Walesevs31
New Member
Does anyone know when each TOC’s rail replacement is up with their current providers and the tender dates?
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Rail replacement contract end dates?
- Thread starter Walesevs31
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RailUK Forums
RJ
Established Member
Transport for Wales’ contract with Transport UK ends on the 31st October 2026, with it going in house from the next day.
TheSmiths82
Member
hOW
How can it go in house, will they operate their own coaches or will they just subcontract to work to local operators? I can't see how they can provide their own vehicles considering the fast area TFW covers.
The planning, management and delivery cost is probably much cheaper if it's undertaken by an employee of the operator.
They can still arrange their own contracts which vehicle / driver suppliers.
Much more cost effective than having to manage a third party contract which will pretty much do the exact same thing as a person in house, who won't be changing a mark up on the planning/ delivery fee.
They can still arrange their own contracts which vehicle / driver suppliers.
Much more cost effective than having to manage a third party contract which will pretty much do the exact same thing as a person in house, who won't be changing a mark up on the planning/ delivery fee.
Western Gaffer
Member
The 'f' being pronounced in the Welsh style presumably?
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
TfW already runs the TrawsCymru bus network which contracts scheduled services to a collection of local operators, similar to TfL bus operations I think.
I imagine "in-house" means within the wider TfW operation, not specifically the rail business.
RJ
Established Member
It’s the compilation of driver duties, procurement of bus operators to cover them and presumably the day to day operation and control of the service that has gone in house. They are becoming the aggregator, rather than contracting this service to a solutions provider like Transport UK, Go Ahead Group, Stagecoach Solutions, First Travel Solutions, CMAC etc.
RJ
Established Member
They lay on a replacement bus service for planned closures. For unplanned closures they do sometimes lay buses on but they aren’t always advertised.
It does seem to be increasingly common that a deliberate decision is taken to not advise by any of the usual public channels that a short notice replacement bus is running.
I'm sure there are good reasons for doing so and I won't get into this question here.
I will however say that it also seems common that this information isn't provided even by the station staff in person or privately by social media direct message to a customer. The result is that very few passengers show up and sometimes the bus operators even run empty, or are stood down because they reasonably report that they've looked for passengers and found nobody in need of transport.
I can only speculate as to the direct causes for this, but it seems rather likely that some operators are not only ordering replacement buses that are unadvertised to the general public, but also in effect unadvertised internally. If station staff and the social media desk aren't informed directly that there's a replacement bus, and it isn't available to view publicly anywhere, then they can't reasonably be expected to be aware of it either. Accordingly they will advise customers that road transport isn't in place, at least in the form of a replacement bus, if directly asked. What else could they do?