Firstly, i should begin by offering my apologies for neglecting this blog over the past year. Whilst there are many topics on which i could have offered my opinion, the overwhelming feeling regarding most of them has been that my voice would add little to what appears to be an overcrowded marketplace of shouting.
Back in June 2023 as the deadline day was approaching for it’s final withdrawal following a brief stay of execution, the former regular driver of the 82 service with First and Libra approached me to do some timetable work for a potential bid for funding under the “WestLocal” scheme. This has the strapline of being “People-powered transport: designed locally, run locally“. In terms of people to design such a scheme, i think we’re both pretty well qualified. Both myself and the regular driver live on the route of the former 82 service, and we have both done more laps of it that either of us could count. We made a good team on the project – he was happy dealing with the parish council and i was happy doing the numbercrunching.
A plan for all seasons…
The scope of the project was to cover as much of the withdrawn 82 and 179 services as possible, whilst also following the latest instruction from the West of England Combined Authority, which was that these services must not be competitive with any other bus services. Competitiveness between local bus services is a curious concept in local government. Some councils are happy to support services which run alongside commercial services over parts of their route, recognising the importance of a public transport network which links tangibly important targets together. Others may see any supported bus service joining the same two stops together as a commercial route as something competitive which they must avoid at all costs, regardless of how illogical it may make a bus service route. It appears that the West of England Combined Authority sit firmly on the furthest wing of the latter camp.
After several versions back and forth between ourselves and Paulton Parish Council, we arrived at the version of the route we were most happy with by October 2023. It would have covered the whole of the 82 service route from the era before Bristolians began messing with it in October 2021. It was clear then that the experts in plush city centre offices have likely never been to Paulton, let alone understand how certain aspects of bus services are set up and the rationale behind how they operate. It was also proposed to serve the whole village of Timsbury, rather than skirting around the edge (as service 522 does when the roads aren’t closed) before travelling on to Tunley and Odd Down Park & Ride. At the Radstock end, Writhlington was also to be added on to the route (which had the knock-on benefit of giving a little extra shopping time in Midsomer Norton).
As we were covering the scope of two bus services, plus some additional parts of the former 768 route as well, the service was proposed to be two buses Monday to Friday and one on Saturdays. Journeys were appropriately placed to arrive at all the local secondary schools in a timely manner and provide afternoon return journeys in both directions. The economy on Saturday was found by curtailing the route to Midsomer Norton as the Radstock end is sufficiently covered by the FromeBus 414 and 424 services (a relic of FromeBus’ operation on the 82 route).
All quiet on the WESTern front…
As October ended and the bid was submitted to our penningmeester overlords in Bristol, a silence fell. The silence lasted until the very end of January when a fellow operator alerted me to the fact that one of the B&NES Councillors from Paulton was searching for an operator to commit to running their new bus service. They forwarded the email with the revised proposal as apparently i wasn’t on the radar as being interested in running bus services, despite having rescued the 178 route from the edge a year previously.
The revised timetable being offered had systematically removed most of the ethos with which the original proposal had been put together. By all accounts, the West of England Combined Authority had decreed that the proposal for two vehicles to work the service was unsustainable. Rather than return the proposal to those who had worked on it for some revision, the nameless staff at the Combined Authority (whom us mortals are never allowed to meet, speak to or attempt to reason with) rewrote it themselves with negligible skill, care or understanding.
I forwarded it to the driver with whom i had worked on the project. He hadn’t seen it either. Having been so keen to have our ideas in order to form a credible proposal in the first place, the Parish Council and local councillors were now seemingly keen to move on from us now they had exhausted our usefulness.
School times…
Despite a headline on the timetable that it is “Based on providing service to Fosseway, Somervale and Norton Hill Schools from Paulton Am and return to Paulton PM“, the morning journeys arrive at all three of those schools too late for morning registration. It also appears that nobody had spotted that Fosseway is a additional needs school which attracts a huge fleet of minibuses and taxis every morning and afternoon, so the likelihood of any independent travel to the site is pretty much zero. In the version which has been implemented, the afternoon school journeys are pushed even further back to arrive at Norton Hill a minimum of 40 minutes after the school finishes in the afternoon and even later at Somervale (whilst ironically getting stuck in all the traffic on the journey towards Radstock for no fathomable reason).
Route reorganisation
Several parts of the route from the original proposal were removed. Notably Tyning and Writhlington in Radstock – two growing areas with substantial social housing and negligible facilities at the top of hills – were removed entirely.
Withies Park and Chilcompton Road were removed, presumably to avoid “competition” with the 173 and 184 services (and in doing so, removing their links to Paulton Hospital). Greenacres was also removed, removing another substantial area of social housing from the route. In their place was added Welton, traditionally poor bus territory with a vast majority of privately owned housing.
Fruit cocktail, anyone…?
Of course, as it transpired our people powered community bus service was awarded to Brighton based firm The Big Lemon, who have made no secret of their desires to expand their Avon Valley operation having lost significant local bus service contract work in Bristol to Stagecoach and Dan Norris’ axe swinging in 2023. I’m sure their tenure on the service will last as long as the contract does as there is no foreseeable way that the revenue generated by the service will ever stand a hope of meeting the £500+ per day subsidy.
And finally…
If anybody referred to explicitly or implicitly in the text above feels that the above portrays them in the wrong light, please talk to me. My door is, always has been and always remains open for discussion on any of the topics i cover. If a case is presented to me which causes me to reconsider that i’ve been unfair in any aspect of these blogs, then i will amend posts accordingly. I do my best to make sure that these blogs are factually accurate, because i think it’s fair that somewhere along the line the truth is recorded about how these decisions (and mistakes) are made.
If anyone wants to read this as a story of bitterness because something i worked on didn’t get implemented in the form that i suggested, then that is your prerogative. But ultimately, this story regards public money being spent on a project which no hope of becoming financially sustainable within the contracted term (one of the stated aims of the WestLocal funding package) because it is missing several of the target markets which are the lowest hanging fruit around which the rest of the service should be built.
The progressive clamming up of our dominant local government organisation to become completely impenetrable to the outside world about how decisions are made and who makes them is deeply disturbing and unhealthy. It makes every word of press release talking about “people power” and “locally made decisions” look like a work of total fiction. The whole WestLocal scheme seems to be about decisions being made by empowered people who aren’t in possession of the necessary knowledge to make the right choice. This has been echoed through the parallel project of the X91 service from the Chew Valley to Central Bristol at peak times which has had some frankly bizarre choices made about it’s operation.
It feels as if the old Brexit mantra of “we’ve had enough of experts” still runs powerfully through the veins of our local political leaders and influences their instructions to staff. Perhaps these people working in offices (or rather remotely home working rather than occupying their offices) in Bristol should admit that they don’t understand the detail of how bus services work outside of Their City and take guidance from more experienced or knowledgeable voices where appropriate. The prospect of such a faulty and insular organisation ever having franchising powers gives a chill down my spine.
The Citistar Column 