Abellio Surrey Significantly Downsizing

[embers25]

Abellio Surrey are significantly downsizing operations from December:

http://www.abellio.co.uk/news/abellio-surrey-service-change-release/

Abellio Surrey has announced planned changes to bus services in the county from 31 December 2016, for commercial and operational reasons.

It intends making changes to two services run on a commercial basis. Service 446 (Woking to Heathrow Terminal 5) is to be withdrawn between Staines and Heathrow and service 461 (Kingston to Staines) is to be withdrawn between Addlestone and Staines.

At the same time, Abellio has sought to be released from county council contracts for nine services that are subsidised by the council, none of which are part of the ongoing Local Transport Review.

These are: 81 Woking-Barnsbury Estate (Sundays only), 436 Woking-Brooklands (Sundays only), 458 Kingston-Staines, 514 Kingston-Addlestone, 515 Kingston-Guildford, 555 Heathrow-Hersham, 556/557 Woking-Chertsey/Sunbury and 663 Walton on Thames to Esher High School.

A spokesman for Abellio said: "This decision has not been taken lightly. Although substantially downsizing our operation, it is designed to secure a sustainable future for Abellio Surrey so that we can continue to deliver a quality service to the majority of our passengers.”

Mike Goodman, Cabinet Member for Environment and Planning at Surrey County Council said: "We tried to find a solution with Abellio but now our focus is on trying to make alternative arrangements....."

 

[Surreyman]

Abellio are largely pulling out of Surrey from December:

http://www.abellio.co.uk/news/abellio-surrey-service-change-release/

Not really pulling out, cutting some routes, scaling back and making reductions.

As well as the Surrey cuts & reductions, they - Abellio Surrey (not to be confused with Abellio London),are reducing services going over the boundary into Greater London, with just one route remaining going into Heathrow and 2 other routes remaining going to Kingston.

The reason for the cuts is not given in the press release, assume falling profitability and possible staff recruitment/retention issues, anyone know more?

 

[ChathillMan]

Not really pulling out, cutting some routes, scaling back and making reductions.

As well as the Surrey cuts & reductions, they - Abellio Surrey (not to be confused with Abellio London),are reducing services going over the boundary into Greater London, with just one route remaining going into Heathrow and 2 other routes remaining going to Kingston.

The reason for the cuts is not given in the press release, assume falling profitability and possible staff recruitment/retention issues, anyone know more?

Given the demographic of the population they serve, it must be hard to make ends meet, never mind make any money

 

[Busaholic]

Running times on, for instance, the routes into Heathrow have increased dramatically over the past few years, not just at peak times either, and yet they are frequently unattainable. Extra running time equals more buses needed or a cut in headway, sometimes both together. If you have an hourly clockface service and it goes to every 70 minutes then you probably lose 20% of your passengers overnight. This operating area is experiencing precisely what happened with Green Line in the 1970s, and it's a spiral towards oblivion unless (a) some degree of public subsidy is made available or (b) traffic dissipates overnight. Regrettably, neither seems very likely.

 

[plcd1]

Not really pulling out, cutting some routes, scaling back and making reductions.

As well as the Surrey cuts & reductions, they - Abellio Surrey (not to be confused with Abellio London),are reducing services going over the boundary into Greater London, with just one route remaining going into Heathrow and 2 other routes remaining going to Kingston.

The reason for the cuts is not given in the press release, assume falling profitability and possible staff recruitment/retention issues, anyone know more?

Courtesy of something I read on another forum there was a BBC local radio interview with the key representative from Surrey County Council (SCC). He took a rather hard line about cuts to date saying they had affected a small proportion of people in Surrey. He was equally tough about these upcoming Abellio changes saying that the county had been in discussions with Abellio for many months and had already paid them additional monies to keep things going until December. This suggests to me that there are some serious financial issues on the routes in scope of these changes. He also expected to be able to put alternative arrangements in place but, of course, did not say what those would be or who would run them.

They aren't routes I know other than the odd view of some of them arriving in Kingston. Depending on how things pan out there may be implications for TfL in one or two places but we'll see. In times of more generous funding it might have been easier to fix things with a mix of commercial and TfL routes but those times are long gone.