhill needs its train back. Haverhill really only has 1 sort of frequent bus route with several variants. The 13 isn't directly town centre to town centre (only X13 is). It goes on a long circuitous tour around the residential areas of Haverhill and then village to village on the way to Cambridge. It's a long route, Haverhill bus station to Cambridge bus station is actually timed as taking 75 to 80 minutes! Addenbrookes is only the edge of Cambridge. The infrastructure hasn't kept up with the growth of the town, really it needs a railway to grow any further and provide more opportunities to its residents. I like buses but they perform best for shorter journeys unless an area is remote.
Also my family are still 25 minutes drive from there. There village is 2000 people with only a school bus serving it. Naturally my cousins were quite isolated until they could drive. I feel I at least have some choice despite the issues with buses locally, but for a 1st world country, we really should be better than this.
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The problem with a larger regional organisation covering multiple county sized areas is that it will likely be less responsive to the local needs of small remote towns and if they aren't directly democratically accountable (& given the difficulty currently being experienced across the country in the face of attempts to simply create unitaries within long standing geographical identities that would seem a very difficult sell to the public) there is nothing to influence them to do anything. Counties probably actually are the sensible size to manage bus services, at least the normal sized ones, as they are big enough to fund the resources to manage it but small enough to actually be in touch with the users and react to the needs of residents. Some of the historic boundaries may not really be appropriate to modern connections but people are emotionally tied to an identity and can be very protective and anti-change (& if you want to see a stupid boundary look at Stamford in Lincolnshire, it is almost entirely surrounded by other counties to the point that only one road out of the town stays in Lincolnshire a situation caused by the residents refusing to be moved out of Lincolnshire) so it would require a significant amount of political courage and determination which few if any of our politicians have ever shown (even more than they would need to properly fund bus services which they won't do and similar to that needed to tackle car use).
It's finally been said! I think of one of my local county boundaries, which with Essex is the River Lea, so a natural boundary. When all the towns here were small market towns up to 80 years ago, it made a lot of sense to divide it that way. But I think especially with towns like mine near cities and basically functioning as an extension of it in everyday life, these county boundaries haven't scaled so well. And certainly doesn't help with running transport, ensuring good access to services like health effectively and putting houses in decent locations. To me, people can identify with the historic counties but they aren't a great way of running services we need effectively and I think the contrast between places with good services and those with bad or mediocre services proves that. Buses are merely one of the more obvious signs, but applies to all sorts of public services, maintenance etc.
Also with Stamford, not sure what is more silly, Lincolnshire going around that town or the fact Rutland exists! I walked across it in 6 hours, Stamford to Oakham, that's how small it is!
Some of the historic boundaries may not really be appropriate to modern connections but people are emotionally tied to an identity and can be very protective and anti-change
The important part of this quote is the second part, not the first part. Boundaries appropriate to modern connections were tried with Avon, Humberside and Cleveland. They didn't last.
The important part of this quote is the second part, not the first part. Boundaries appropriate to modern connections were tried with Avon, Humberside and Cleveland. They didn't last.
Fair point but we'll have to see how long the new authorities last. Ones like North East, East Midlands and West of England especially are not so different to the failed 1974 counties. Bristol's built up area has lost out big time, the way it's divided now. Separate counties cutting across clear built up areas is the problem, no issue at all in rural parts of the country.
One thing that has not been said is that it is not a statutory requirement that local authorities fund local bus services and some in the recent past have given little in direct financial support. Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Dorset, Somerset, Torbay all spring to mind, though I acknowledge it has improved a bit of late. The only statutory transport is for school pupils over a distance set by the local authority, normally 2 or 3 miles depending on age.
And again, not clear who to contact as it's 2 tier local government still. Some councillors are district and county councillors, which is very confusing.
I'll say it again . . . CONTACT EVERYONE !! Sometimes it's that final bit of seed that takes root, but you need to throw lots of seed about at first. You've been told already that simply posting on here won't get anywhere . . . if you're serious about improving bus services in a tiny part of Hertfordshire, start agitating amongst decision makers.
Construct a timetable, with a defined route, for your evening bus service. Should the route start from Waltham Cross, or Cheshunt Station? Should it connect with Route 310 at Cheshunt Pond? What areas of the town should it run to? What are the likely passenger journeys that would make if popular? Should it run every evening, or perhaps just Thursday-Friday-Saturday evenings to start off? What size of bus? Which local operators might be interested? How much mileage is involved? How much might the cost per night be? {Driver + fuel . . . assume £20ph driver cost (which includes NI premium, before anyone asks); assume diesel pump prices}.
Don't post it here . . . send it to EVERYONE you can think of . . . it might just work !!
Alternatively, it might give you a bit of a shock . . . it won't be cheap, and it will give you an idea of how any Local Transport Authority has to decide between services that run in the daytime and actually might make a difference, and services that run in the evening and probably won't. Remember, you're always looking for regular passengers, travelling several time a week, rather than once a week, occasionally.
The question of why things were privatised. Well, it's hard to imagine now and we only see/hear about the things that go badly wrong (such as Thames Water) but the nationalised industries were basket cases in many respects. Take British Telecom which was part of the Post Office. Getting a phone into your house took weeks. British Steel was losing the equivalent of £1.5bn a year in 1980. More pertinently, the National Bus Company (which was created in 1969) became increasingly loss making. It lost the equivalent of £235m in 1975, and that precipitated a massive review of bus services (Market Analysis Projects) in which the NBC slashed routes in places like the Home Counties and South East England as well as the West Midlands. Oh, and between 1965 and 1985, bus patronage halved. Whether you approved of Thatcher and her policies (and I didn't care for her nor her treatment of communities in the North), things could not have persisted.
I so wished that would change. I would rather the politicians just treat the population as adults. Policy A costs this much, we need to raise Tax B for a bit to maximise the benefits. The current approach has certain things done well and other things that are drawbacks, we want to reduce the drawbacks. Left or right, politicians all need to do the policies that work the best. Bus deregulation has proven by itself like all privatisations that it hasn't worked, actually failed in all its promises.
As an example, fuel duty being frozen for so long and then cut a few years ago, that has wasted and lost so much money, £80 billion in 13 years apparently. It is nuts that we choose to keep it when apparently this country is so broke. I would seriously propose it as we are ending the fuel tax freeze and increasing it to pay for the roads and pavements to be fixed, better street lighting etc. Anything left will pay for infrastructure and public transport improvements. We are paying but also benefitting then.
They have attempted this twice. Manchester went to the people about introducing a congestion charge with the proceeds ringfenced for transport improvements. 80% of people rejected it. In 2001, Bristol gave people a choice on whether to have a 6%, 4%, 2% or zero increase in council tax with various iterations showing where the money would be spent and/or savings found. 54% of people (and this is in a large metropolitan conurbation with a liberal mindset) voted for Zero. People do not vote for tax increases. Of course, people always want more spending on the NHS and education etc but not at their expense. That is politics - pure and simple.
The country isn't just struggling financially, it is in a deep financial mess. Public sector debt outstanding is roughly equal to one year of GDP and the international financial markets charge the UK very high interest rates to borrow more money.
Exactly and the OP seems to think that the government is being disingenuous. The fact is that ALL the political parties in the 2024 election were disingenuous in how bad the financial position is in the country. The national debt has gone up massively since 2008 when the government had to bail out those financial institutions who'd invested in the US sub prime market. Of course, even this has to be couched in that the Blair government had spent some considerable sums but via PFI schemes (so it didn't appear on the UK balance sheet). GDP debt is at 96% and the IFS were stating that all the parties were skirting around the issue.
Say the boundary was Harlow or anywhere else, we as a country should know better than to make the mistake of having a hard border again. Places north of that would for the most part be under a different transport authority. But why would services from the former arbitrarily stop at the boundary? It should be obvious if the boundary town is 90000 and neighbouring town is even a 1/4 of that size (or less in many cases), people will want to travel between the two and beyond, that should be obvious and clearly something very wrong with how different regions interact with each other in Britain, that what your saying is somehow just accepted as fact of life. How about we fund these things properly and the government create a local government environment that sees mutual benefit in helping each other where goals overlap (like transport). Any boundary areas should see overlapping services, not nothing!
Except there is no hard border. Buses don't suddenly stop at the TfL boundary. They run across to Waltham Cross because it makes financial and operational sense. Hard border... Can you travel from Hertford to Harlow? Harlow to Bishops Stortford? Harlow to Epping? Hounslow to Slough? Croydon to Redhill? I can think of only one instance where a local authority has been so boneheaded and insular to run to a boundary and no further.
In your particular instance, there are two things. Will you get a direct bus from Cheshunt to Enfield - unlikely as whilst you might want it, the demand is clearly limited or else someone would've introduced one. Clearly, public body TfL don't see the need to provide one and no commercial operator has also stepped up. Can you get a better evening service on the 310 - perhaps. And in that case, do as @greenline712 suggests and contact the relevant councillors, the Herts public transport unit, etc and perhaps some BSIP funding will be available. Contact everyone and do it consistently but just posting on here is just shouting at clouds.
Exactly and the OP seems to think that the government is being disingenuous. The fact is that ALL the political parties in the 2024 election were disingenuous in how bad the financial position is in the country. The national debt has gone up massively since 2008 when the government had to bail out those financial institutions who'd invested in the US sub prime market. Of course, even this has to be couched in that the Blair government had spent some considerable sums but via PFI schemes (so it didn't appear on the UK balance sheet). GDP debt is at 96% and the IFS were stating that all the parties were skirting around the issue.
The 2008 financial crisis was just episode 1 of a series that also includes brexit, covid, subsidising energy prices and the moron premium on interest since the 2022 so called fiscal event.
The 2008 financial crisis was just episode 1 of a series that also includes brexit, covid, subsidising energy prices and the moron premium on interest since the 2022 so called fiscal event.
Well indeed - the point I was making was that we were spending more in those days but it was just off the balance sheet and into PPPs/PFIs. I was always very suspicious when Osborne brought forward the legislation in the Bus Services Act. I don't think it was a Damascene conversion into furtherment of public transport - just a means of offloading what little involvement there was in central government into the provinces.
The question of why things were privatised. Well, it's hard to imagine now and we only see/hear about the things that go badly wrong (such as Thames Water) but the nationalised industries were basket cases in many respects. Take British Telecom which was part of the Post Office. Getting a phone into your house took weeks. British Steel was losing the equivalent of £1.5bn a year in 1980. More pertinently, the National Bus Company (which was created in 1969) became increasingly loss making. It lost the equivalent of £235m in 1975, and that precipitated a massive review of bus services (Market Analysis Projects) in which the NBC slashed routes in places like the Home Counties and South East England as well as the West Midlands. Oh, and between 1965 and 1985, bus patronage halved. Whether you approved of Thatcher and her policies (and I didn't care for her nor her treatment of communities in the North), things could not have persisted.
This is all fair comment. The problem was that the promoters of privatisation and deregulation refused to see the difference between manufacturing enterprises selling products into a genuinely competitive market and service providers operating in sectors where a suitably controlled monopoly will tend to provide the best overall customer experience. They also failed to recognise that HMT has always stifled any attempts at entrepreneurial management in the public sector as if they were somehow incompatible with public ownership. Yet some municipal bus companies, subject to local accountability rather than the dead hand of the Treasury, did manage to behave more commercially.
I worked in the bus industry for over 20 years and experienced the difficulties of privatisation yet my feeling was always that the ownership didn't have to matter very much, it was the regulatory/supervisory regime that made far more difference to passengers.
The OP complains of being near a hard border which apparently limits the provision of better services but the importance of said border is almost nothing to do with local government boundaries per se and everything to do with the difference between unfettered deregulation and franchising overseen by an accountable public body.
the National Bus Company (which was created in 1969) became increasingly loss making. It lost the equivalent of £235m in 1975, and that precipitated a massive review of bus services (Market Analysis Projects) in which the NBC slashed routes in places like the Home Counties and South East England as well as the West Midlands. Oh, and between 1965 and 1985, bus patronage halved. Whether you approved of Thatcher and her policies (and I didn't care for her nor her treatment of communities in the North), things could not have persisted.
Are there any good books on this, especially covering the London Country area? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the public were just as misled on their public bus company as they were on British Rail. These companies needed to be run regionally by regional authorities, not an unsupportive, uncaring national government. British rail eventually got there with sectorisation, just for it to be rashly sold off! PTEs really should've covered every corner of the country and covered both bus and rail. That's what makes devolution seem so promising, especially if its replicated in more places.
People do not vote for tax increases. Of course, people always want more spending on the NHS and education etc but not at their expense. That is politics - pure and simple.
It certainly is one of the greatest contradictions of our times. I want much better services and I have nothing against paying for them through taxes. I look at jobs 10 to 15 miles in places within Hertfordshire and unless you drive (I don't) you can't realistically get to them and certainly not in a reasonable journey time (45 minutes). We wonder why Central London is so dominant, the transport made that possible. The infrastructure barely exists elsewhere.
Exactly and the OP seems to think that the government is being disingenuous. The fact is that ALL the political parties in the 2024 election were disingenuous in how bad the financial position is in the country. The national debt has gone up massively since 2008 when the government had to bail out those financial institutions who'd invested in the US sub prime market. Of course, even this has to be couched in that the Blair government had spent some considerable sums but via PFI schemes (so it didn't appear on the UK balance sheet). GDP debt is at 96% and the IFS were stating that all the parties were skirting around the issue.
Yes because I look at the past, what the country is going through now is not ideal but it's nothing when compared to after WW2 for example. The country had 250% debt to GDP, severe labour and material shortages for a long time after 1945. That's when we were actually on the verge of collapse. But the government still nationalised a 1/4 of the economy, created the NHS and built a 1 million homes in 6 years despite all the restrictions. They rebuilt because they had to, same as now, we can't keep to the same old policies, we have to rebuild now. I think of all the money spent to get us through Covid, £400 billion, it was spent because the alternative was much much worse, the national debt didn't change that much funnily enough. Imagine what even £100 billion into all our infrastructure could do in the short term.
I think what is concerning is the growing wealth in an ever shrinking number of hands, a couple 100 billion shifted up to the richest since 2020 and they are hoarding the wealth by not investing, that is terrible for the future. The only way I accept that the country is broke, is that the money and assets are in the wrong hands. We own nothing anymore! PFIs are a scam, possibly worse than privatisation or housing benefit effectively subsidising landlords.
As for buses, around half of the revenue is now public money (almost £1 billion) but the government and councils have no say in how they are run nor the outcomes they want from buses or even the design of a well thought and effective network, that has to change.
Except there is no hard border. Buses don't suddenly stop at the TfL boundary. They run across to Waltham Cross because it makes financial and operational sense. Hard border... Can you travel from Hertford to Harlow? Harlow to Bishops Stortford? Harlow to Epping? Hounslow to Slough? Croydon to Redhill? I can think of only one instance where a local authority has been so boneheaded and insular to run to a boundary and no further.
In your particular instance, there are two things. Will you get a direct bus from Cheshunt to Enfield - unlikely as whilst you might want it, the demand is clearly limited or else someone would've introduced one. Clearly, public body TfL don't see the need to provide one and no commercial operator has also stepped up. Can you get a better evening service on the 310 - perhaps. And in that case, do as @greenline712 suggests and contact the relevant councillors, the Herts public transport unit, etc and perhaps some BSIP funding will be available. Contact everyone and do it consistently but just posting on here is just shouting at clouds.
The variable quality of services, between TFL and Non-TFL suggests a hard border. Compare the timetables, all different frequencies and hours of operation, not all of them can be relied on to reasonably get around in a decent journey time. TFL is at least consistent, the last two routes you say are the 81 and 405 routes, both with long hours of operations at a frequency that makes sense. The 724 and 508/9/10 at least run 24 hours but are on their own with that. Harlow to Epping is a decent service but unfortunately doesn't cover all hours the tube runs!
I get the impression that the number of routes and frequency should be based on population size but minimum hours of operation should be consistent across regions, which is what is missing right now.
And even if I don't reach out to any councillors or whoever, this has been a really interesting thread. It's helped me to narrow down what I could say to councillors, whereas before it was a proper jumble! I may not change my mind, but interesting to see different perspectives from people with the career experience. I have my perspectives just from travelling all over the country a lot in the last 3 years.
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This is all fair comment. The problem was that the promoters of privatisation and deregulation refused to see the difference between manufacturing enterprises selling products into a genuinely competitive market and service providers operating in sectors where a suitably controlled monopoly will tend to provide the best overall customer experience. They also failed to recognise that HMT has always stifled any attempts at entrepreneurial management in the public sector as if they were somehow incompatible with public ownership. Yet some municipal bus companies, subject to local accountability rather than the dead hand of the Treasury, did manage to behave more commercially.
I worked in the bus industry for over 20 years and experienced the difficulties of privatisation yet my feeling was always that the ownership didn't have to matter very much, it was the regulatory/supervisory regime that made far more difference to passengers.
The OP complains of being near a hard border which apparently limits the provision of better services but the importance of said border is almost nothing to do with local government boundaries per se and everything to do with the difference between unfettered deregulation and franchising overseen by an accountable public body.
Fair comment. TFL and non-TFL definitely don't mix and any other areas of the country that franchise buses will learn from that. Too early to say with Manchester yet. And strongly agree that the government back then failed to accept what would inevitably happen when natural monopolies (notably transport and water, probably mail, energy and communications too) had to deal with the logic and whims of the market. The public sector definitely should be allowed to be commercially minded, the potential is massive with the resources behind them.
And the treasury needs to be broken up, devolution is the perfect opportunity to let regions raise their own funds and set their own priorities. Not even sure something as big as the Lower Thames Crossing should be decided nationally, it's a regional south east project, we need the regional body structures to exist, so we can build and manage it ourselves.
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I'll say it again . . . CONTACT EVERYONE !! Sometimes it's that final bit of seed that takes root, but you need to throw lots of seed about at first. You've been told already that simply posting on here won't get anywhere . . . if you're serious about improving bus services in a tiny part of Hertfordshire, start agitating amongst decision makers.
Construct a timetable, with a defined route, for your evening bus service. Should the route start from Waltham Cross, or Cheshunt Station? Should it connect with Route 310 at Cheshunt Pond? What areas of the town should it run to? What are the likely passenger journeys that would make if popular? Should it run every evening, or perhaps just Thursday-Friday-Saturday evenings to start off? What size of bus? Which local operators might be interested? How much mileage is involved? How much might the cost per night be? {Driver + fuel . . . assume £20ph driver cost (which includes NI premium, before anyone asks); assume diesel pump prices}.
Don't post it here . . . send it to EVERYONE you can think of . . . it might just work !!
Alternatively, it might give you a bit of a shock . . . it won't be cheap, and it will give you an idea of how any Local Transport Authority has to decide between services that run in the daytime and actually might make a difference, and services that run in the evening and probably won't. Remember, you're always looking for regular passengers, travelling several time a week, rather than once a week, occasionally.
I get what you are saying but it's a lot to put on someone who just wants buses to run when I need them. I did create a map of what I would like to exist in this borough, including frequencies and hours of operation. But how would I be expected to know the actual PVR, staff and other costs? Let alone what companies like Uno or Arriva make from different routes right now? Not public knowledge at all. I merely thought about journeys that are difficult by bus today including times of day or days where very little runs like Sunday and how to link it with the wider area including access to trains from various residential areas. A lot of gaps exist today. Suspiciously there are a number of short routes in this area around Waltham Cross and quite a lot of dead mileage from Potters Bar Garage too. Places like Cuffley seem to have many buses passing through, just not for any passengers. It all seems incredibly opaque.
You've created a map . . . measure the routes; assume a speed of around 12 MPH, select timing points about 10 minutes apart; construct a timetable.
Assume 1 bus per hour, massage the timetable so you have a round trip of about 55 minutes (if a circular). You now have the basics of a bus route !!
If you really want to see buses run when you perceive they need to run . . . you have to do the spade work, I'm afraid. Talking on here is reaching a tiny audience which has no effect whatsoever . . . sorry, but that's the truth.
If you really want some background: all published by CAPITAL TRANSPORT, some will be out of print, but if you hunt around on-line bookshops . . .
LONDON COUNTRY by Laurie Akehurst and David Stewart: all about LCBS from 1970 to deregulation and privatisation.
PRIVATISING LONDON'S BUSES by Roger Torode; the story of London Buses Tendering in the 1980s and 1990s . . . including details about how the network changed in and around the London/Essex/Hertfordshire border.
LONDON BUSES IN THE 1960s by Ken Glazier; how the network developed and then contracted prior to the LT / LCBS split in 1969.
RESHAPING LONDON's BUSES: Barry Arnold and Mike Harris; the way that London rebuilt its network in the 1960s / 1970s.
A LONDON COUNTRY BUSMAN, 1975-1990; the story from one who was there (albeit not in your area).
If you find yourself becoming enthralled . . . there are many more!!
If you really want some background: all published by CAPITAL TRANSPORT, some will be out of print, but if you hunt around on-line bookshops . . .
LONDON COUNTRY by Laurie Akehurst and David Stewart: all about LCBS from 1970 to deregulation and privatisation.
PRIVATISING LONDON'S BUSES by Roger Torode; the story of London Buses Tendering in the 1980s and 1990s . . . including details about how the network changed in and around the London/Essex/Hertfordshire border.
LONDON BUSES IN THE 1960s by Ken Glazier; how the network developed and then contracted prior to the LT / LCBS split in 1969.
RESHAPING LONDON's BUSES: Barry Arnold and Mike Harris; the way that London rebuilt its network in the 1960s / 1970s.
A LONDON COUNTRY BUSMAN, 1975-1990; the story from one who was there (albeit not in your area).
If you find yourself becoming enthralled . . . there are many more!!
You also have cases like Southend and Thurrock, which are unity authorises, surrounded by Essex county Council, who won't fund certain services as a different council areas. Stoke-on-Trent similar situation, a unity authority, surrounded by Staffordshire County Council . This has been highly by BSIP (bus services improvement plan) where Stoke-on-Trent will fund certain parts of routes within Stoke-on-Trent, but not in say Newcastle under lyme
This is all fair comment. The problem was that the promoters of privatisation and deregulation refused to see the difference between manufacturing enterprises selling products into a genuinely competitive market and service providers operating in sectors where a suitably controlled monopoly will tend to provide the best overall customer experience. They also failed to recognise that HMT has always stifled any attempts at entrepreneurial management in the public sector as if they were somehow incompatible with public ownership. Yet some municipal bus companies, subject to local accountability rather than the dead hand of the Treasury, did manage to behave more commercially.
I worked in the bus industry for over 20 years and experienced the difficulties of privatisation yet my feeling was always that the ownership didn't have to matter very much, it was the regulatory/supervisory regime that made far more difference to passengers.
It's true that something happened under public ownership. Even privately owned BET subsidiaries that had been relatively healthy were soon recording losses. Now, of course, things don't just happen in a vacuum. The 1970s saw oil shocks and increasingly car centric policies. However, in my part of the country, bus services were still existing in a similar fashion as they had in the 1950s despite the changes to social behaviour. It was only in 1980/1 that real changes were effected when deckers were introduced and services axed. Clearly, there were entrepreneurs there (see Harry Blundred, Chris Moyes, Roger French and James Freeman) who were all NBC men who were frustrated by the over-riding culture in the NBC.
The variable quality of services, between TFL and Non-TFL suggests a hard border. Compare the timetables, all different frequencies and hours of operation, not all of them can be relied on to reasonably get around in a decent journey time. TFL is at least consistent, the last two routes you say are the 81 and 405 routes, both with long hours of operations at a frequency that makes sense. The 724 and 508/9/10 at least run 24 hours but are on their own with that. Harlow to Epping is a decent service but unfortunately doesn't cover all hours the tube runs!
I get the impression that the number of routes and frequency should be based on population size but minimum hours of operation should be consistent across regions, which is what is missing right now.
And even if I don't reach out to any councillors or whoever, this has been a really interesting thread. It's helped me to narrow down what I could say to councillors, whereas before it was a proper jumble! I may not change my mind, but interesting to see different perspectives from people with the career experience. I have my perspectives just from travelling all over the country a lot in the last 3 years.
There is a difference in what one local authority can subsidise and provide because it has a different funding stream. The fact is that the 724 and 508-10 are only 24 hours, not because of local authorities, but because of the airports are a major traffic generator both in terms of passengers and staff. You're not going to get that from Harlow to Epping.
Yes because I look at the past, what the country is going through now is not ideal but it's nothing when compared to after WW2 for example. The country had 250% debt to GDP, severe labour and material shortages for a long time after 1945. That's when we were actually on the verge of collapse. But the government still nationalised a 1/4 of the economy, created the NHS and built a 1 million homes in 6 years despite all the restrictions. They rebuilt because they had to, same as now, we can't keep to the same old policies, we have to rebuild now. I think of all the money spent to get us through Covid, £400 billion, it was spent because the alternative was much much worse, the national debt didn't change that much funnily enough. Imagine what even £100 billion into all our infrastructure could do in the short term.
I think what is concerning is the growing wealth in an ever shrinking number of hands, a couple 100 billion shifted up to the richest since 2020 and they are hoarding the wealth by not investing, that is terrible for the future. The only way I accept that the country is broke, is that the money and assets are in the wrong hands. We own nothing anymore! PFIs are a scam, possibly worse than privatisation or housing benefit effectively subsidising landlords.
As for buses, around half of the revenue is now public money (almost £1 billion) but the government and councils have no say in how they are run nor the outcomes they want from buses or even the design of a well thought and effective network, that has to change.
After WW2, we were skint. We were still rationing until 1954; it's one of the reasons why the Labour Government lost the 1951 election. So how did we manage to have Keynsian principles in practice. The reason why were then able to pay our bills was that we were the single largest recipient of the Marshall Plan. The Americans lent us billions - the catch was that we had to cede the empire. Yes, we were able to set up the NHS and Welfare State but that was because demographics were on our side. It was not the same financial burden that we have now. A man in 1951 was likely to live about 18 months after pensionable age... now it's 14 years. People living longer means a greater requirement on the NHS. Add in stuff like the Triple Lock and we're screwed. Best of luck trying to remove that - if you can't remove Winter Fuel Allowance from a load of pensioners who don't need it, then you ain't gonna remove the triple lock.
PFIs are not a scam. Put it this way - you want to buy a new sofa for your home. You have choices - you can not buy it but then you have a dilapidated sofa. Or you can try to squirrel money away and save the money to buy it outright but there's no guarantee that you can do that or that something else might go wrong (like a boiler needing replacing) so you may never have the money. You could try to borrow from friends or family but that might be embarrassing (a bit like the government debt on the balance sheet). Or you can go to the bank and they'll give you a credit card - you can buy the sofa but you're obliged to pay interest. That is essentially what PFI is.
Bus companies may get half their revenue from public sources but what is that. BSOG is a subsidy to passengers, keeping fares low. Concessionary travel is a subsidy to passengers too. Some of it is in tendered services where the operator is delivering a service specified by the councils.
I work with a lot of public bodies. Believe me, if you saw what I saw, you'd not be quite so Animal Farm in your good/bad binary view of public and private service provision.
As for buses, around half of the revenue is now public money (almost £1 billion) but the government and councils have no say in how they are run nor the outcomes they want from buses or even the design of a well thought and effective network, that has to change.
This is one of those stats that often gets quoted but entirely misunderstood in a way that makes it look worse for the industry. There are 3 broad strands of funding from government only 1 of which comes with little say and even then this has been adjusted and modified to influence behaviour and along the way this has caused a reduction in that funding overall:
1. The purchase of travel whether through free travel for concessionary passengers, student tickets for travel to school on commercial services and other fares promotions. These are a direct purchase of a product from a supplier, little different to the purchase of stationary or the like and whilst you may not get a major say in how the product is provided you are getting exactly what you are paying for (& in terms of concessionary travel the government dictate how much they pay not the operator) and as a major customer you can have a lot of influence. This category has been increasing as more and more groups look for discounted travel (like under 18's) plus a lot of BSIP schemes come with some form of free or discounted ticket offers as part of their proposals as they are often relatively cheaper than paying for a bus service and when promoted as a special offer are less of a problem to withdraw when the initial funding ends.
2. The contracting of bus services. This is the direct purchase of a service and the government as the purchaser has absolute say of how it is run and provided as far as they wish via that contract which will vary depending one what they are funding and how much influence they want or feel they should have. With lots of BSIP funded enhancements this category has been increasing for probably the first time in years though the increase in costs mean councils have had to pay more to keep the same but as the recovery has gone on some routes have left funding again (we have routes that around COVID went fully tendered but have now returned to having commercial cores as revenue has improved reducing the pressure on council coffers).
3. Fuel Duty Rebate (as was, now known as Bus Service Operators Grant) though there is still some remnants of the post-COVID recovery grant is still hanging around. This is a rebate on some of the tax payed on fuel to help reduce the cost of provision of bus services to make it more competitive to private motoring. Whilst this is a less direct relationship of funding to influence what BSOG is paid against does have some influence on outcomes via things like incentives. This category was falling for many years as successive governments reduced the amount paid though the remnants of the Recovery Grants have meant that has slightly reversed recently.
All money going to the bus industry is lumped together and called "subsidy" and then considered as keeping companies afloat when only the 3rd category really fits that description. The second category is subsidy of the network but in terms of the operator it is a commercial arrangement with control over how that money is spent and how the service is delivered and if it wasn't provided the commercial network would be unchanged (though the whole network would be substantially diminished and that is not a desirable position). The first category is a subsidy of the passenger not the industry (and in the case of concessionary passengers the operators are also partly subsidising that scheme as many reimbursement rates are below what they should be for "no better & no Worse off" and in effect the operator would receive the equivalent from the passenger if the local authority didn't pay it (& often more than the government pay, with some reimbursement rates being so low you could lose half the passengers and still earn more money). We don't consider the sub-contracting of waste disposal or the purchase of furniture by the government as a subsidy of those industries but we seem to do so with buses.
You've created a map . . . measure the routes; assume a speed of around 12 MPH, select timing points about 10 minutes apart; construct a timetable.
Assume 1 bus per hour, massage the timetable so you have a round trip of about 55 minutes (if a circular). You now have the basics of a bus route !!
If you really want to see buses run when you perceive they need to run . . . you have to do the spade work, I'm afraid. Talking on here is reaching a tiny audience which has no effect whatsoever . . . sorry, but that's the truth.
If you really want some background: all published by CAPITAL TRANSPORT, some will be out of print, but if you hunt around on-line bookshops . . .
LONDON COUNTRY by Laurie Akehurst and David Stewart: all about LCBS from 1970 to deregulation and privatisation.
PRIVATISING LONDON'S BUSES by Roger Torode; the story of London Buses Tendering in the 1980s and 1990s . . . including details about how the network changed in and around the London/Essex/Hertfordshire border.
LONDON BUSES IN THE 1960s by Ken Glazier; how the network developed and then contracted prior to the LT / LCBS split in 1969.
RESHAPING LONDON's BUSES: Barry Arnold and Mike Harris; the way that London rebuilt its network in the 1960s / 1970s.
A LONDON COUNTRY BUSMAN, 1975-1990; the story from one who was there (albeit not in your area).
If you find yourself becoming enthralled . . . there are many more!!
To which also add the Ian Allan publication "London Country" by John Glover. He was fairly senior in the Surrey CC public transport team, and there is a lot of economic information in this book. It certainly wasn't as rosy as the OP seems to believe.
Fares doubled between 1974 and 1977, and then again between 1977 and 1981. The proportion of income from revenue support steadily increased to reach almost 20% (and don't forget, there were almost no concessionary fares schemes at the time). Herts and Surrey were fairly generous with subsidies - other counties less so - but nonetheless, many routes were withdrawn during this period, and passenger numbers almost halved between 1969 and 1985.
He explains - as has been mentioned on Roger French's blog today - that Surrey pursued a policy of trying to substitute other operators for London Transport. London Country costs were about 3/4 of LT's; Alder Valley even lower. And as LCBS revenue per mile was on average higher than LT's, the savings to Surrey of replacing LT were greater still. (Even after the privatisation of LT, costs of LT contracts much exceeded their provincial equivalents - what is now the R5/R10 cost Kent County Council far more in subsidy per passenger journey than any other route in the county).
Interestingly, Surrey noted that mileage increased by almost 10% between October 1986 and October 1987.
Yes because I look at the past, what the country is going through now is not ideal but it's nothing when compared to after WW2 for example. The country had 250% debt to GDP, severe labour and material shortages for a long time after 1945. That's when we were actually on the verge of collapse. But the government still nationalised a 1/4 of the economy, created the NHS and built a 1 million homes in 6 years despite all the restrictions.
There are some big differences between after World War 2 and now. Back then most of the debt was owed to UK citizens, or the US government, and there were fixed exchange rates and exchange controls. The Nationalised industries were similarly acquired from UK shareholders, not international investors.
I think of all the money spent to get us through Covid, £400 billion, it was spent because the alternative was much much worse, the national debt didn't change that much funnily enough.
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