Thanks for that.
Will be interesting to see which vehicles survive past the end of the 4 on August 11th.
The reasons they give are nonsense though. This is entirely the result of their own mismanagement, poor advertising, poor service, high fares and their post-2005 policy of bowing to Stagecoach at every turn.
Well, to borrow your terminology from another post, I'm going to 'call you out' for hyperbole and nonsense.
Are you in possession of First Northampton's financial statements? Have you been privy to the commercial decisions and marketing strategy?
I don't think the reasons being given by First are "nonsense" at all - let's look at them:
"Our services in Northampton have underperformed for some years."
Very possibly true - nobody, apart from those who have seen the figures can know what the profitability or otherwise of First Northampton's operation is or was.
"We have been faced with extra cost pressures due to the economic climate, including high fuel prices and cuts in external funding."
All of this is true - the economy has been difficult, fuel costs are high and First have probably lost out more than Stagecoach with the changes in funding by NCC. Stagecoach, by virtue of their size in the wider Northamptonshire area have probably been less affected by some of these.
Additionally Gordon Brown's "bung" to pensioners of "free" bus passes has probably impacted First's income as well - the bus companies don't receive the same amount of money when accepting a pass as they do when somebody pays a cash fare:
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10040100.Why_should_OAPs_have_free_bus_travel___the_big_debate/
"Unfortunately, in this instance it means we need to consider discontinuing all our services in Northampton in order to ensure the long term sustainability of our operations in South East and Midlands."
Well, if one area is unprofitable it has an impact on the profitability of other areas because they need to cross-subsidise. In this case it is probably better to discontinue operations and protect the more profitable operations.
Now - in the interests of balance, let's subject your "claims" to similar scrutiny:
"This is entirely the result of their own mismanagement,"
Totally subjective - one could argue that to have sustained the service for as long as they have against the economic and cost background is quite remarkable.
"poor advertising,"
Erm - First have put their timetables on the bus stops, provided printed timetables at the bus station, have a website with their timetables and fares on and their timetables are on NCC's website. Exactly the same as Stagecoach has done. So what could / should First have done differently?
"poor service"
Define "poor service" - if their drivers are routinely rude to customers then I'd agree with you, equally if their buses never turned up or were always late, then again, I'd agree with you. But beyond anecdotal evidence, this doesn't seem to be the case and First seem no worse than Stagecoach, Arriva or Centrebus on this. So on what basis are you claiming "poor service" ?
"high fares"
I've just picked myself up off the floor from laughing at this. You, for many months, have been claiming Stagecoach are expensive and how First are much better value. So either First are expensive or they aren't - which is it? And if you drop fares further, you further erode your operating margins making the services even less profitable than they currently are - so surely by that logic, reducing fares would have hastened First's demise in Northampton?
"and their post-2005 policy of bowing to Stagecoach at every turn."
Evidence?
If by "bowing to Stagecoach" you mean not copying everything Stagecoach has done, that may be a perfectly reasonable thing to have done. If SC double the frequency on a route it suggests they have sufficient vehicles and drivers to cover that. If First didn't have those resources to hand then how could they have copied SC ?
If the result of SC improving their service meant some of First's were less profitable, then surely the right thing to do was withdraw and focus on fewer routes to keep costs under control rather than trying to compete and lose more money?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
MK_Tom, as I've said on the Firstgroup survival thread, if you look at the ex GRT operations at the time of the takeover/merger with Badgerline, these included Northampton, and if you look closely, most of the ex GRT areas have either cut back, or closed. Yet, the ex Badgerline areas are, largely fine, save for PMT. The problems at Northampton stem from GRT days, when they decided not to fund new vehicles until 1995 (two years after the takeover by GRT), then took out some 1985 Leyland Olympians, and transfered them to SMT in Edinburgh. This still left a large amount of Bristol VRTs languishing.
A belated attempt to turn the corner was made in Frst days, though, inevitably, with ex GRT folk at the top of the tree, this wasn't to last.
And even in GRT days, they conceded some routes or journeys to Stagecoach United Counties. So, that's when the rot set in - 1993.
I suspect this post is a far better explanation of First Northampton's situation.
I've not looked at the other ex-GRT purchases, but the one observation I'd make about First Northampton is that it was quite 'isolated'. The next 'nearest' First operation is Leicester, so the options of route-sharing or vehicle sharing were limited to non-existant. After that then you're looking at London, Eastern Counties or South Coast / South West - none of which could help.
If Northampton had been bought by whoever owned MK Metro at the time, it might have turned out differently - but we'll never know.
