Because franchising in Manchester has greatly improved reliability. Also at the moment, if busses don’t turn up you’ve got nowhere to get information from. Theoretically, you can call TLC travel, but they never answer. And if you call metro, all they do is try calling TLC and look at Bus Times tracking themselves. There’s no network management.
I recently visited Hebden Bridge as a tourist.
Entirely on a whim, merely having seen a minibus tottering around, I decided to risk a journey up to a remote village up a steep hill (pretty famous iirc, toursit central, but mostly on coach tours or personal transport). I like a hike, but this was pretty far.
All I needed was bustimes. Even if I hadn't seen the bus number, it would have been trivial to figure it out, and thus when and where to get on and off.
As you may know, this was not without trepidation. I knew I was only a gearbox failure away from a very expensive taxi ride to ensure I didn't miss my train back to Holiday HQ (Bradford). But bustimes in the first instance, and then the clean, well maintained bus and polite cheery driver, all reassured me.
That's the thing about lifeline buses. The people running them generally do care. But on a small infequent route, what does it matter why a bus hasn't turned up? You know what you need to do, arrange alternative means (or wait for hours).
I have literally zero interest in downloading some goddawful bespoke metro (Metro?) app and figuring out all its nonsense functions and foibles to plan journeys and get real time information either for planned journeys or to find out what's gone wrong. I want to enjoy my holiday.
The only conceivable benefit of franchising you should accept, is turn up and go frequencies, and/or Swiss levels of mechanical and staffing reliability. You're being sold better information and network organisation instead, and maybe one extra bus every two hours I guess, because it's far cheaper.
I use bustimes for all my travel needs, despite all my regular buses being slick corporate behemoths with as much digital information I could ever want.
Although amusingly, when on a recent bus diversion, I could find zero information, either from the company or the public body that subsidises the "socially necessary" routes and maintains the bus stops and their (on that occasion, fictional, paper timetables). They have their own goddawful planner and other app based nonsense. Never tiring of trying to shove it down your throat. Using my taxes to do it.
The driver knew in advance, telling us in rather cryptic fashion as we boarded (no real skin off his nose if passengers were none the wiser). I'm pretty sure it was roadworks related. We would be delayed but not miss our stop.
The mandated internal electronic displays helpfully said "Bus on diversion". Cheers. Any more info? You have an infinitely scrolling tool there, you know. Nope. Bus says no.
So as far as the network level was concerned, there will have been no advance information, had I consulted their app. The company one might have perhaps, but its so hard to use, I'd have been back on route before I figured it out.
Bustimes just helpfully had a bus half a mile off route driving at a 90 degree angle to it, but all on a simple uncluttered map to remind you the chosen diversion route wasn't as mad as it seemed. Up ten dots, across two, and down ten, space invader style.
Without bustimes, I felt as potentially lost and powerless as a tourist, should that bus have conked out. And I live in that city! It has decent daytime frequencies, but evenings, and during a diverion? Not so much. Enough to potentially ruin my plans.
I had left in good time for such scenarios and worse, only because of my travelling companion's nervous disposition (which was not unduly perturbed by also being with me on that little bus up the hill), my usual practice being to cut it fine.
I am not looking forward to paying more for information I don't need, and probably quite negligable improvements in frequency, when the time comes for my region. There's loads more routes could be put on, but ask a hundred residents what they should be, you'll get a hundred different answers.
The market spoke well here. I did not like losing my little direct but half hourly mostly empty minibus to the shopping centre, instead forced to change in the city centre or a random roundabout up the road, but such measures have held the price of a day ticket down remarkably well.
But even though they have the powers (and legal obligation) to subsidise socially necessary buses, my little bus has not been seen for many a year. Even though bustimes would increase its usefulness tenfold compared to the paper timetable days. And it's even more socially necessary, with the NHS and other services setting up in the increasingly vacant shops.
But if a tiny company set it up and ran it on a shoestring, a local bus for local people, there'd be an instant competing registration, with not a peep from our public network bodies.
There is a nice local company set up by local people up here recently. A mix of subsidised and commercial routes, new travel opportunities. It's depot is probably someone's back shed, its fleet a mix of well loved well presented well driven second hand buses. Maybe not reliable, but you'd hardly notice given the terrible record of the major groups around here. It will not have a chance in franchising. Not a chance.
Their managers and drivers will go back from whence they came, the big groups.
