NX charging infrastructure manager to display NX services

[goldenarrow]

I've learned of a hilarious anecdote that took place at Heathrow recently involving National Express and the airport.

Heathrow Central Bus station along with Terminal 4 and Terminal 5 bus stations had been operated by National Express for several decades but they lost the contract tender earlier this year after it emerged NX had potentially abused their power as both an operator and a supposedly neutral infrastructure manager.

Fast forward to now and with NX due to start services in July, the airport received the bizarre request for an undisclosed sum of money from NX to display their services on the airports departure screens (yes, you read that right). NX want to charge the very hubs that are on their most profitable routes for the right to display said routes.

Can anybody think of a more ludicrous situation where an operator is actively discouraging departure information of its services?

 

[Stan Drews]

I suspect your anecdote may have grown some limbs before you learned about it!
The bus station management contract was one of many retendered by Heathrow Airport Ltd. last year, so if NX didn’t retain it, they simply lost it through the normal tendering process.

 

[goldenarrow]

I suspect your anecdote may have grown some limbs before you learned about it!
The bus station management contract was one of many retendered by Heathrow Airport Ltd. last year, so if NX didn’t retain it, they simply lost it through the normal tendering process.

NX lost the bid to Transdev not because they outbid but because NX simply weren't telling the truth. NX claimed that Heathrow Central was at full capacity and then introduced two new routes and uplifted frequencies on four routes a month later. I know this because it involved my department.

HAL then got an external team to do a capacity study of which I was part of to test their claim. There was no statistical evidence to support their claims and more pressingly, we found that the existing capacity plans handed to us had been meddled with to over inflate the true number of services (typically 3-5 services per hour) giving the impression of a full timetable when this just wasn't the case. Upon delivering our findings to HAL, NX accused us of being "prejudiced" and "being in the pocket of competitors". I think that set the tone really.

The anecdote comes from an email screenshot on a staff group chat and to be honest is unsurprising given their form. Never in my career have I had to deal with such childish actions from one of the UK's largest operators.

 

[Stan Drews]

NX lost the bid to Transdev not because they outbid but because NX simply weren't telling the truth. NX claimed that Heathrow Central was at full capacity and then introduced two new routes and uplifted frequencies on four routes a month later. I know this because it involved my department.

HAL then got an inhouse team to do a capacity study of which I was part of to test their claim. There was no statistical evidence to support their claims and more pressingly, we found that the existing capacity plans handed to us had been meddled with to over inflate the true number of services (typically 3-5 services per hour) giving the impression of a full timetable when this just wasn't the case.

The anecdote comes from an email screenshot on a staff group chat and to be honest is unsurprising given their form on such antics.

Sounds intriguing, but it would still be incorrect to suggest NX were “stripped of the contract”. Presumably their submission for the new contract was deemed non-compliant, and Transdev ended up with the contract on the basis of coming out best on the metrics HAL used to measure/score the compliant bids.

 

[goldenarrow]

Sounds intriguing, but it would still be incorrect to suggest NX were “stripped of the contract”. Presumably their submission for the new contract was deemed non-compliant, and Transdev ended up with the contract on the basis of coming out best on the metrics HAL used to measure/score the compliant bids.

Fair point, they were effectively invalidated. I've edited the above

 

[Flying Snail]

I guess an operator attempting to charge an airport for listing their services is a change from the usual of airports charging obscene rates for bus services delivering customers to their door or entering into sweetheart deals with individual operators in order to stifle competition.