JKP
Member
The south of Scotland similarly sees no bus services on Boxing Day with the exception of Stagecoach X74 and 358 in Dumfries and Galloway.
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Railway Improvements That Have Led to Major Cuts In Bus Services
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Dai Corner
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The reopening of the Ebbw Vale branch in south Wales with hourly trains to Cardiff killed off the last buses to the city.
Interestingly though, the introduction of rail services to Newport more recently hasn't affected the parallel bus services too badly and there are still six an hour between the city and Crosskeys, five going on to serve Newbridge and one Llanhilleth. None get as far as the end of the branch,
It will be interesting to see what changes bus franchising brings in a few years time.
Interestingly though, the introduction of rail services to Newport more recently hasn't affected the parallel bus services too badly and there are still six an hour between the city and Crosskeys, five going on to serve Newbridge and one Llanhilleth. None get as far as the end of the branch,
It will be interesting to see what changes bus franchising brings in a few years time.
You wouldn't expect the introduction of a heavy or light rail route without there already being a substantial bus service already being present. Otherwise it would suggest there isn't the demand to sustain a rail service. Once the rail service opens you would expect the bus service to reduce or even be eliminated as the traffic switches to rail. That isn't a bad thing of itself. The hope is rail also takes a decent amount of traffic from the car. Rail appears to be much better at getting people out of cars than buses.
How is bus traffic?
There is certainly a perception (that I share) that a large section of car drivers will take trains and trams but won't take buses.
I think the last statistics I saw said that although car miles were up from the low of during Covid, they still were below the pre-pandemic peak.
TheSmiths82
Member
When the Metrolink came to Chorlton it had a massive effect on the bus routes. I remember it in the morning it could easily take over 30 minutes to get into the city centre on the 86 because so many people were getting on at each stop. Very frequently the bus was full before it even left Chorlton (about 5 or 6 stops into the route!). Many services ran duplicates too, the buses were supposed to be every 6 minutes but in reality it was more like every 2 minutes the morning peaks. Gradually this reduced the bus service dramatically. In Chorlton it didn't really matter as we had a cheaper and faster way to get into the city centre but it did have an effect further into Whalley Range and Moss Side where people now had less buses but no alternative Metrolink. Some of it might be due to the general decline of bus use as well and the reduction of subsidies.
I am counting this Metrolink service because it runs on what used to be a railway line.
I am counting this Metrolink service because it runs on what used to be a railway line.
I can't locate specific references but, yes, I remember reading that to be a specific intention.
In this case though, it was a silly, passengers unfriendly idea. In what way is it helpful to passengers to, instead of having a through bus service to Newcastle, to have to get out and walk across a bus and Metro station in order to have to catch a train for the final five minutes of their journey?
RJ
Established Member
There have been some in London.
The extension of the East London Line from Shoreditch to Dalston eventually prompted a service review. The casualty was the 67, which was withdrawn between Dalston Junction and Aldgate
The introduction of the Elizabeth Line, greatly increasing frequency and capacity on the GWML resulted in route 427 being withdrawn from the corridor between Southall and Acton. London's busiest route at the time, the 25, was withdrawn between City Thameslink and Oxford Circus. Still an enormous demand for buses between Whitechapel and Ilford though, lots going on despite having strong rail links and decent cross platform connections between the District, Central and Elizabeth Lines.
The extension of the East London Line from Shoreditch to Dalston eventually prompted a service review. The casualty was the 67, which was withdrawn between Dalston Junction and Aldgate
The introduction of the Elizabeth Line, greatly increasing frequency and capacity on the GWML resulted in route 427 being withdrawn from the corridor between Southall and Acton. London's busiest route at the time, the 25, was withdrawn between City Thameslink and Oxford Circus. Still an enormous demand for buses between Whitechapel and Ilford though, lots going on despite having strong rail links and decent cross platform connections between the District, Central and Elizabeth Lines.
johncrossley
Established Member
This thread implies that buses and trains are competitors. That is the wrong way of thinking. Would this thread exist after rail improvements in countries that have more of a tradition of integrated public transport, and therefore greater usage of public transport?
Buses and trains are imperfect substitutes, so one mode affecting the economics of the other on parallel routes does affect consumer utility and is a topic worth discussing.
johncrossley
Established Member
I've linked this to the International Transport section here:
Railway Improvements That Have Led to Major Cuts In Bus Services (outside UK)
This thread in the UK Railway Discussion area has discussed the effect on bus services when rail improvements are made https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/railway-improvements-that-have-led-to-major-cuts-in-bus-services.295630/ What happens to bus services in your country when rail...
www.railforums.co.uk
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You can see in the Netherlands they changed the bus service immediately as a response to rail improvements. Many of the examples in this thread show buses trying to compete with trains but giving up after a while.
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes. If a bus service was the only connection between two places and a train service was added, the bus service would probably be withdrawn.
And rail use has suffered in an area (business travel) where the travel now often just isn’t happening, rather than transferring to cars.
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Not every where - n many places it would be recognised that the train and bus are in general serving two different markets. The bus service might be thinned. OK not if it serves exactly the same settlements as the train and runs through wilderness between them…
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The UK practice of parallel, competing bus services is generally not a thing (aside from Flix competing with intercity rail), though, more common is shorter bus routes designed to interchange with trains and serve stationless places. That's why we ended up with the "it's not a local bus if it's more than N kilometres" thing that results in oddities like false destinations on buses in the UK to work around it - it wasn't an issue on the mainland as the UK concept of very long local bus routes just doesn't really exist.
Birmingham big time
Several X services and even stoppers from Redditch
X95/6 Shrewsbury Telford Brum Leicester
X50 from Oxford via Stratford
Frequent X30/1 services from Cannock and other Xs fromTamworth
Ludlow, Malverns, Worcester to Brum
All gone largely due to new or improved rail services
Also a few that were tried in the 80/90s X37 Leamington - Birmingham. Redditch - Coventry.
Probably more that I can't recall
Several X services and even stoppers from Redditch
X95/6 Shrewsbury Telford Brum Leicester
X50 from Oxford via Stratford
Frequent X30/1 services from Cannock and other Xs fromTamworth
Ludlow, Malverns, Worcester to Brum
All gone largely due to new or improved rail services
Also a few that were tried in the 80/90s X37 Leamington - Birmingham. Redditch - Coventry.
Probably more that I can't recall
Given proper funding, what should then happen is that the bus route is adapted as it no longer needs to be a “quick route” between the main settlements but can act more as a feeder in and out of the train service. Requires planning, integration and money, though - 3 things which seem alien to those with influence on UK transport policy.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Years ago , when I worked for the SRA , we got the Vale of Glamorgan line re-opened to passenger use (Barry - Bridgend) , which was a great success - (bust the original passenger estimates handsomly in months) - report from local rail managers that it had materially changed the bus service in the area , and we then had budget money to do a study of the effect on local bus services , but I regret now in not doing it !
DelW
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North of Birmingham in the 1960s Midland Red ran hourly (? possibly 1bp2h) X99 services to\from Nottingham and X12 services to\from Derby. They alternated with shorter part-route versions, 110 to Tamworth and 112 to Burton on Trent. They were normal services available at every stop, though I think they weren't allowed to carry passengers on journeys wholly within the Birmingham boundary.
The 110 was usually a double decker (a D9 in my era) but the others were single deckers, and the X99 and X12 were often dual purpose buses with coach seating. It was always a bonus if I managed to catch one of those.
I think this is a bit of 'horses for courses' though. In my county of residence, I struggle to think of many bus services that are directly parallel to rail services whose purpose is not really mainly to deal with intermediate stops. There is one (part of a longer route, the overall journey of which does not practicably parallel rail) where the railway stations are inconveniently located for the City/town centres.
As has been alluded to in #77, a bus competing with rail through a wilderness will probably not wash its face unless (a) the train service is very infrequent compared to the bus and/or (b) the train fares are very high and/or (c) the train journey takes a very long time by way of circuitous routeing, and/or (d) the rail stations are inconveniently sited for where the passengers are actually travelling to and from and the overall journey time by bus, taking into account the inconvenience of changing, is seen as preferable to travelling by train.
In an example, an hourly rail service from a town through an urban/peri urban area with a 'competing' bus service of 12 buses per hour over a variety routes, serving the housing and employment areas much more conveniently (as in closeness of stops) and frequently, with the rail station at the City end inconveniently sited, then the bus service is going to do well......
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Or possibly at the moment (d) the bus fare is subsidised to be substantially less than the train fare. I suppose that's a variant of (b) and is about to happen to the Far North Line - bus £2, train many times that. I must admit to not wholly understanding ScotGov's inclusion of coach in passes and discount schemes when England does not, as they just end up subsidising competition with themselves.
The line between coach and bus tends to be a bit fuzzier in Scotland - middle distance services (which often provide important local connections) quite often end up having coaches operating on them.
Actually, that reminds me of a rare case of that happening in England which fits well in this thread. Go North East briefly ran coaches on the X9 and X10 routes between Newcastle and Middlesbrough. Each service was hourly giving a combined half hourly service between Newcastle, Gateshead, Heworth, and Middlesbrough (with slightly different intermediate points: the X9 called at Peterlee and Billingham, while the X10 served Dalton Park, Norton, and Stockton). Evening and Sunday services went via both sets of calling points.
However, the Durham Coast service has improved (and Northern seem to price it relatively cheaply), and thus the bus service has been reduced to hourly (and it just uses conventional double deckers). All of them run what was the evening/sunday route which means end to end journey times are a bit longer than they were, but they still get a fair amount of use - even Northern advances can't really compete with the £3 single (or £2.50 north of Peterlee). On Sundays, the service has been reduced even further - Peterlee to Middlesbrough now only gets one bus every two hours.
For the full journey the X50 bus, coach as it was at least for a while, can not compete on time.
The route though did not closely follow the railway but the A44 & A3400 so Woodstock / Blenheim Palace, Shipston-on-Stour, Stratford-upon-Avon, Birmingham were rail improvements the primary reason for stopping the service. The X20 Stratford-upon-Avon <> Birmingham service was cut back and diverted to Solihull some time ago due to the running time along the A34 from crossing the M42 into into the centre of Birmingham.
Now the 50 has 4 services each way a day Stratford-upon-Avon > Shipson-on-Stour > Chipping Norton which on paper connect with the S3 Oxford <> Chipping Norton service.
I don't know what route and stops the X37 took but many villages between Leamington / Warwick and the West Midlands boundary have either no service or a very scant one e.g. just one bus a week. Of course once the M40 was completed through to the M42 if a bus took that route then no villages served.
True, in November my car was stolen, and a 45 minute journey across the city from Wood Green to Wembley became a 2 hour nightmare using 3 buses before I found a quicker train route. London Buses are hampered by idiots who refuse to pay the fare resulting in stand off with driver who shuts off the engine and refuses to move (this happens a lot), the risk of phone snatchers sitting behind you ready to pounce and run off the bus, unruly schoolkids, 20 Zones, roadworks...
The train is much more straightforward. Buses in central London are even worse, so much so that TfL is concentrating more on outer London with the Superloop Express bus routes. Working from home also took more bus passengers away since Covid.
Yes, obviously depending on how the subsidy is paid (does the bus operator receive any or much more money if more passengers travel). Low fares will always attract some people, but where substantial differences in journey time are present this will mitigate against wholesale transfer.
There has been traditionally a less clear definition in Scotland between local bus and coach services - I guess when the first pass / discount schemes were set up it was seen too difficult (time consuming / fraught with argument) to differentiate between a coach running effectively a local bus between Fort William and Portree and (say) one running non stop from Glasgow to Perth.* No doubt the bus companies (particularly one that ran plenty of local buses and long(er) distance coach services at the time, whose major shareholders were supportive of the ruling party) lobbied for their inclusion and at a good rate of re-imbursement. With such schemes having been operating for 20 years or more, it is politically too difficult to start differentiating them now?
* The constituents of the SBG have always run long distance local bus services, often at hourly or even better frequencies, that on the traditional A road network acted as local buses through the towns and villages that they passed through, remembering that outside of the central belt, the rural districts are more sparsely populated than in much of England. Glasgow-Stranraer, Dumfries-Stranraer, Glasgow-Dumfries, Edinburgh-Newcastle, Glasgow-Perth-Dundee, Dundee-Aberdeen, Inverness-Aberdeen and others. Although there have been some of these in England (Newcastle-Carlisle or Northampton-Cambridge or Aylesbury-St. Ives [Cambs.], Northampton-Shrewsbury spring to mind), there weren't that many over comparable distances, were slower, even fewer radiating from the major cities, and anyway many of those that did exist in the past on both sides of the border were long gone (for a variety of reasons) by the time wide area Senior concessionary passes came along. However, the Scottish motorway network / main road network and the geography of Scotland has neatly facilitated the conversion of many long distance bus routes into 'coach' services with bus features, that simply (with a few exceptions) does not exist in England
Much of this loss of onetime "express" bus services along old main roads is because they fell between two stools when road, as much as rail, improvements were made. The examples given would have had one or two stops in towns along the way, maybe major villages, and could readily overtake local buses stopping everywhere. But when bypasses and motorways came along, for cars this avoided going through such places, they passed them at 70mph, which the express coach had to still go through for the incidental trade there. If these likewise used the motorway the end-to-end only demand was not enough to sustain them. It was what finished off the Green Line routes from the Home Counties into London, which could still do a reasonable journey time from say Hemel Hempstead into London down the M1, but not if they still went through Watford, Edgware and such like.
Quite. Also added in is traffic congestion increasing journey times and one man(person) operation meaning buses stopping for longer and then having to travel much faster (and less comfortably) to do the journey in the same or an increased time; road layout and furniture (roundabouts, lights, chicanes etc etc) to slow cars down and cope with traffic volume which makes bus travel unpleasant over any distance.
I think the rail service improvements (if they were in fact concurrent to bus service reduction) may well have been contributory, but certainly not the only reason for the demise of such bus services.
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