First Group: General Discussion

[nick291]

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Our UK Bus division operates around a fifth of local bus services in the UK and is one of the largest bus operators with a fleet of approximately 6,400 buses around the England, Scotland and Wales. We have bus routes serving 40 of the UK’s largest towns and cities providing great value public...

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Thanks Stan!

 

[JD2168]

Something I have noticed is that First South Yorkshire has said it will no longer be posting on X (Twitter), is this the same at all First operations or is it just First SY?

 

[Volvodart]

Something I have noticed is that First South Yorkshire has said it will no longer be posting on X (Twitter), is this the same at all First operations or is it just First SY?

It appears for all First Bus. You would normally have expected some notice for things like this before this happened.

 

[-Colly405-]

It appears for all First Bus. You would normally have expected some notice for things like this before this happened.

When a lot of organisations started quitting X earlier in the year, none of the ones I follow gave notice, they just did it.

What surprises me is that they've not gone to Bluesky, Threads, etc.

 

[Volvodart]

When a lot of organisations started quitting X earlier in the year, none of the ones I follow gave notice, they just did it.

What surprises me is that they've not gone to Bluesky, Threads, etc.

They have not.removed the X links from everything, the regional news pages still have them.

 

[G760XRE]

Noted today at Potteries depot with new panels, ready for rubbing down and repainting was Portsmouth Streetlite 63297 SN65OKX. Couldn't get a picture unfortunately due to where it'd been parked. Is this returning to Portsmouth once completed, or transferring elsewhere. As 63310 went to Berkshire after being painted here recently.

 

[317 forever]

Surely if you're riding on them, you don't see the livery anyway???

I still don't quite get the relevance. You say you might travel less because buses are less distinctive externally but you can't see that if you're travelling. However, you say you look at buses passing in the opposite direction...which means you don't need to travel anyway?

In any case, the loss of revenue from a few enthusiasts will be nothing compared to the projected savings from not repainting vehicles on transfer

I don't think you got my point - explained above

Absolutely right.

First of all, reliability is THE most important consideration for a customer. It's the base requirement - does it get me to where I want to go, and at the time it should. That is the core of the "product" and you can't market an inherently crap product (i.e. doesn't turn up, isn't late, doesn't go where I want it to go).

Get that right and then you can focus on marketing etc. Oh, and price/value is a relatively low consideration for most passengers. This is borne out in countless studies and surveys.

I think 2 successive posts criticising my 1 point (about the merits of different Urban style liveries) is excessive.

 

[Nammer]

Noted today at Potteries depot with new panels, ready for rubbing down and repainting was Portsmouth Streetlite 63297 SN65OKX. Couldn't get a picture unfortunately due to where it'd been parked. Is this returning to Portsmouth once completed, or transferring elsewhere. As 63310 went to Berkshire after being painted here recently.

I believe it is heading for Berkshire

 

[fgwrich]

Incredible that First even thought it OK to boast that some buses were cleaned daily when this should be a base requirement for the whole fleet (defective bus washes etc permitting).

Mind you, Stagecoach seems to be heading down this route of late. One of the features listed on the new livery has been that this bus has CCTV! Hardly Impressive considering just about every new vehicle from the early to mid naughties had had CCTV. No working WiFi though like stagecoach used to provide, or indeed still advertise on many of its vehicles. But we have CCTV for your security!

Case in point is Cornwall. In the latest Transport Focus passenger survey GoCornwall scores much better than First. Go Cornwall have a fleet of plain red buses which are getting decidedly worn and battered yet overall they get the basics right. They do normally turn up when they're supposed to, the buses are clean internally and the drivers generally seem a much happier bunch than those with First.

On the branding topic the loss of the Portland Coaster branding seems to be affecting loadings. Yes Easter is a new service period for this route but loadings have been very low / non-existent on the majority of journeys. Compared to previous years:

- No branded buses creating intrigue and awareness to potential passengers highlighting the route to Portland Bill and the lighthouse.
- Timetables at stops in the new corporate style compared to nicely branded publicity with no mention of the fact it is an open top bus and the attractions enroute.
- No marketing of ticketing options online, on bus or stop publicity.
- Route number changed from Portland Coaster to just 11 making it seem like a standard route.
- In the past there was lots of marketing done too and attractive leaflets about the service at key tourist hotspots. I don't think there was even a post on the Service Updates page of their website advertising the services return.

Contrast that with the Weymouth Land Train around the seafront and harbour. Yes not a bus but lessons to be learnt by First for a premium, tourist orientated open top route (that locals love too!) - clear branding, large flags/bollard covers/posters/A-Boards at the stops and lots of marketing has been done on social media groups etc. So many more passengers seen on this with journeys busy unlike the 3 people I saw board the open top. First seem to just expect people to turn up for the open top route without doing anything. Shocking this year so far!

Having just spent a week down in Cornwall again, it’s sadly not hard to see why GCB has overtaken First in the leagues. The heart and soul that MMH & AC had left rather felt like it had been ripped out of FK. Route branding didn’t seem to mean anything anymore with U-Lines vehicles running mostly on the 17 (and somewhat confusing arrangement with 17 & 17a), Tinners on the U4, and a scruffy array of Volvos on the former Lands End Coaster turned 1. What also seemed to be causing confusion was both the AI generated timetables on the 17 and the addition of the former Sunseaker leg up to the St Ives Holiday Village - both trips had passengers checking with the drivers to ask if they “had gone the wrong way” and “was still going to St Erth”.

I’m not surprised about the Portland Coaster either sadly - like killing off the Open Top routes in Cornwall, the bizarre and frankly poor effort of keeping the Exmouth Coast, sorry Explorer alive, First seem rather hellbent on killing off additional marketing that seemingly makes such a service an attractive option to the casual tourist. As I believe it was @Goldfish62 has said in the past, whatever people think of Ray Stenning’s Best Impressions, there’s little doubt that a key tourist route like this needs his work. Presumably it won’t be long before the Jurassic Coast X53 becomes a plain old Ultravoilet route too, and any semblance of Localised branding is completely lost for good.

 

[F Great Eastern]

The Railair and Aircoach twitter accounts have been deleted without any notice whatsoever.

I know that they were stopping posting on there for their bus operations, but those two didn't even get the explanation.

 

[Andyh82]

Either they’ve used this as an excuse to make some people redundant in the social media team or someone really into politics has just taken over control of this area of the business and has made a point. I didn’t realise they were not just stopping service updates but stopping promo on there as well, and actually deleting the accounts.

I would probably guess the vast majority of bus users are not fully into politics and continue to use X just like they usually did and don’t really know or don’t care who owns it and if they do they don’t really mind. I’m not sure we are at the point where it’s dead. It’s noticeable that organisations like Bee Network and TFL are still using X

 

[nick291]

The Railair and Aircoach twitter accounts have been deleted without any notice whatsoever.

I know that they were stopping posting on there for their bus operations, but those two didn't even get the explanation.

RailAir did. Least I saw a post explaining that they would no longer be active on their twitter account.

 

[Non Multi]

Either they’ve used this as an excuse to make some people redundant in the social media team or someone really into politics has just taken over control of this area of the business and has made a point. I didn’t realise they were not just stopping service updates but stopping promo on there as well, and actually deleting the accounts.

I would probably guess the vast majority of bus users are not fully into politics and continue to use X just like they usually did and don’t really know or don’t care who owns it and if they do they don’t really mind. I’m not sure we are at the point where it’s dead. It’s noticeable that organisations like Bee Network and TFL are still using X

The problem was until recently if you weren't logged in (or don't have an account) on the web, X defaulted to showing your most popular post at the top, not your most recent post. That made it unsuitable for communicating alterations to the service.

Now you can't see anything at all unless you join, massively reducing its reach and usefulness as a platform to post service changes.

 

[Dwarfer1979]

The problem was until recently if you weren't logged in (or don't have an account) on the web, X defaulted to showing your most popular post at the top, not your most recent post. That made it unsuitable for communicating alterations to the service.

Now you can't see anything at all unless you join, massively reducing its reach and usefulness as a platform to post service changes.

The advantage of Twitter was that you didn't have to be logged in to see it and you could also link to it so you could show your twitter feed on your website which meant it could be used to communicate with all your passengers who had internet available whether or not they used twitter or were on a device logged into it. X removed this attractive feature as you say which made it less useful as a general communication tool for disruptions which is where social media was most useful and if you can now only view as a logged in user it becomes even less useful as a general tool of communication. I believe X also made it more difficult to manage information across multiple apps, there were ways of setting up things so the same message could be posted to twitter (which would then also feed to your website) and facebook with one post but that now isn't as easy to do which makes the whole process more difficult. Whilst lots of people are still on X there are many who have left and many of those still on have reduced their usage all of which damages the case for devoting resources to X.

There is also a lot of people who when they look at it find much of the activity on X is bots rather than actual users when compared to other streams which diminishes its worth and makes it much harder to justify dedicating resource to but at the moment the issue is there is no clear platform to use, usage is splintering over multiple platforms which increases cost to a business as people are having to duplicate activity. A lot of the staying on X is as much inertia, you have invested a lot of time in building that up and moving to different methods means rebuilding that and making a decision like that also takes time once someone thinks of making the switch.

Alongside this with the rise of apps, particularly with mobile ticketing becoming more common, operators have a more direct method of targeted communication with their actual customers with messaging and notifications via the app which can be sent to the people who actually need to know. We are now in a position where there is no dominant method, all streams have strengths and weaknesses and no obvious correct answer on the best method is yet clear and we may well never get back to a position with such a clear and obvious channel that all organisations use as a universal method. I suspect operators will begin pushing their apps as the best method to stay connected and updated about them over splintered general communication.

 

[mangad]

I'd hope they've looked at the engagement they get on social media and its costs before making a decision. But there's always a tussle in "reach out to customers where they are vs keep them in our own ecosystem". And if you're trying to reduce costs, then the time someone's spending posting on social media is inevitably going to come under scrutiny.

Whether this is a sensible, customer-forward move, is an entirely different question

 

[Hophead]

I would not expect more than a small proportion of a bus company's actual or prospective passengers to be active on X/Twitter and suspect that this has always been the case. As above, regarding apps, most operators now seem to have off-the-shelf websites from the likes of Passenger which have service alteration pages baked in.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I would not expect more than a small proportion of a bus company's actual or prospective passengers to be active on X/Twitter and suspect that this has always been the case. As above, regarding apps, most operators now seem to have off-the-shelf websites from the likes of Passenger which have service alteration pages baked in.

But not all of them do and a number of them are still not publishing cancellations when they occur. We appear to be back to the anti-customer strategy of if they are not telling anyone about things, it doesn't happen and the public deserve much better than that. Good operators will post service disruption but others will not post it because they value their brand image over transparency.

Also from what I've heard about Aircoach from an Irish road transport forum, is it's just another long list in cutbacks to the customer experience over the last 18 months or so and a complete lack of engagement with the local community to turn it into just another UK bus operating company, when in reality it is an Irish coach company and needs to be run differently.

As we've seen, the centralising of customer care for both Aircoach and other UK operations to a single call centre leads to staff who don't know the networks and ask really basic questions they shouldn't need to). The whole idea of cutting the phone line opening times and having nothing at weekends (for those operators that did have a weekend line like Aircoach) was based on social media being available for longer hours. Instagram and Facebook now are no longer being monitored by the OpCos and only used as marketing tools (indeed Aircoach has a big disclaimer saying the page is not monitored)

In the case of Aircoach in Ireland, that operator last year earnt a reputation for cancelling services and still does even as far as this week without any notice to customers, a bus tracking service that doesn't track all of the routes and last year reconfigured a network under a local team who had no experience in buses which was never going to work as many people told them at the time. Less than a year later they had to rip the network up and withdraw services from areas long served as their changes failed. Rather than face the music, they hired a PR firm to deal with local representatives and irate customers as they appear to be scared of their customer base. Meanwhile National Express, who are Aircoach's biggest competitor continue to operate phone lines 7 days a week and social media from 8am to 10pm.

I'm really nervous about where First is heading in terms of the bus side. All of the good work that has been done in the UK mainland over the last few years for me after the damaging years that went before them and the damage of the later Lockhead era it is seemingly being undone.

 

[Hophead]

While all the above may well be true, it doesn't counter my point that the number of actual or prospective passengers active on X/Twitter is a tiny proportion of the total. As such, updates published on a platform unseen by, and inaccessible to, the majority of your customers means that they may as well not be published at all. And, how many operators not publishing updates on their websites actually bother to provide them by other means? And how effective is that messaging?

 

[SSmith2009]

if they're no longer posting on X/Twitter, surely it's time to introduce a feature on their app that sends service notifications to you.

 

[F Great Eastern]

While all the above may well be true, it doesn't counter my point that the number of actual or prospective passengers active on X/Twitter is a tiny proportion of the total. As such, updates published on a platform unseen by, and inaccessible to, the majority of your customers means that they may as well not be published at all. And, how many operators not publishing updates on their websites actually bother to provide them by other means? And how effective is that messaging?

At the end of the day it's most likely about First Bus trying to discourage people from contacting them and thus allowing them to reduce the costs that they have to pay to service those contacts. This is not a very good move at all in what is a public facing user facing business.

I agree with you that less people are using Twitter/X and some of the moves that platform has made under Musk are very much retrograde, but in the Aircoach case (and no doubt others) when the company laid off it's local support team last year and closed the lines at weekends and reduced the hours during the week they went on record of telling customers not to worry as they should use X/Twitter at weekends which would keep things updated. They also explicitly told people not to use any other social media network. At the same time they then told people that responses may take 14 days and then made a contact us form that took so long to complete that it almost seems designed to put people off.

We also should not be excusing companies who are leaving people high and dry in terms of services being unreliable but the companies not bothering to tell anyone about them. The school of thinking that it's best to not mention something as if nobody talks about it, it doesn't happen since posting publicly about it will draw attention to the fact to prospective customers has no place in public transport. There needs to be transparency about services where the end user comes before the companies image.

 

[G760XRE]

The last handful of E400s from Leicester are expected at Colchester to finish off the last few B7TLs.

33700 is now painted in First Ultraviolet livery. Couldn't get a picture due to where it was parked in the Potteries depot. Expect this will now be heading over to Colchester soon.

 

[Canary73]

First Essex is very flakey for its customer services. It shut its travel centres years ago and has now pulled out of twitter advising people to use the app. Its pretty poor given it isn't available from the first and last service and can take ages to respond. Its an area that needs regulation. When I have used Twitter they either failed to respond or do so days afterwards.

 

[WY Bus Spotter]

Does anyone happen to know the identities of the three open toppers used for the Leeds United parade this afternoon? I presume they were Ensign stock?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Does anyone happen to know the identities of the three open toppers used for the Leeds United parade this afternoon? I presume they were Ensign stock?

Looking at the photos, one is definitely ex First Glasgow 33908 SN11FPA - it was leading the parade and you can clock the reg on photos. Middle one looks like it may have been former Ensign e500 68EB - deffo tri-axle. Bringing up the rear is a Routemaster and I'd lay decent money as it looks to be an RMC (and would make sense as you want to secure the door to stop excitable fans from boarding) that it's Ensignbus RMC1510.

 

[JD2168]

Looking at the photos, one is definitely ex First Glasgow 33908 SN11FPA - it was leading the parade and you can clock the reg on photos. Middle one looks like it may have been former Ensign e500 68EB - deffo tri-axle. Bringing up the rear is a Routemaster and I'd lay decent money as it looks to be an RMC (and would make sense as you want to secure the door to stop excitable fans from boarding) that it's Ensignbus RMC1510.

The E500 was 68EB

 

[buslad1988]

This is a good example to show that adaptations/branding on the new livery template can still work!

Norwich Sightseeing

Norwich Sightseer Revealed

Following our report that the Norwich Sightseer open top service is to begin this Saturday 24th May ( Norwich Sightseer - 16th May 2025 ), Z...

eastnorfolkbus.blogspot.com

 

[Leyland Bus]

This is a good example to show that adaptations/branding on the new livery template can still work!

Norwich Sightseeing

Norwich Sightseer Revealed

Following our report that the Norwich Sightseer open top service is to begin this Saturday 24th May ( Norwich Sightseer - 16th May 2025 ), Z...

eastnorfolkbus.blogspot.com

That's far nicer! Why didn't they just do that??

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

That's far nicer! Why didn't they just do that??

For all their operations??? Perhaps the light blue might be mistaken for Arriva?

Three observations...

• Former Kernow vehicle so interesting to see that reappear
• The Norwich one is returning.... I didn't expect that when last year's vehicle headed to Great Yarmouth
• There is still some commercial and operational freedom?

Interesting photo

 

[Leyland Bus]

For all their operations??? Perhaps the light blue might be mistaken for Arriva?

Three observations...

• Former Kernow vehicle so interesting to see that reappear
• The Norwich one is returning.... I didn't expect that when last year's vehicle headed to Great Yarmouth
• There is still some commercial and operational freedom?

Interesting photo

No, no... I was meaning having different colour variations in that house style rather than just grey and purple, which I find abit "meh"...

*My bold to tie in the answer.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

No, no... I was meaning having different colour variations in that house style rather than just grey and purple, which I find abit "meh"...

*My bold to tie in the answer.

Probably because the view was that they were spending too much on repaints and it prompted a return to a national scheme. However, where it makes sense (and tourist services are the obvious one), then they should have a little more freedom.

I don't mind the purple and grey, and whilst I'll miss some of the First liveries, it was getting a bit silly in some places (e.g. Cornwall, Bristol)