Bee Network Service/Route Discussion

[mayneway]

Further Bee Network strikes are planned from Tues 30 Sept to Thurs 2 Oct
details at https://tfgm.com/bus-industrial-action
(seems same as last weekend:
all Metroline depots, all Stagecoach depots other than Queens Rd, all First - other than some school journeys at various depots)

One problem identified on Monday - and presumed on previous strike days:
the app not having any real-time information as to routes and journeys at every bus stop, reverted to showing "timetabled" journeys
Only if you clicked on "disruptions" did the app tell you there was no buses running!!

Surely there should be a facility to switch it off / state no buses running at the various bus stops ??

There is the option to switch to real time only which is what the signs in the bus stations and online tell you to do.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Bee Network website has a warning note today the certain bus services will be affected by a road matter on the M60 between J6 - J9.

 

[Tim33160]

There is the option to switch to real time only which is what the signs in the bus stations and online tell you to do.

Cheers!

 

[Andyh82]

Franchising is a tried and tested system pre-dating deregulation. It is less about having a crystal ball and much more about crafting a resilient and predictable plan to stay within your costs for the term of the contract.
Companies can very much make direct supply agreements to have more predictable and shock resistant costs. It is for this reason why renegotiations are uncommon. It takes a major industry wide shock (like COVID) to go to the negotiation table.

Is this is a flaw of the Manchester style franchising model?

In London, and indeed in the old style tendering process, operators will have a range of contracts on the go, with overlapping start and end dates with costs forecasted at various different times based on predictions made at various times. Some contracts may have costs that have gone up faster than expected, some may have costs that have not gone up as fast.

With the big contracts approach, the Manchester operators basically have a small number of big contracts with the forecasting done all at once.

 

[Tim33160]

Tranche One went live 24 Sept 2023: two years ago!

How long will Bee Network bus service franchises last for?:
Under franchising, local bus services within Greater Manchester are provided under three categories:

Large contracts – ten contracts, each five years long (with the option to extend for two more years).

Small contracts – approximately 25 contracts, each three years long.

School service contracts – each three years long.

So some contracts end this time next year!

 

[mattb7tl]

Is this is a flaw of the Manchester style franchising model?

In London, and indeed in the old style tendering process, operators will have a range of contracts on the go, with overlapping start and end dates with costs forecasted at various different times based on predictions made at various times. Some contracts may have costs that have gone up faster than expected, some may have costs that have not gone up as fast.

With the big contracts approach, the Manchester operators basically have a small number of big contracts with the forecasting done all at once.

I would say so but that flaw can also reap benefits.

I think fleet renewal is also going to be interesting for a similar reason with 3/4 of the fleet below four years old. It would be quite the financial shock and difficult to budget for to replace the fleet but it also comes with the bonus of bulk buying.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

And this is one of the reasons why smaller operators weren't successful in winning anything (or even bidding), the risk is too high. If Stagecoach get their sums slightly wrong then their profit is reduced for a bit, if a small operator gets their sums wrong they go out of business - it is also easier for a big group to hedge costs like fuel for the contract that a small operator will struggle to support in the same way. London has highlighted this, and on smaller scale route contracts rather than big area ones, as contracts normally are losing money by the end of the term which is offset by the profits from new contracts but smaller operators can't manage the volume to win contracts every year to allow new profits to cover old losses so at some point they get to a point where they just have loss making work left and ran out of cash.

Cost spikes may not be obvious when bidding but they happen often enough that the risk to a business can be high without any pattern to the likelihood of it happening over the period of a specific contract (I think there have been 3 fuel price spikes in my 20-odd years in the industry where bus fuel prices increased by 2 or 3 times the standard rates of inflation over a period of weeks and there have been 2 wage spikes caused by shortages caused by matters outside the bus industry).

It is not helped by councils using a metric for inflation (either RPI or CPI) to calculate price increases that has no connection to actual costs in the bus industry and often runs some way below and refusing to be flexible on this when it is shown to not be reflective or reality. What a tendering authority is effectively encouraging by insisting on such a position is that the initial price is inflated to allow for the unknown, but expected, cost spike that is assumed may turn up in a couple of years and if it doesn't the operator comes out on top. It could be argued that it is in the councils interest to encourage a more partnership approach with a willingness to negotiate prices if costs spike to ensure they aren't overcharged at the start just in case.

It isn't a simple answer and no approach is perfect but it is important to appreciate the downsides and risks of a specific position as well as the upsides. A more partnerships approach requires openness and flexibility from both partners but allows risks to be better managed and shared without loading upfront costs, a more rigid contractual relationship increases risk costs to one partner or the other but requires less discussion and contractor management through the period of the contract.

This is a very insightful post.

As someone who has experience of many public sector submissions, I do have to take issue with some posters who believe that competitive tendering (as to call Bee Network franchising is a total misnomer) is some sort of silver bullet.

Some of the realities are... in some contracts, you are expected to be fixed price (at least for an initial period) so you have to essentially gamble that you have made sufficient provision for any price spikes. And that's it - it's a gamble that you have made provision within your costing to absorb some level of price increase whilst also trying to win the business. In some instances, you can get a derogation for legislative changes e.g. increase in NI contributions but often not. Cost increases may be tagged to CPI or even CPIx (usually a lower figure) which, as @Dwarfer1979 says, often understates the actual cost pressures.

Those who argue that it is a "tried and tested" system may also be aware of failures. We have seen many small operators adopt a business model that is based on tendered work as a bedrock, and then fail as costs increase without an ability to recover this from the tendering authority. Of course, a tendering authority may try to insulate themselves from this (as they invariably try to pass the risk to the operator totally) by insisting on various penalties if the operator wishes to pull out (e.g. on the hook for the cost of retendering and/or the difference between the original and new price) - it's becomes somewhat worthless if the operator no longer exists though.

 

[mattb7tl]

Those who argue that it is a "tried and tested" system may also be aware of failures. We have seen many small operators adopt a business model that is based on tendered work as a bedrock, and then fail as costs increase without an ability to recover this from the tendering authority. Of course, a tendering authority may try to insulate themselves from this (as they invariably try to pass the risk to the operator totally) by insisting on various penalties if the operator wishes to pull out (e.g. on the hook for the cost of retendering and/or the difference between the original and new price) - it's becomes somewhat worthless if the operator no longer exists though.

In most urban regions small operators have to build a company on tenders because they cannot enter the commercial network due to it being a monopoly so that is a failure of deregulation. In practice they already deal with the listed issues.

 

[mangad]

Is this is a flaw of the Manchester style franchising model?

In London, and indeed in the old style tendering process, operators will have a range of contracts on the go, with overlapping start and end dates with costs forecasted at various different times based on predictions made at various times. Some contracts may have costs that have gone up faster than expected, some may have costs that have not gone up as fast.

With the big contracts approach, the Manchester operators basically have a small number of big contracts with the forecasting done all at once.

Maybe but don't forget London is a very different market with a different setup. Small groups of depots privatised many years ago. No one really had a monopoly because there was so much scope for different companies being able to operate in different areas. That wasn't the case in Greater Manchester. Some companies had monopolies. Take Stockport pre Bee Network. It was basically Stagecoach territory. They ran almost everything. They had a depot right in the heart of town that ran most of the services. Who would have been a shoe in to win individual route contracts in Stockport? Simple. Stagecoach. They'd have known the financials, they had the base.

And I will be blunt. London's system could arguably be no longer fit for purpose. I used to live in South West London. When I moved there you have Mitcham Belle, London United and Go Ahead all competing. Now it's just Go Ahead. They have pretty much every route in the area. They own the depots, they pretty much have the monopoly. Don't think London's model is some grand panacea to the problem. The number of operators has fallen dramatically over the years. It may well be they end up in a worse state than the franchise areas going down the depot route.

 

[py_megapixel]

Take Stockport pre Bee Network. It was basically Stagecoach territory. They ran almost everything. They had a depot right in the heart of town that ran most of the services. Who would have been a shoe in to win individual route contracts in Stockport? Simple. Stagecoach. They'd have known the financials, they had the base.

I'd go further than that. Stagecoach completely dominated the entire southern half of Manchester. I don't have the exact statistics, but I'd not be surprised if Stagecoach had an overall majority of the Manchester bus fleet. It was certainly the case that you could venture miles and only ever see Stagecoach buses. A couple of corridors had other operators - the 41 between Manchester and Didsbury, and the 199 between Stockport and Hazel Grove - but those were only really there incidentally, with their main customer base being passengers from further afield, and the vast majority of local journeys would have been on Stagecoach. Then there were the occasional bits of work by Diamond and Arriva who happened to have won tenders in the area, but they were so few and far between that unless you used them, you might well not even have known they existed.

This brings me to another point. In the latter years, SME operators in south Manchester had all but disappeared. Plenty had long since folded or withdrawn from running service buses - Bullocks, Finglands, MCT and of course the infamous UK North, to name a few. There was Go Goodwins for a while more recently, until they abruptly gave up (which hardly inspires confidence).
So those bemoaning TfGM for sweeping away opportunities for SMEs - all two of them that existed, to my knowledge, in south Manchester at the time of the transition, though there might well be some I've forgotten - should probably pay attention to the fact that the behemoth Stagecoach operation had already been doing that, quite effectively, for two decades or more!

 

[Tetchytyke]

Those who argue that it is a "tried and tested" system may also be aware of failures. We have seen many small operators adopt a business model that is based on tendered work as a bedrock, and then fail as costs increase without an ability to recover this from the tendering authority.

And in the deregulated market we have seen countless small companies try to get a foothold in an area with a small commercial network, only to be figuratively (and in some cases literally!) run off the road by the big boys.

If anything, I would say the smaller companies are more used to the tendering process and are more used to balancing the need to be competitive on price with the need to be sustainable.

We have also seen the opposite side of the point you’re making in Dumfries and Galloway: there the small companies have been willing to take more of a risk knowing that the penalty clauses don’t really matter if you’re never going to be big enough to repay them if everything hits the wall. We can call this the Sullivan’s Buses model: the TfL fines were meaningless to an insolvent company.

 

[mangad]

So those bemoaning TfGM for sweeping away opportunities for SMEs - all two of them that existed, to my knowledge, in south Manchester at the time of the transition, though there might well be some I've forgotten - should probably pay attention to the fact that the behemoth Stagecoach operation had already been doing that, quite effectively, for two decades or more!

At the change there were five smaller companies left in the Stockport area that i can think of. Belle Vue was (and is) doing the 391 for Cheshire East that they picked up after the demise of Little Gem (to be vaguely more accurate, Little Gem gave up their TfGM routes but kept the 391/392 and started using the Maynes brand for them before very quickly selling it on (I presume) to Belle Vue).

High Peak was (and is) doing the 394 and 199. D&G had the 385 that they took on again in after the demise of Little Gem. Stotts had a service or two. And then there was Nexus Move who did some evening journeys. of all the remaining pre Bee operators, Stotts and Nexus Move are the only one to have gone. I would be surprised if Belle Vue didn't apply for a Bee Network schools franchise - but High Peak and D&G, far less so. Greater Manchester really isn't their area. Stotts had elderly owners beyond retirement age. And Nexus Move were a bit of an enigma anyway.

And that's just Stockport. Who else was there in Tameside, for example? Stotts, Stagecoach, Nexus Move...

 

[Simon75]

Why didn't they run buses in house ie like the former GM Buses/GM Transport ?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Why didn't they run buses in house ie like the former GM Buses/GM Transport ?

I wonder if the Bee Network currently feels shielded against union disruption under the current industrial action by the targeting of the bus operators rather than themselves?

 

[mangad]

Why didn't they run buses in house ie like the former GM Buses/GM Transport ?

They weren't legally allowed to. When the Tories brought in the 2017 Bus Services Act that allowed franchising, it also included a ban on councils and authorities creating new in house operators to operate the regulated services. They had to use private operators. Who, according to Conservative Party mantra, always do everything better then public ones.

This ban was scrapped in the 2024 bus services bill.

 

[M60lad]

Regarding the unfortunate incident on M60 yesterday which ended up closing the Motorway this caused major problems to quite a number of services with them running heavily delayed and some return services not running at all.

One of the worst affected services was this 248 Manchester Airport-Eccles service:

Vehicles – 248 – bustimes.org

bustimes.org

This particular journey left Manchester Airport on time at 07:47 but didn't manage to get to Eccles until 12:26.

Looking at how long this journey took I wonder what happened regarding drivers hours? At short of 5 hours would they have been over their driving hours as I thought you can only drive so many hours before needing a break.

In fact looking at Bus Times it shows quite a few 248s were missing due to being stuck in traffic somewhere along the route

 

[markymark2000]

Regarding the unfortunate incident on M60 yesterday which ended up closing the Motorway this caused major problems to quite a number of services with them running heavily delayed and some return services not running at all.

One of the worst affected services was this 248 Manchester Airport-Eccles service:

Vehicles – 248 – bustimes.org

bustimes.org

I do have to wonder what is the point in Bee Network control staff at times like this as their disruption management was dire yesterday. It took 2+ hours before they would letting buses terminate early to avoid the disruption. Significantly longer than it should have taken! Consequently, it decimated much of the South Manchester network until midday.

I can't help but feel that if TFGM weren't such control freaks and let operators manage some disruption themselves, as largely happens in London, the plans would have been put in place a LOT quicker.
The best example of a quick and easy fix that I found was the 41 where it was taking over an hour to get from Sale Moor roundabout to Sale Metrolink but TFGM didn't have the sense until 10am to permit buses to terminate at Sale Moor or Northenden and turn around there. Instead the entire 41 just died. They had an easy option to run 90% of the route well but it took 2 hours for someone to come up with that brilliant idea. A route which takes 2 hours to complete, should not completely die because of a 1km stretch (4 minute timetabled) at the tail end of the route and shouldn't have taken Einstein to figure that out. If nothing else, this really reminds me what a flop TFGM are when it comes to the basics. All fur coat, no knickers comes to mind.

This particular journey left Manchester Airport on time at 07:47 but didn't manage to get to Eccles until 12:26.

Looking at how long this journey took I wonder what happened regarding drivers hours? At short of 5 hours would they have been over their driving hours as I thought you can only drive so many hours before needing a break.

You could have gotten away with that on cumulative breaks maybe but that get's complicated. Other than that, my guess is that the driver was asked to continue and then be taken off at the earliest opportunity on the basis that even so much as getting a relief driver to them would have taken just as long as the driver continuing. The DVSA is normally willing to overlook one off instances of a driver going over driving hours if it is caused by an unprecedented delay. However the DVSA would expect the operator to have taken the driver off at the earliest possible opportunity.

 

[Mollman]

They weren't legally allowed to. When the Tories brought in the 2017 Bus Services Act that allowed franchising, it also included a ban on councils and authorities creating new in house operators to operate the regulated services. They had to use private operators. Who, according to Conservative Party mantra, always do everything better then public ones.

This ban was scrapped in the 2024 bus services bill.

To be pedantic, it will be scrapped by the Bus Services Act 2025.

 

[Dwarfer1979]

Maybe but don't forget London is a very different market with a different setup. Small groups of depots privatised many years ago. No one really had a monopoly because there was so much scope for different companies being able to operate in different areas. That wasn't the case in Greater Manchester. Some companies had monopolies. Take Stockport pre Bee Network. It was basically Stagecoach territory. They ran almost everything. They had a depot right in the heart of town that ran most of the services. Who would have been a shoe in to win individual route contracts in Stockport? Simple. Stagecoach. They'd have known the financials, they had the base.

A small depot isn't some unique specialist building, you need a yard and sufficient covered area to carry out maintenance, and in an urban area like Manchester there will be plenty of those around (the depot I am currently sat in was previously a factory and before we moved in they just cleared the yard and knocked some openings in the side to get the buses in and we use lifts to get under the buses). If you are route tendering your can get in with a single route with manageable number of buses and build over time but with area tendering you are tied to big existing depots with big companies. You pay your money and take your choice but depots aren't particularly a big separation of one being better than the other.

Stagecoach kept the dominance in Stockport because they were good at running bus services for much of that period, First didn't keep the dominance in north Manchester because they weren't so there were more operators on that side of town (though they had probably be declining for several years due to the long term threat of franchising making it less attractive to stay around) but in many cases it is anyway about the potential than the reality - the Manchester contracts didn't really have any contracts of a suitable size for a genuine SME and all of the contracts ended up with what I would call big group companies so whatever they though they did to keep/attract those smaller operators didn't work.

And I will be blunt. London's system could arguably be no longer fit for purpose. I used to live in South West London. When I moved there you have Mitcham Belle, London United and Go Ahead all competing. Now it's just Go Ahead. They have pretty much every route in the area. They own the depots, they pretty much have the monopoly. Don't think London's model is some grand panacea to the problem. The number of operators has fallen dramatically over the years. It may well be they end up in a worse state than the franchise areas going down the depot route.

The issues in London over operators wasn't access to depots, as you say there used to be more operators all of whom had a base, but the risk issue I previously mentioned. Smaller operators couldn't carry the losses that incurred at the end of the contract as inflationary increases didn't keep up with cost increases and they didn't have the resources to keep winning contracts every year to balance out the profits from Year 1 covering the losses from Year 5, that is what did for Sullivans, Harris, Mitcham Belle and countless others.

And in the deregulated market we have seen countless small companies try to get a foothold in an area with a small commercial network, only to be figuratively (and in some cases literally!) run off the road by the big boys.

And we have seen numerous develop and thrive, I currently work for one and my previous employer was also one. It depends on where you are, what you do and how good at it you are. They do often sell up after a while, the successful ones get to a certain size where the nature of the business changes and either the owner is looking to retire or is no longer enjoying running a business due to getting to a size where it is all paperwork. It used to be they would be replaced by new operators but all the "extras" the government have loaded onto bus operators (Concessionary Fares, BODs, A/V Announcements etc - all laudable but expensive or difficult to deal with as a new start up whilst also having to deal with setting up the business and adding more money to be found before you can start) mean fewer operators are starting now.

If anything, I would say the smaller companies are more used to the tendering process and are more used to balancing the need to be competitive on price with the need to be sustainable.

The simple point is there is no standard small operator model nor is there a standard council tendering process so it will simply vary from place to place.

We have also seen the opposite side of the point you’re making in Dumfries and Galloway: there the small companies have been willing to take more of a risk knowing that the penalty clauses don’t really matter if you’re never going to be big enough to repay them if everything hits the wall. We can call this the Sullivan’s Buses model: the TfL fines were meaningless to an insolvent company.

I'm not sure anyone has actually been clear on what the issue was with the Dumfries & Galloway tendering, Stagecoach certainly seemed to be avoiding saying what it was. I suspected that it was a compensation figure tied to the size of the company bidding, so a small independent would be risking a small fine but Stagecoach could have been looking at a fine larger than the size of the contract. You may, though, be correct and it was simply that the independents just thought if it was going to be activated they would be bust and so wouldn't be paying anyway.

The point I have been trying to make is there is a difference in how normal tendering is dealt with and how franchising is dealt with in terms of contract flexibility and scale (London route tendering isn't really franchising just a regulated market). If you look at the proposals for Merseyside they are even worse than Manchester for smaller operators (and by smaller you are including anyone up to, though possibly not including, Rotala in size) as it is 5 huge area contracts and then, it appears from statements, school buses but nothing in the middle. If I were going to introduce a franchising scheme in somewhere like Manchester I would have had the big area contracts based on a single large depot covering all the high frequency high volume work, some smaller contracts of 20-30 vehicles (big enough for a new entrant to the market but small enough for a new depot to be created to house them cost effectively) covering some second tier 'commercial' and larger 'tendered' work (based on what they were before franchising) but at the bottom I would have kept some of the small, local contracts for 1-3 pvr to be tendered in the traditional manner (so without all the extra paperwork requirements) aimed at the smaller operators in my area (possibly what & where shaped by which operators I had, so in Manchester case more in the north & east and less in the south) intended to keep some of those operators active and possibly attract some of the coach operators in. It wouldn't have been much more work for the authority and creates work for the smaller local businesses which allows more flexibility in the system for change and development down the line.

 

[mayneway]

At the change there were five smaller companies left in the Stockport area that i can think of. Belle Vue was (and is) doing the 391 for Cheshire East that they picked up after the demise of Little Gem (to be vaguely more accurate, Little Gem gave up their TfGM routes but kept the 391/392 and started using the Maynes brand for them before very quickly selling it on (I presume) to Belle Vue).

High Peak was (and is) doing the 394 and 199. D&G had the 385 that they took on again in after the demise of Little Gem. Stotts had a service or two. And then there was Nexus Move who did some evening journeys. of all the remaining pre Bee operators, Stotts and Nexus Move are the only one to have gone. I would be surprised if Belle Vue didn't apply for a Bee Network schools franchise - but High Peak and D&G, far less so. Greater Manchester really isn't their area. Stotts had elderly owners beyond retirement age. And Nexus Move were a bit of an enigma anyway.

And that's just Stockport. Who else was there in Tameside, for example? Stotts, Stagecoach, Nexus Move...

Stotts owners apparently were not interested In bidding for any work as they wanted to retire.

 

[Stan Drews]

I'm not sure anyone has actually been clear on what the issue was with the Dumfries & Galloway tendering, Stagecoach certainly seemed to be avoiding saying what it was. I suspected that it was a compensation figure tied to the size of the company bidding, so a small independent would be risking a small fine but Stagecoach could have been looking at a fine larger than the size of the contract. You may, though, be correct and it was simply that the independents just thought if it was going to be activated they would be bust and so wouldn't be paying anyway.

The reason (unlimited liability) was discussed over in the DGC thread.

 

[4cryingoutloud]

The DVSA is normally willing to overlook one off instances of a driver going over driving hours if it is caused by an unprecedented delay. However the DVSA would expect Diamond to have taken the driver off at the earliest possible opportunity, and if the driver did continue to Eccles, I'd argue that wasn't the 'earliest possible opportunity'

Just to point out that 248 is operated by Metroline, I believe from their Wythenshawe depot.

 

[markymark2000]

Just to point out that 248 is operated by Metroline, I believe from their Wythenshawe depot.

Apologies. I got the wrong depot. I'll remove the relevant section of the post.

 

[slowroad]

Has there been any decent analysis yet of the impact of franchising on passenger numbers? This is what a Chat-GPT guesstimates:

First bar is overall growth; the difference between first and second bar is average growth across metropolitan areas; the main bundled reforms are the fare cap and frequency increases. Chat GPT picked the time periods and noted impacts may be understated because of the phased introduction of franchising. But it does point to the need to separate franchising from other measures which could have been introduced anyway.

 

[py_megapixel]

Has there been any decent analysis yet of the impact of franchising on passenger numbers? This is what a Chat-GPT guesstimates:
View attachment 189174
First bar is overall growth; the difference between first and second bar is average growth across metropolitan areas; the main bundled reforms are the fare cap and frequency increases. Chat GPT picked the time periods and noted impacts may be understated because of the phased introduction of franchising. But it does point to the need to separate franchising from other measures which could have been introduced anyway.

I'm not sure it really points to anything to be honest. Asking Chat GPT to provide statistics is pointless; you might as well just roll a dice.

The £2 fare cap was already in place in the old deregulated system so there is no point in considering it here. I suppose contactless tap-in with automated capping could have been introduced by the deregulated operators of their own accord, but for passengers travelling with multiple operators, it would have been a terrible passenger experience - as it is in several places already where only half the buses have it, or there are confusing slightly different rules for slightly different operators, or there are several separate interfaces for checking your journey history, or it doesn't integrate with other modes.

I agree that franchising needs to be analysed separately from certain other measures, but there is a certain amount of nuance here - e.g. plenty of things that could in theory have been implemented under the old system but in reality would have to be abandoned on practical grounds.

 

[slowroad]

I'm not sure it really points to anything to be honest. Asking Chat GPT to provide statistics is pointless; you might as well just roll a dice.

The £2 fare cap was already in place in the old deregulated system so there is no point in considering it here. I suppose contactless tap-in with automated capping could have been introduced by the deregulated operators of their own accord, but for passengers travelling with multiple operators, it would have been a terrible passenger experience - as it is in several places already where only half the buses have it, or there are confusing slightly different rules for slightly different operators, or there are several separate interfaces for checking your journey history, or it doesn't integrate with other modes.

I agree that franchising needs to be analysed separately from certain other measures, but there is a certain amount of nuance here - e.g. plenty of things that could in theory have been implemented under the old system but in reality would have to be abandoned on practical grounds.

Don’t agree about Chat-GPT: but you need to use it intelligently - check its sources, review its methods, cross check as far as possible etc.

 

[mattb7tl]

Best measurement would be per head of population against other metropolitan counties comparing pre-pandemic figures. GM is leading the way. You won't find this mentioned on the bought out bus articles.

GM:
67.2 (2019) > 62.5 (2024) -7.0%
WY:
61.9 (2019) > 49.7 (2024) -20%
SY:
66.8 (2019) > 46.8 (2024) -30%
WM:
91.1 (2019) > 79.2 (2024) -13%
Merseyside:
72.3 (2019) > 60.9 (2024) -16%
Tyne & Wear:
99.7 (2019) > 71.4 (2024) -28%

 

[317 forever]

Maybe but don't forget London is a very different market with a different setup. Small groups of depots privatised many years ago. No one really had a monopoly because there was so much scope for different companies being able to operate in different areas. That wasn't the case in Greater Manchester. Some companies had monopolies. Take Stockport pre Bee Network. It was basically Stagecoach territory. They ran almost everything. They had a depot right in the heart of town that ran most of the services. Who would have been a shoe in to win individual route contracts in Stockport? Simple. Stagecoach. They'd have known the financials, they had the base.

And I will be blunt. London's system could arguably be no longer fit for purpose. I used to live in South West London. When I moved there you have Mitcham Belle, London United and Go Ahead all competing. Now it's just Go Ahead. They have pretty much every route in the area. They own the depots, they pretty much have the monopoly. Don't think London's model is some grand panacea to the problem. The number of operators has fallen dramatically over the years. It may well be they end up in a worse state than the franchise areas going down the depot route.

A difference is that in London tendering is for individual routes and started before the split and privatisation of London Buses Limited.

In Manchester and other areas adopting franchising now, they are tendering by garage from already privatised operations, and commercial ones at that.

 

[Leedsbusman]

Best measurement would be per head of population against other metropolitan counties comparing pre-pandemic figures. GM is leading the way. You won't find this mentioned on the bought out bus articles.

GM:
67.2 (2019) > 62.5 (2024) -7.0%
WY:
61.9 (2019) > 49.7 (2024) -20%
SY:
66.8 (2019) > 46.8 (2024) -30%
WM:
91.1 (2019) > 79.2 (2024) -13%
Merseyside:
72.3 (2019) > 60.9 (2024) -16%
Tyne & Wear:
99.7 (2019) > 71.4 (2024) -28%

Is that 2024? 2023/4? 2024/5?.
Franchising in itself doesn’t lead to customer growth. The things that a franchising authority does it’s what results in the growth and there is very little that can only be done under franchising, but somethings that are more likely.

GM retains at £2 fare v many others so won’t have seen the impact others have of moving to a £3 cap (or £2.50 in WY).

There is little point in trying to prove franchising is better than deregulation- it just needs measuring against the planned benefits.

 

[slowroad]

Best measurement would be per head of population against other metropolitan counties comparing pre-pandemic figures. GM is leading the way. You won't find this mentioned on the bought out bus articles.

GM:
67.2 (2019) > 62.5 (2024) -7.0%
WY:
61.9 (2019) > 49.7 (2024) -20%
SY:
66.8 (2019) > 46.8 (2024) -30%
WM:
91.1 (2019) > 79.2 (2024) -13%
Merseyside:
72.3 (2019) > 60.9 (2024) -16%
Tyne & Wear:
99.7 (2019) > 71.4 (2024) -28%

Official DfT figures for bus passenger journeys (admittedly not per capita) are:
GM: 189.7 (2019), 146.5 (2023), 163.5 (2024)
Total metropolitan counties: 904, 684. 755.
So the declines 2019 to 2023 (pre-franchising) are 33% for GM and 34% for the total. In 2024 (partial franchising etc) there is a recovery, with the overall reduction compared to 2019 becoming 14% for GM and 16% for the total. So no clear sign that the early stages of franchising had anything other than a very small / no impact. I don’t know why our results are so different…….population can’t have changed much.